REPORT TO THE PRESIDENT

Technology and the Future 

of Cities

Executive Office of the President

President’s Council of Advisors on

Science and Technology

February 2016

REPORT TO THE PRESIDENT

Technology and the Future of Cities

Executive Office of the President

President’s Council of Advisors on

Science and Technology

February 2016
About the President’s Council of Advisors on

Science and Technology

The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) is an advisory group of the 

Nation’s leading scientists and engineers, appointed by the President to augment the science and 

technology advice available to him from inside the White House and from cabinet departments 

and other Federal agencies. PCAST is consulted about, and often makes policy recommendations 

concerning, the full range of issues where understandings from the domains of science, technology, 

and innovation bear potentially on the policy choices before the President. 

For more information about PCAST, see www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/pcast
i

The President’s Council of Advisors on 

Science and Technology

Co-Chairs

John P. Holdren

Assistant to the President for 

Science and Technology

Director, Office of Science and Technology 

Policy

Eric S. Lander

President

Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT

Vice Chairs

 

William Press

Raymer Professor in Computer Science and 

Integrative Biology

University of Texas at Austin

Maxine Savitz

General Manager (retired)

Honeywell

Members

Wanda M. Austin

President and CEO

The Aerospace Corporation

Christopher Chyba 

Professor, Astrophysical Sciences and 

International Affairs

Director, Program on Science and 

Global Security

Princeton University

Rosina Bierbaum

Professor, School of Natural Resources 

and Environment

University of Michigan

S. James Gates, Jr. 

John S. Toll Professor of Physics

Director, Center for String and 

Particle Theory

University of Maryland, College Park

Christine Cassel

President and CEO

National Quality Forum

Mark Gorenberg

Managing Member

Zetta Venture Partners
ii

Susan L. Graham

Pehong Chen Distinguished Professor 

Emerita in Electrical Engineering and 

Computer Science

University of California, Berkeley

Ed Penhoet

Director

Alta Partners

Professor Emeritus, Biochemistry and 

Public Health

University of California, Berkeley

Michael McQuade

Senior Vice President for Science and 

Technology

United Technologies Corporation

Barbara Schaal

Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences

Mary-Dell Chilton Distinguished Professor 

of Biology

Washington University of St. Louis 

Chad Mirkin

George B. Rathmann Professor of 

Chemistry

Director, International Institute for 

Nanotechnology

Northwestern University

Eric Schmidt

Executive Chairman

Alphabet

Mario Molina

Distinguished Professor, Chemistry and 

Biochemistry

University of California, San Diego

Professor, Center for Atmospheric Sciences

Scripps Institution of Oceanography

Daniel Schrag

Sturgis Hooper Professor of Geology

Professor, Environmental Science and 

Engineering

Director, Harvard University Center for 

Environment

Harvard University

Craig Mundie

President

Mundie & Associates

Staff

 

Marjory S. Blumenthal

Executive Director

Jennifer L. Michael

Program Support Specialist

Diana E. Pankevich

AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow

Ashley Predith

Assistant Executive Director
iii

PCAST Cities Working Group

Working Group members participated in the preparation of an initial draft of this report. Those 

working group members who are not PCAST members are not responsible for, nor necessarily 

endorse, the final version of this report as modified and approved by PCAST.

Co-Chairs

Mark Gorenberg*

Managing Member

Zetta Venture Partners

Craig Mundie*

President

Mundie Associates

Eric Schmidt*

Executive Chairman

Alphabet

Working Group Members

 

Adrian Aoun

Director

Special Projects

Google, Alphabet

Ryan C.C. Chin, 

Managing Director and Research Scientist

City Science Initiative

MIT Media Lab

Luis Bettencourt

Professor of Complex Systems

Santa Fe Institute 

Charles Catlett

Senior Computer Scientist

Argonne National Laboratory and 

University of Chicago

Director, Urban Center for Computation 

and Data

Rosina Bierbaum*

Professor, School of Natural Resources 

and Environment

University of Michigan

Daniel Doctoroff

Chairman and CEO

Sidewalk Labs 

Christine Cassel*

President and CEO

National Quality Forum

S. James Gates, Jr.*

John S. Toll Professor of Physics

Director, Center for String and 

Particle Theory

University of Maryland, College Park
iv

 

Susan L. Graham*

Pehong Chen Distinguished Professor 

Emerita in Electrical Engineering and 

Computer Science

University of California, Berkeley

Maxine Savitz*

General Manager (retired)

Honeywell

Steven Koonin

Director

Center for Urban Science and Progress

New York University 

Daniel Schrag*

Sturgis Hooper Professor of Geology

Professor, Environmental Science and 

Engineering

Director, Harvard University Center for 

Environment

Harvard University

Richard G. Luthy

Silas H. Palmer Professor

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Stanford University 

Joseph Stagner

Executive Director

Sustainability and Energy management 

Stanford University

Peter Marx

Chief Technology Officer

City of Los Angeles

Adjunct Professor

University of Southern California, 

Los Angeles

Nancy Sutley

Chief Sustainability and Economic 

Development Officer

Los Angeles Department of Water and 

Power

William Press*

Raymer Professor in Computer Science and 

Integrative Biology

University of Texas at Austin 

Staff

 

