Governance
A broad category of content focused on governance in cities.
Examples: Urban policy, justice, municipal services
From Fixed Routes to Flex Routes: Additional Responses to the May 13 Webinar
Earlier this month we hosted a live webinar featuring Alex Gibson from TransLoc, and Josh Powers who is serving as a member of the County Manager’s Office and is the contract administrator and regional transit liaison between Johnson County Government and the Kansas City Area Transit Authority (KCATA). Josh shared his unique perspective and insights from service changes and the re-utilization of infrastructure to creative ways to avoid driver layoffs and the allocation of resources with CARE Act funding.
Included in this post are responses to additional questions we were not able to answer during the live session.
Reopening Our Cities in the Midst of COVID-19 Calls for Inclusive Community Engagement
Though public life has been put on pause by the COVID-19 pandemic, the recovery period is predicted to bring a sequence of phases returning us gradually into public spaces with varying levels of social distancing as Coronavirus cases decline. The way to recovery is through collaboration; across sectors, across stakeholders, and across equity gaps. We believe that the careful engagement of all voices, in a collaborative, thoughtful way is critical when forming solutions to the challenges we are facing and to moving forward with confidence and trust.
We hope to provide a framework for addressing the challenges that will come with building back our necessary social infrastructure, by and for the community. From our perspectives as an urban anthropologist at THINK.urban and as a director of stakeholder engagement firm Connect the Dots, we see the following key points as a good place to start.
One Approach for Cities to Recoup Lost Revenues Due to COVID-19
We encourage public sector partners to think about data monetization as a spectrum of opportunities. On one end, there’s indirect monetization, which refers to the obvious idea of getting more value from data by doing more with what already exists. That could mean putting data in a more accessible form or location; sharing it across departments more effectively; or mining it more deeply to identify potential operational insights, anomalies, or efficiencies.
On the other end of the spectrum is the idea of direct monetization, meaning new, incremental revenue flowing directly to the city in exchange for the rental, purchase, or limited use of the city’s data. This is approach requires some focus and a proactive sales effort, but can deliver attractive, meaningful revenue streams.
In the middle of the spectrum is what we think of as the Hybrid opportunity. This is often where cities are most comfortable getting started, since its initial focus is on ensuring that the municipality is getting fair value for the time, effort, and costs of the city’s current efforts supplying data to other entities.
The Blueprint for Community Business Success
There is a lot that a city leader can do just by being a vocal champion for entrepreneurship. Mayors uniquely understand their communities’ assets and are therefore in a position to communicate and advocate on behalf of the city’s entrepreneurs. Engaging entrepreneurs and regulators in focus groups, appointing a special city official or liaison to entrepreneurship, and requiring city departments to review procurement and contracting, are all cost-effective tools that mayors have at their disposal to reduce the barriers for entrepreneurs.
How Cities Can Engage with Mobility as a Service
By incorporating multiple transport modes into a single application, users can benefit from personalised services which recognise individual mobility needs, easier transactions and payments, and dynamic journey management and planning.
A fully comprehensive MaaS offering could mean the ownership of private vehicles is no longer necessary for people. As mobility needs begin to be provided by a range of services through a single platform, usership could replace ownership.
The potential of MaaS has been recognised around the world. In the UK, the government has included MaaS within its transport strategy. An expert committee of Members of Parliament concluded that MaaS has the “potential to transform how people travel” by boosting public transport, reducing congestion, and improving air quality.
Cities Can Prepare for Autonomous Vehicles Now
Waiting for car manufacturers and ride-hail operators to decide the future of urban AV deployment will not create the cities that urban planners hope for, and often work very hard to make happen. While significant penetration of AVs — private or shared — is likely a decade or two away, deferring directional, optimization, and livability strategies will rob cities of flexibility, influence, and degrees of freedom within a decade.
If you believe AVs are coming eventually, the time to start getting ready is now, even if you believe human drivers will remain dominant for many decades. The steps outlined here are important support for the alternative to SOV, of expanding mobility-as-a-service such as Uber and Lyft.
Glasgow’s 5 Key Takeaways on Innovative Procurement
Innovative procurement is a much more flexible and open process compared to traditional procurement. Instead of buying a specific product or service the local authority is given an opportunity to discover new approaches. It’s allowing them to have a greater influence on products and find solutions that are catered to solving particular challenges, but will it replace traditional procurement? Bax & Company is engaging with cities to hear their perspectives on innovative procurement in order to help them better manage this promising, but uncertain, process. They spoke to James Arnott, the Principal Officer in Development & Regeneration Services of Glasgow City Council (GCC) to hear about Glasgow’s experience.
A Breakdown of San Francisco’s Affordable Housing Crisis
There is a definitive need for affordable housing programs for low-income households. But there is also clearly a need for housing assistance for people earning up to and beyond the city’s median income. When available funds and programs don’t align well with defined needs – and there is simply not enough money to solve the problem, the housing affordability challenge can seem insurmountable. If there is a silver lining to the current state of housing in the Bay Area, it’s that the affordability crisis has served as a much-needed call to action. Under a regional framework known as the 3Ps (production, preservation, and protections), new programs that seek to facilitate new housing construction, preserve existing affordable housing, and to enact tenant protections have been tried, tested, funded, and legislated at the local, regional, and state levels.
MetroLab’s 10 Principles for Government + University Partnerships
Using tools like algorithms and sensors, smart cities increase the quality of life for their residents, by making these communities cleaner, safer and healthier. When done thoughtfully smart cities efforts can also strive to make cities more inclusive and equitable. At the end of the day, it’s all about the people who live in these communities and making their interactions with city and/or county services easier and better.
California as an Example for Managing Urban Water in Drought Periods
Coordinated approaches are preferred for building urban drought resilience. Over the long term, a “trust but verify” policy can be more effective than the “better safe than sorry” approach of the mandate because the former encourages local suppliers to continue investing in diversified supplies. A good model is the stress-test approach the state adopted toward the end of the drought, which allowed local utilities to drop mandated conservation if they could demonstrate that they had drought-resilient supplies to last three more years.
In the wake of the drought, the state has adopted measures to improve information sharing, including a system for urban suppliers to provide regular updates on their supply situations. To encourage all agencies to prepare for more extreme droughts, urban water management planning documents must now address how suppliers would manage longer droughts.
Oakland’s Clean Energy Economy Strategy
Oakland and other cities in California are working to end dependence on natural gas in new construction. Cities, product manufacturers, regulators, and utilities in California have been working together under the Building Decarbonization Coalition to end the use of natural gas in buildings. This coalition and its members have demonstrated the availability of electric technologies to replace gas systems in all building types, shown that all-electric new construction is cheaper to build and operate than buildings with gas, and helped educate builders and contractors to show how modern electric systems like heat pumps and induction cooking deliver better cooking and heating for homes and businesses than their gas-based alternatives.
Cybersecurity Should be a Top Priority for Smart City Leaders
The growth of smart cities – projected to increase fourfold by 2025 – will continue. Unfortunately, at best, only a few cities have the skilled staff needed to address these new risks and cybersecurity challenges. Hence, the onus is increasingly on city administrators, technology providers, and even community leaders to take on a steep learning curve together, and better understand how cybersecurity fits into making cities safe and secure. The question remains – how do we get there?