Social Media & Networking posts, articles, and infographics

Social media and the city

January 30, 2012 by Adam Christensen
with 305 views

Social media provides local government with powerful and flexible tools to deliver information services through a variety of channels. Equally important, it provides unique tools for formulating policy and redefining the meaning of accountability as well. Discovery techniques based on social media are already helping local authorities to... [read more]

How measuring e-mails can reduce greenhouse gas emissions

January 26, 2012 by Green Buildings Alive
with 149 views

Our last post asked what we might draw from a global study of 500 million ‘tweets’ which found people are happiest in the morning – at almost precisely the time when complaints about the air conditioning in office buildings peak. The author of the twitter study, Scott Golder, commented “It looks like people send AC requests the same time... [read more]

The Economics of Sustainable Cities: Four Key Components

January 26, 2012 by This Big City
with 279 views

After asking lots of questions about the economics of sustainable cities in last week’s blog post, we turned to Twitter to try and find some answers. During the very first #CityTalk - a monthly tweetchat launched by me and the chaps at Future Cape Town – we got caught up in a seriously fast-paced discussion on the subject, with... [read more]

Could Twitter Help Us Create Smarter Transit?

January 25, 2012 by Jack Mason
with 190 views

Could Twitter Help Us Create Smarter Transit Routes? “Traditional city maps visualize just one aspect of urban design—the city’s intended structure, full stop. But add in a layer that visualizes how people actually use the city, and then the map becomes much more interesting. Eric Fischer did exactly that when he used Twitter’s... [read more]

Is Social Media the Key to Making Buildings More Sustainable?

January 23, 2012 by This Big City
with 210 views

Can you use social media to better engage your community? Even in construction? [read more]

Network Structure and City Size

January 13, 2012 by David Levinson
with 121 views

Recently published: Levinson, David (2011) Network Structure and City Size. PLoS One PLoS ONE 7(1): e29721, January 12, 2012 [doi] Network structure varies across cities. This variation may yield important knowledge about how the internal structure of the city affects its performance. This paper systematically... [read more]

Hilo, HI: First Crowdsourced Placemaking Municipality

January 12, 2012 by Neil Takemoto
with 168 views

Crowdsourced placemaking had been a private sector sponsored success in Bristol, CT, but what about coming from the public sector? To many, public sector sponsored crowdsourced placemaking sounded rather impossible, with such arguments as: - A municipality doesn’t do placemaking, or implementation, the private sector does. It’s the... [read more]

Boom: Carsharing Meets Mobile

January 11, 2012 by TheCityFix - produced by EMBARQ
with 101 views

Smartphone technology, increased connectivity and the presence of social networks empower individuals to embark on a new era of personal mobility. Photo by carpooling.com. Earlier last month we wrote about how the “Millennial” generation prefers the comfort and ease of car-sharing programs to car ownership. Today, there is further evidence to the growing culture of car sharing among 18- to 24-year-olds. According to a survey conducted by Carpooling.com, three quarters of this age group agreed that they would rather live without their car than their smartphone. [read more]

Observations From 100 Posts: We Want To Feel Connection

November 30, 2011 by Kate Gallery
with 78 views

November 30, 2011, Washington, DC: This morning marks a milestone: My 100th blog post. Not only have I made it this far, but the list of ideas for future posts is longer than ever. Funny what happens when you dip a toe in the water. What have I learned through the course of 100 posts? Have there been many surprises? Unexpected challenges or observations? Several of you have asked. Read on for lessons and reflections 100 posts in. (Then come back for blog post 101.) [read more]

Whose Street, Exactly? Occupy in the Context of Complete Streets

November 17, 2011 by Next American City
with 134 views

Chances are you heard about Occupy protestors in Oakland and Washington, D.C. being struck by cars two weeks ago—a Mercedes and a Lexus, respectively. But did you hear about the Hummer in Oakland? Or, breaking with the tableau of luxury automobiles used to aggressively threaten protesters, the Toyota truck that drove through a general assembly at the port? Those are the two I saw in Oakland, but I imagine there are more incidents connected to Occupy protests—less widely reported, maybe less injurious, but no less disturbing. Taken all together, these incidents do more than vilify expensive car ownership and update our definition of road rage. [read more]

Occupy: The Sky’s the Limit

November 6, 2011 by the polis blog
with 148 views

Aerial map of Occupy Wall Street from grassrootsmapping.com.

In the United States, the mainstream media seeks to place protest out of sight and out of mind, often reducing serious social movements to nothing more than tentative uprisings. But now, more than 1500 cities and towns worldwide have been "occupied" by a revolutionary urban movement of young people, an “army of love” that cannot be... [read more]

#Earth2Chat - Asian Megacities Must Be Sustainable

October 27, 2011 by This Big City
with 107 views

Last week, the This Big City and Earth2Hub teams co-hosted the very first #Earth2Chat on Twitter. As it was Urban Asia week on This Big City, we were discussing sustainability in Asian cities, and despite the frenetic pace of questions and answers, we kept track of our favourite moments. And here they are! As with every debate on... [read more]