Marjory S. Blumenthal

Executive Director

Diana E. Pankevich

AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow

Jennifer L. Michael

Program Support Specialist

Ashley Predith

Assistant Executive Director

*denotes PCAST member
EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT

PRESIDENT’S COUNCIL OF ADVISORS ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

WASHINGTON, D.C. 20502

President Barack Obama

The White House

Washington, D.C. 20502

Dear Mr. President: 

We are pleased to send you this report, Technology and the Future of Cities, by your Council of 

Advisors on Science and Technology. It complements and goes beyond the ideas captured by 

the label, “Smart Cities,” identifying opportunities to improve people’s lives both by 

modernizing key infrastructures (such as for energy, water, or transportation) and by using 

information technology (often with open data) to enhance city operations and services. 

These opportunities illuminate new directions for place-based policy―investments to renew 

infrastructures will have greater payoff when they incorporate innovations rather than merely 

replace old and failing systems. Combined, the innovations that are increasingly within reach 

provide an opportunity to revamp how cities operate at all levels and for all stakeholders. 

Transforming cities around the world in this way is already a race―one that the United States 

cannot afford to lose. It is generating demand for new products, new companies, and new skilled 

jobs in the effort to produce the best urban environments.

This report drew from a working group composed of PCAST members and additional experts 

familiar with both key technologies and the evolution of cities and urban policy. It calls for a 

more integrated Federal approach to supporting new technologies in combination with a range of 

other innovations to improve the lives of city residents. 

The urban ecosystem can benefit from the integration of a wide array of technologies that have 

been evolving rapidly, including systems to increase energy efficiency, renewable energy

technologies, connected and autonomous vehicles, water and wastewater management systems, 

communications technologies to enhance connectivity, and new ways to do farming and 

manufacturing. The Federal Government can help to ensure a robust pipeline of such 

technologies for urban applications through improved coordination of relevant research and 

development activities, taking advantage of the National Science and Technology Council. 

PCAST recommends interagency coordination in supporting experimentation with these 

concepts in discrete regions within cities (districts), using the competition/challenge model to 

motivate broad participation. It also recommends supporting and enlarging nascent efforts to 

share data and results from innovation, so that resource-limited cities can learn from each other 

as well as make sure that key insights are not trapped within a city silo.

The strategic orientation we advocate promises to connect the fruits of science and technology 

with the social and economic concerns that have long dominated urban policy. The time is ripe 
for an integrated approach to innovation to be brought to bear to improve the quality of life for 

all who live in cities, but perhaps above all the economically disadvantage and under-connected. 

PCAST hopes that the framework proposed in this latest report will help policy-makers at all 

levels to make the most of that potential. We are grateful for the opportunity to serve you and 

the Nation in this way.

Sincerely, 

John P. Holdren Eric S. Lander

Co-Chair Co-Chair
vii

Table of Contents

The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology......................................i

PCAST Cities Working Group..............................................................................................iii

Table of Contents..............................................................................................................vii

Executive Summary.............................................................................................................1

Table of City Infrastructure Technologies......................................................................... 3

Recommendations............................................................................................................... 4

1. Introduction.....................................................................................................................7

2. Current Activities and Near-Term Future Opportunities...............................................8

2.1 Technologies Being Implemented Today and in the Near Future........................ 9

2.1.1 Transportation.................................................................................................. 9

Table of City Infrastructure Technologies.............................................................. 11

2.1.2 Energy.............................................................................................................. 12

2.1.3 Buildings and Housing................................................................................... 13

2.1.4 Water............................................................................................................... 14

2.1.5 Urban Farming................................................................................................ 15

2.1.6 Urban Manufacturing.................................................................................... 15

2.2 Transformations Happening in Urban Development Districts............................ 16

Table of Three Key Dimensions............................................................................... 17

2.2.1 Energy-Efficient “Green” Districts............................................................... 18

2.2.2 Convenient, Accessible, “Mobile” Districts................................................ 19

2.2.3 Connected, “Inclusive” Districts .................................................................. 20

2.3 Data-Enabled Pilot Projects Being Implemented by City 

Chief Technology Officers........................................................................................ 21

Table of Example Data-Enabled Pilot Projects...................................................... 21

2.4 The Emerging Urban Science Profession and Degrees ........................................ 23

2.4.1 Urban Science Tools for Interactive City Modeling................................... 24

2.4.2 Practitioner Certification and Accreditation Programs............................ 24

2.5 Current Federal Government Initiatives................................................................ 25

Table of Federal Government Initiatives ............................................................... 25

