Smart Cities
Silicon Valley is Incorporating Health into Green Building Design
For the Millennial employee, working at a mission-driven company is just as important as a steady paycheck. In the Bay Area, where the concerns for environmental and social sustainability run deep, this is even more so the case. In order for top companies in Silicon...
Where Goes the Neighborhood?
Here’s a basic recipe for a vibrant, livable global city: take an extensive transit system and locate jobs, homes, and multiple amenities nearby. Now consider New York and Chicago, which have bragging rights as the top one and two biggest U.S. transit systems. Which...
Classic Planning — More Bang for the Urban Buck
Since World War Two, urban planning and architecture has destroyed more good, urban fabric than the war itself. Architects, planners, artists, and cultural leaders wholeheartedly believed in “Less Is More”, “Form Follows Function”, “Architecture of Our Times”, and...
Smart Cities: Turning Information Into Action
We recently hosted a conversation about how the smart cities movement is gaining more momentum with city leaders, planners, businesses, NGOs and consumers engaging in meaningful conversations about sustainable cities and thriving communities. Our goal was to move...
From Digital Divide to Digital Equity
March 12 marked the 25th anniversary of the creation of the World Wide Web by Sir Tim Berners Lee. The web has enabled people around the globe to innovate in ways previously unimagined, collaborate with ease across oceans, and spur revolution. Imagine explaining the...
Sustainable Parks and Why They Work
As the population continues to grow and environmental concerns move increasingly to the forefront of public knowledge, more and more communities are looking for outdoor spaces that are both beautiful and sustainable. That’s why sustainable parks are such a big trend...
Mobility as a Service – In Las Vegas
It seems like you can’t turn a corner without encountering a tech company tackling a mobility challenge these days. The CEO of Zappos Tony Hsieh moved their corporate headquarters from the suburbs to downtown Las Vegas and, in a reversal from the Silicon Valley tech...
Stakeholder Engagement in Santiago: Chile’s Energy Future
The phrase “stakeholder engagement” does not exist in Spanish. And yet, in January of 2014, a group of 12 MBA and MPA students from Presidio Graduate School, myself being one of them, traveled to Santiago for a stakeholder engagement project, focusing on Chile’s...
One Woman’s Urban Farm-Hopping Journey Across America
Armed with nothing other than a longing to deepen my understanding of American food culture, sustainable farming and the steps needed to facilitate a food system change in an urban community, I drove solo from Virginia to California over a 3-month period. I needed to...
Quick Wins: 8 Smart City Projects That Can Pay Back Quickly
At the Smart Cities Council, we believe strongly that technology should be in service to a city’s larger vision. Thus, we recommend that any smart city roadmap start with those larger goals in mind. Once that’s out of the way, however, most smart city...
Sustainable Olympics in Sochi: A Challenge of Olympic Proportions
Photo credit (above): The Nation In 1996, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) declared environmental protection as the third pillar of the Olympic Games. Since then, environmental sustainability has been successfully integrated into the construction and...