3. A National Platform for Sharing Information, Software, Results, and Best 

Practices.........................................................................................................................28

3.1 City Web ..................................................................................................................... 29

Table of City Web Opportunities............................................................................. 30

Figure: Transformation to City Web Platform....................................................... 31
viii

3.2 International Collaboration and Participation in the Development 

of International Standards to Help Create a Worldwide Industry ..................... 32

4. Opportunities for the Federal Government to Accelerate Progress...........................33

4.1 International Activities and U. S. Competitiveness .............................................. 33

4.2 What Should the U. S. Government Do?................................................................ 34

Figure: Opportunity Landscape............................................................................... 35

4.3 Coordinated Interagency Programs and Incentives for City and District 

Technology Adoption................................................................................................ 35

4.3.1 Demonstration Projects................................................................................ 36

4.3.2 Certification and Accreditation Programs to Create the Workforce of 

Tomorrow to Implement the New City Technologies.............................. 36

4.3.3 Certification Standards and Goals Beyond the Building Level................. 37

4.3.4 The City Web .................................................................................................. 37

4.4 Recommendations.................................................................................................... 37

4.5 Federal Government Funding for Technology Adoption..................................... 39

4.6 Formalized Coordination of R&D Across Government Agencies........................ 41

Appendix A. The City Web ................................................................................................42

Table of City Web Opportunities ..................................................................................... 43

A Growing Set of Technology-Savvy Stakeholders........................................................ 45

New Practices of Data Creation and Open Data Portals............................................... 46

Technology and Data Exchange with Standardized Protocols and Application 

Program Interfaces (APIs) ........................................................................................ 49

Data Analytics for Prediction and Optimization ............................................................ 52

Integrated Modeling and Scenario Evaluation............................................................... 54

Conclusion: City Web and the Vision of an Information-Enabled City ....................... 56

Appendix B. Data-Enabled Pilot Projects.........................................................................57

Improving Public Health and Asthma with Data-Driven Services................................ 57

Reducing Air Pollution with Shared Energy Use Data and Emissions Accounting .... 58

Eliminating Deaths and Serious Injuries on the City’s Streets Using 

Data-Driven Approaches.......................................................................................... 59

Improving Fire Prevention with Artificial Intelligence .................................................. 59

Making Street Services Technology Efficient ................................................................. 60

Crime Prediction................................................................................................................. 60

Improving Recycling by Integrating Public and Private Data in Real Time................. 61

Load-Balancing of Street Systems Through Crowd-Sourcing and Marketplaces...... 61

Appendix C. Selected Federal Government Initiatives....................................................62

Department of Commerce Initiatives.............................................................................. 62

Department of Transportation Initiatives....................................................................... 63

Department of Housing and Urban Development Joint Agency Initiatives............... 64
ix

Department of Energy Initiatives..................................................................................... 66

Environmental Protection Agency ................................................................................... 67

White House Smart Cities Initiative, NSF, and MetroLab Network............................. 67

Appendix D. Selected Smart Cities International Projects ..............................................69

Appendix E. Tools for Urban Development Districts.......................................................73

Appendix F. A Vision for Older Adults in Cities................................................................76

Appendix G. Additional Experts Providing Input.............................................................79

Additional Acknowledgments........................................................................................... 84
1

Executive Summary

Cities are beginning a new era of change. From 1920 to 2010 many U.S. cities “hollowed out” as suburbs 

grew faster than their urban cores. The trend started reversing in 2011 as Millennials and Baby Boomers

looking for social connections and convenience settled in urban neighborhoods. Accompanying the 

resurgence of residential cities are complex and persistent urban challenges, including resilience against 

climate change and natural disasters. This report focuses on the technologies that shape some key 

infrastructures and economic activities, as opposed to those involved in delivering education, health 

care, or social services. As described in Chapter 2 of the report, technological advances promise to 

improve the environments in which people live and the services that city governments and companies 

offer. 

Cleaner energy technologies, new models of transportation, new kinds of water systems, buildingconstruction innovation, low-water and soil-less agriculture, and clean and small-scale manufacturing 

are or will be available in the near future. These options, which are summarized in the Table of City 

Infrastructure Technologies, are evolving through private-sector commercialization and implementation 

plus university and National Laboratory research and development (R&D) in concert with city 

governments. 

Information and communication technologies (ICT), the proliferation of sensors through the Internet of 

Things, and converging data standards are also combining to provide new possibilities for the physical 

management and the socioeconomic development of cities. Local governments are looking to data and 

analytics technologies for insight and are creating pilot projects to test ways to improve their services. 

Technologies influence patterns of behavior. Digital and mobile technologies are making the 

connections between service providers and users tighter, faster, more personal, and more 

comprehensive. Sharing-economy business models are emerging that enable more efficient use of 

physical assets, such as cars or real estate, and provide new sources of income to city residents.

Large U.S. cities, through their Chief Technology Officers and related staff, are using technology and data 

analytics to solve specific problems in areas such as health, transportation, sanitation, public safety, 

economic development, sustainability, street maintenance, and resilience—problems that affect city 

residents every day. For example:

• The city of Los Angeles shares road closure, safety, and other data with app providers to

improve driving, reduce congestion, and promote safety. In return, the app providers, such as 

Waze, share real-time crowd-sourced reports of issues encountered on the streets from more 

than 1.5 million users to the city’s emergency management, police, fire, transportation, street 

services, sanitation, and other departments. 

• The city of Chicago is working with the Argonne National Laboratory and the University of 

Chicago to deploy the Array of Things—a city-wide network of 500 lamppost-mounted sensors

that monitor air quality, among other conditions; and it is analyzing its non-emergency 
2

complaint-call data to identify environmental issues such as pest infestations, connected to the 

incidence of asthma. 

• The New York Fire Department started using data mining and predictive analytics to determine 

which of New York City’s one million buildings are most likely to erupt in a major fire. They now

examine 7,500 factors across 17 city-agency data streams and use artificial intelligence to track 

trends city-wide. 

Because change in a city is costly (in many ways) and can be especially challenging for early adopters, it 

is important that the results of urban experimentation be shared, helping to foster less expensive and 

more easily replicable solutions. U.S. cities need a platform for collaborating with each other and all 

relevant stakeholders, sharing results, insights, and best practices. The platform should foster the 

development of standard, customizable models (for studying alternatives) and applications. It must also 

facilitate innovation from the bottom up, being neither built nor operated monolithically and, like the 

World Wide Web itself, having no central authority directing innovation. This platform, beginnings of 

which already exist, is introduced in Chapter 3 and referred to as the “City Web.” It can help cities build 

on each other’s work and also open these solutions to smaller cities that lack the budget for significant 

technology capacity.

In this new era for cities, discrete and distinct districts and sub-centers are supplementing historic 

downtown centers—multiple areas within a city that provide either similar or complementary social and 

economic functions. Understanding and adjusting tradeoffs between physical and socioeconomic 

transformations in cities requires well-planned, integrated experimentation and implementation. That 

is difficult to do city-wide, but districts create the perfect living laboratory. A district does not 

necessarily have a predefined scale, nor must it fall within the political boundaries of a single city. A 

district has an area and population that are large enough for new technology implementations to have 

an impact, but also manageable from the point of view of clarity of intervention, tuning, collection of 

data, and assessment of progress and lessons learned. 

The potential of a district-based approach first captured attention through Innovation Districts, which 

were primarily started to improve the local economy and create jobs in abandoned urban areas. Today 

technological implementations provide another path to impact, transforming city districts to become 

more energy-efficient and green; more convenient, accessible, and conducive to mobility; and more 

connected and inclusive. These goals are interconnected, and pursuing them jointly through integrated 

solutions can produce much more livable cities. For example, the use of connected and autonomous 

vehicles would greatly reduce the need for parking spaces and space dedicated to roads. Freed-up 

space could enable pedestrian paths, bike lanes, urban farming, and clean urban manufacturing; or it 

could facilitate change in the density of buildings, which might, in turn, facilitate the deployment of 

more-efficient energy and water systems, which could lower the cost of housing and help entice people 

back to the city. 
3

Urban Sector Technologies / Concepts Objectives

Transportation Multi-modal integration via ICT 

applications and models

On-demand digitally enabled 

transportation

Design for biking and walking

Electrification of motorized 

transportation

Autonomous vehicles

Save time

Comfort or productivity

Low-cost mobility and universal access

Reduced operating expenses to 

transportation providers

Zero emissions, collisions, fatalities

Noise reduction

Lifestyles

Tailored solutions for the underserved, 

disabled, and elderly

Energy Distributed renewables

Co-generation

District heating and cooling

Low-cost energy storage

Smart-grids, micro-grids

Energy-efficient lighting

Advanced HVAC systems

Energy efficiency

Zero air pollution

Low noise

Synergistic resource management with 

water and transportation

Increased resilience against climate 

change and natural disasters

Building and 

Housing

New construction technologies and 

designs 

Life-course design and optimization

Sensing and actuation for real-time 

space management

Adaptive space design

Financing, codes, and standards 

conducive to innovation

Affordable housing

Healthy living and working 

environments

Inexpensive innovation and 

entrepreneurial space

Thermal comfort

Increased resilience

Water Integrated water systems design and 

management

Local recycling

Water efficiency via smart metering 

Re-use in buildings and districts

Active ecosystem integration 

Smart integration of water, sanitation, 

flood control, agriculture, and the 

environment as a system

Increased resilience

Urban 

Manufacturing

High-tech, on-demand

3D printing 

Small batch manufacturing 

High-value added activities requiring 

human capital and design

Innovation parks

New job creation

Training and education

Urban space conversion and re-use

Close integration of living and work

Urban Farming Urban agriculture and vertical farming Lower water use

Cleaner delivery

Fresher produce
4

In 2015, several Federal agencies, notably including the Departments of Commerce, Transportation, and

Energy, started or increased efforts to implement programs of technology-based innovation for cities. A 

key milestone was the September 2015 announcement of the White House Smart Cities Initiative, which 

put a spotlight on the support for urban technology innovation being provided by a number of Federal 

agencies. It also featured the launch of the private, non-profit MetroLab Network, which pairs city 

governments with local university research labs using Federal R&D funding and philanthropic support to 

apply innovation to the solution of diverse city problems. And the Department of Transportation Smart 

City Challenge, launched in December 2015, has already inspired many cities to create innovative,

multiple-stakeholder proposals in a competition for grant money. 

The rest of the world is not standing still. National governments in the United Kingdom, Germany, 

China, India, Brazil, and Singapore have stepped up with considerable organization and resources to 

become leaders in urban innovation, positioning their countries and companies for what is now 

recognized as a multi-trillion-dollar worldwide opportunity. Anticipating another 1.1 billion people 

moving into Asian cities in the next 20 years, the Asian Development Bank is allocating $18 billion per

year in grants and loans to help transform cities. Other countries are also generating showcase 

innovations and, in so doing, improving the quality of life for some of their poorest people.

In reality, the nations of the world are in a race to transform their cities and reap the rewards, many of 

which will be economic―new products, new companies, and new skilled jobs, which, along with 

improved urban quality of life, create a virtuous circle that attracts talented new residents and 

additional businesses from around the world. This is a race the United States cannot afford to lose.

A Federal Government role is appropriate to ensure timely progress in a complicated arena rife with 

public goods. As the recommendations that follow indicate, that role involves the integration of many 

technologies, classes of stakeholders, and agency missions; facilitation of demonstration projects of a 

variety of kinds at district scale; coordination of interagency and public-private R&D investment;

facilitation of new standards; workforce development; cooperation with state and local governments; 

and more. A more complete discussion of the recommendations summarized below can be found in 

Chapter 4.

The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) calls for the Federal Government 

to take a more integrated approach to supporting new technologies that can improve the lives of people 

in cities. Doing so would expand upon recent efforts to coordinate Federal support for individual cities. 

At the same time, a better-integrated Federal effort to encourage technological innovation in cities 

would support ongoing Federal programs that focus on economic disparities and physical infrastructure. 

A coordinated effort has the potential to: 

1. Help the United States seize a new, multi-trillion-dollar business opportunity, including 

technology exports; 

2. Create new jobs to support expanded development and implementation of the technologies 

discussed in this report and the revitalization of specific districts and ultimately larger areas of 

cities; 

3. Enhance the quality of life for all city residents, in disadvantaged as well as more affluent areas, 

helping cities function better overall; and
5

4. Improve infrastructure that is critical for homeland security and for resilience to climate change 

and disasters.

Given the many Federal agencies with missions and programs that relate to cities, and the many 

opportunities to leverage one another’s work, enhanced mechanisms for coordination of Federal activity 

are needed. 

RECOMMENDATION 1. The Secretary of Commerce, working with the Secretaries of Housing and Urban 

Development, Transportation, and Energy, should establish an interagency initiative, the Cities 

Innovation Technology Investment Initiative (CITII), that will encourage, coordinate, and support 

efforts to pioneer new models for technology-enhanced cities incorporating measurable goals for 

inclusion and equity. 

(1a) Under the leadership of the Department of Commerce, CITII should create and develop, by 

December 31, 2016, an initial blueprint for how U.S. agencies can foster systemic innovation across 

many dimensions of cities. 

(1b) In advance of developing that blueprint, CITII should, through the use of competitions following 

the model of the Department of Transportation’s Smart Cities Challenge, undertake activities to 

accelerate adoption of new technology. It should fund five districts with funding in the range of 

$30-40 million each, from existing sources in its constituent agencies, with at least two of the 

districts in low-income communities. 

(1c) CITII should work with Federal agencies that have campuses that could be Federal “districts of 

experimentation,” such as the Department of Defense with military bases, to create living trial/testbed and demonstration areas that can serve as model districts. These collaborations would 

recognize and encourage innovation in natural/self-defined districts composed of single-owner 

campuses owned and/or operated by the Federal Government. 

(1d) CITII, working in concert with the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the 

Department of Labor, should design training programs, including certificate programs, that can 

connect urban technology innovation to jobs development. 

(1e) Under the guidance of CITII, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the 

National Science Foundation (NSF) should initiate a convening process to establish the prospects 

and parameters for an independent, community-driven body to define, implement, and evolve the 

City Web (a City Web Consortium), similar to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the 

Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), which emphasize standardization based on broad adoption 

of common and proven approaches. The Federal Networking and Information Technology Research 

and Development (NITRD) program should work with CITII to coordinate existing activities to share 

data, models, and software tools among cities and stakeholders. 

(1f) The U.S. Chief Data Scientist (CDS) should work with Federal agencies in CITII to identify types of 

data useful in the design and implementation of projects that improve public safety, public health, 

citizen mobility, and other desirable goals. The CDS should help the agencies promote new ways by 

which various stakeholders can develop and share best practices and data, attending to privacy and 

security. CITII should also develop a framework of incentives to motivate all stakeholders to share 

their data with others. This should include a common use-based model for ensuring privacy and 

ethical data use. 
6

RECOMMENDATION 2. Because PCAST believes technology will play a crucial role in revitalizing lowincome communities in cities across the United States, the Department of Housing and Urban 

Development (HUD) should embrace technological innovation as a key strategy for accomplishing its 

mission.

With its history in urban development, HUD should become an originator of new models for making cities 

more nimble and more adaptable to technological change. The Department will require the staff 

capacity and the funds on the scale necessary to support advances in urban technology and innovation. 

HUD should immediately appoint a Chief Technology Officer or Chief Innovation Officer. The Department 

should adjust future budget requests to establish programs such as innovation laboratories and other 

data and technology resources common to other agencies. 

RECOMMENDATION 3. The Administration should seek legislation enabling two financing programs 

that will support cities and municipalities to develop Urban Development Districts (UDDs) and to 

introduce significant new technology in their communities.

(3a) The Administration should continue to seek approval by Congress of innovative new 

Qualified Public Infrastructure Bonds (QPIBs), which, as originally proposed by the Administration 

in January, 2015, would, if approved by Congress, provide an incentive for more private 

investment in technology-based innovation in cities. QPIBs extend benefits of municipal bonds to 

public-private partnerships. 

(3b) The Department of the Treasury should create an Advanced Technology Infrastructure 

Incubator (ATII) Program. ATII would facilitate loan funding of technology-based innovation in 

Urban Development Districts at levels that allow for meaningful change and impact, particularly 

in low income districts. This would be scored, based on risk, by the Office of Management and 

Budget at an appropriate small fraction of the value loaned.

RECOMMENDATION 4. The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) should create the Urban 

Science Technology Initiative (USTI) Subcommittee to coordinate Federally funded research and 

development (R&D). Building on more limited coordination efforts such as those revolving around 

smart cities, USTI would connect different kinds of infrastructural and other physical technology R&D 

with data- and ICT-oriented R&D. USTI should begin its work by creating an inventory of relevant R&D 

projects and grant programs across all agencies. PCAST also recommends that the research work of 

USTI be informed by the implementation work of CITII, and vice versa, a process likely to be in place in 

the beginning through the participation of the same agencies in both interagency activities.
Technology and the Future of Cities

7

1. Introduction

Cities are entering a fourth stage of modern transformational change, shaped by technological innovation. The 

first stage came with the steam engine, the second with the electrical grid and reliable mass transit (e.g., subway 

systems), and the third with the personal automobile, which stimulated the growth of suburbs and in turn 

necessitated the creation of a network of highways. The new profession of urban planning also transformed and 

created the cities that we see today.1

 Today more than 80% of the population in the United States lives in large 

metropolitan areas, generating more than 90% of the country’s GDP.

From 1920 to 2010, U.S. cities “hollowed out,” with suburbs growing faster than their urban cores. Many cities 

in the United States were characterized by concentrations of urban poor in their centers as the more affluent 

residents moved to suburbs, where they relied heavily upon personal automobiles in their daily lives. The urban 

centers generally have had higher levels of crime, lower levels of employment and income, deteriorating 

services, and often inadequate housing. 

In 2011 the flight from the cities began to reverse, with Millennials and Baby Boomers leading the return to 

urban neighborhoods as they looked for social connections and societal services.2,3

 Cities are again growing. 

This fourth transformational era sees distinct districts and sub-centers supplementing unitary downtown 

centers. As a result demands on city design, infrastructure, and services are growing and changing. Important 

needs include more effective use of limited space, greater walkability, and ways to support residents across the 

income spectrum. In addition, the need for improved urban resilience in the face of climate change and other 

natural and man-made catastrophes adds to the challenges cities face. Integrating new physical and digital 

technologies to create innovative solutions will offer the best opportunities to address these challenges. 

Viewing cities as collections of districts offers the opportunity to create both new, “green field” areas in cities 

and boldly reshape older, “brown field” ones. Both are evident in Detroit, for example, where the Detroit Future 

City Strategic Framework project addresses needs and anticipated progress toward revitalization through a 

series of maps that decompose the city into different kinds of districts,4 while calling for them all to be 

sustainable, walkable, and conducive to mixed uses.

Against this backdrop, PCAST undertook this study to answer the question of “how can the Federal Government 

best support science and technology and the related opportunities that can improve America’s cities—in 

terms of quality of life, social services, infrastructure, and sustainability—for all their residents?”

 1 The first urban planning courses appeared in the United States and UK in 1909. wwwpersonal.umich.edu/~sdcamp/up540/timeline12.html. 2 Lucy Westcott. “More Americans moving to cities, reversing the suburban exodus,” The Wire, 2014.

www.thewire.com/national/2014/03/more-americans-moving-to-cities-reversing-the-suburban-exodus/359714. 3 “Urban renewal? Census figures show cities surging,” U.S. News, 2013. 

usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/05/23/18441345-urban-renewal-census-figures-show-cities-surging. 4 Detroit Future City. detroitfuturecity.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Eco-D-4.pdf.
Technology and the Future of Cities

8

2. Current Activities and Near-Term 

Future Opportunities 

Challenges faced by Americans living in cities are not new, but they are being exacerbated by city growth and 

aging infrastructure. They include the following:

• finding and acquiring a good job, a quality education, and appropriate training;

• accessing services and products such as health care, child care, and fresh food;

• living and working in safe and healthy environments; 

• efficiently using energy for buildings and transportation; and

• reducing violence and insecurity. 

These challenges are often intensified for those who are poor, disabled, young, alone, or aged. These same 

disadvantaged groups also often have the least opportunity to take direct advantage of new technologies so 

care must be taken to provide the best possible outcomes for all residents.

Advances in technology offer new approaches to addressing these challenges. Yet without help, many cities will 

be slow to realize the benefits of technology or may target investments in suboptimal ways. Cities need support 

to overcome a number of obstacles. Operating, maintaining, and financing existing services takes up the bulk of 

city governments’ time, energy, and resources and forces upon them a focus on short-term efficiency, often at 

the expense of long-term innovation. Urban services are essential; people and organizations cannot function, 

much less reach their full potential, without reliable services and infrastructure. Yet the demand for stability 

inhibits exploration of options that deviate from proven practice, even those that promise to improve services, 

lower costs, or to provide other long-term and/or more equitably distributed benefits.

Other obstacles involve familiar challenges tied to obtaining resources. Subtler problems are often just as 

important, such as the lack of fluency within city agencies in the use of data and analytics that inform planning 

and decision-making, burdens from existing processes and regulations, mobilizing and coordinating different 

levels of government—from agencies to the Mayor’s office within a city to metropolitan and State bodies that 

complement and sometimes constrain a city. Natural disasters such as Superstorm Sandy affect urban areas 

disproportionately; they also elicit the highest levels of coordination of planning and action across levels of 

government, given their urgency and the visibility of high levels of need. Finally, attracting, training, and 

retaining a workforce that is at once dedicated to the highest standards of public service and has the necessary 

technical skills to innovate is a perennial struggle for all city governments, especially in smaller cities. 

Districts offer larger cities the chance to take on these challenges in bite-sized stages. Neighborhood councils, 

city-council districts, business improvement districts, tax districts, campuses (education, institutional, and 

commercial), Promise Zones, sanitation districts, and the many other forms of division and segmentation seen in 

the bigger cities make wide geographies and large constituencies manageable and serviceable. These districts 

are also a path to finding successful solutions that can then be extended to the larger area and population.

Though urban challenges are big, complex, and persistent, the opportunity is even bigger; technological 

advances staged through districts offer solutions to help cities become even better places to live, work, and visit.
Technology and the Future of Cities

9

Cleaner energy technologies, new models of transportation, new kinds of water systems, building-construction

innovation, low-water and soil-less agriculture, and clean and small-scale manufacturing are or will be available 

in the near future. These trends are outlined in the Table of City Infrastructure Technologies and are evolving 

through private sector commercialization and implementation and university and National Laboratory research 

and development (R&D) in concert with city government. 

Information and communication technologies (ICT), the proliferation of sensors (through the Internet of Things), 

converging data standards, and improvements in computational methods and technologies are also combining 

to provide new possibilities for the physical management and the socioeconomic development of cities. Local 

governments are looking to data and analytics technologies and creating pilot projects to improve their services. 

Technologies also influence patterns of behavior. Digital and mobile technologies are making the connections 

between service providers and users tighter, faster, more personal, and more comprehensive. Sharing-economy

business models, which can scale rapidly using the Internet to funnel excess capacity into exchanges for peer-topeer collaboration, are emerging. Those models enable more efficient use of physical assets, such as cars or real 

estate, while also providing new sources of income to city residents.

City services like education and health care are also profoundly changing due to technology. In the interests of 

confining the scope of this report to the use of technology for infrastructure, we do not describe those changes, 

which have been discussed in other reports by PCAST and other groups. 

2.1.1 Transportation

Transportation in cities is on the verge of large-scale transformation, in part through the efforts by vehicle 

manufacturers, their principal suppliers, technology entities like Google, the Defense Advanced Research 

Projects Agency (DARPA), the Department of Transportation (DOT), and universities to develop connected and 

fully autonomous (i.e., self-driving) vehicles (CAVs), which are increasingly public and visible. These efforts are a 

natural evolution of the vehicle-safety features developed over many years into integrated systems with 

advanced software, data, and sensing. The potential cost savings to society and cities from CAVs, in particular,

are significant. The cost of traffic collisions is approximately $300 billion per year.5 Vehicular congestion costs 

the U.S. economy about $124 billion per year, with an additional $50-80 billion due to associated health-care 

costs.6,7 The time regained from not driving is estimated to be worth $1.2 trillion per year; other benefits could 

come from repurposing land from dedicated rights of way and on-street and off-street parking spaces.8 The 

 5 “AAA study finds costs associated with traffic crashes are more than three times greater than congestion costs,” 2011. 

newsroom.aaa.com/2011/11/aaa-study-finds-costs-associated-with-traffic-crashes-are-more-than-three-times-greaterthan-congestion-costs. 6 “Economic and environmental impact of traffic congestion in Europe and the US,” INRIX, 2014. Inrix.com/wpcontent/uploads/2015/08/Whitepaper_Cebr-Cost-of-Congestion.pdf. 7 “The hidden health costs of transportation,” American Public Health Association, 2010. 

www.apha.org/~/media/files/pdf/factsheets/hidden_health_costs_transportation.ashx. 8 From a 2005 analysis: For example, in incorporated Los Angeles County, there are 18.6 million parking spaces accounting 

for 14% of all land, but the amount of space dedicated to parking in the central business district in Los Angeles is a 

staggering 81% (including multi-level parking structures); the numbers are also high in other cities—25% and 31% in 

Phoenix’s and San Francisco’s respective central business districts. 30% of LA traffic in the central business district is just 

due to people looking for parking spaces. Manville, M. and D. Shoup. “Parking, People, and Cities.” J. Urban PLann.Dev.

2005. shoup.bol.ucla.edu/People,Parking,CitiesJUPD.pdf. 
Technology and the Future of Cities

10

application of shared CAV ownership models can transform land-use patterns in downtown cities to feature

more bike lanes, wider sidewalks, or even more housing units by dramatically reducing parking requirements.

An extreme example envisioned by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers suggests that a 

fleet of shared CAVs in Singapore can nearly eliminate all parking and provide mobility to everyone in that citystate of approximately 4 million people, with an average wait time of 20 minutes during peak hours.9

 

Depending on how they are implemented, CAVs also have the potential to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas 

emissions from personal and freight vehicles.10

The development of CAVs is coming on the heels of a wave of innovation using apps, mobile devices, data, 

analytics, and the cloud to deliver new types of ridesharing, routing, cost avoidance, and market transparency. 

Apps such as Uber and Lyft are changing the need for privately owned vehicles. Waze, Apple Maps, and Google 

Maps are providing de facto load-balancing across entire transportation systems. Xerox and others are building 

mobility marketplaces, putting total trip cost, time, and environmental impact data into the hands of individuals 

at the relevant decision times. Automatic vehicle-location systems such as Nextrip are making public 

transportation more manageable by delivering real-time predictions and availability to riders. Many of these 

applications are enabled by a sharp increase in the availability of open data from transportation and transit 

agencies, with more than 80% of surveyed transit agencies providing some open data in 2015.11

Intelligent transportation system (ITS)12 pilot programs are emerging throughout the world including 

experiments ongoing in Copenhagen, Helsinki, and London.13 Singapore is already using autonomous vehicles, 

and Milton, a district of London, will start experimenting with them in 2016. Ann Arbor, Michigan has started 

using people-less transportation test beds with the hope of moving to real city district experiments with 

driverless cars within 6 years.14

Virtually all transportation technologies are introduced in geographic stages (de facto districts) that grow in size 

over time. Many people have suggested that CAVs, for example, will be offered within limited areas such as 

parks and campuses and grow organically from there to serve larger areas.

 9 Spieser, et al. “Toward a systematic approach to the design and evaluation of automated mobility on demand systems a 

case study in Singapore,” Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2014. Dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/82904. 10 For example see: www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v5/n9/full/nclimate2685.html; 

link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-05990-7_13; and www.nrel.gov/docs/fy15osti/63739.pdf. 11 See: onlinepubs.trb.org/Onlinepubs/tcrp/tcrp_syn_115.pdf. 12 U.S. Department of Transportation Intelligent Transportation Systems, Joint Program Office. www.its.dot.gov. 13 See: www.thelocal.dk/20150202/copenhagen-to-roll-out-new-smart-traffic-systems; 

www.fiercewireless.com/europe/story/here-moves-pilot-lte-based-intelligent-transport-system/2015-10-07; 

www.seeits.eu/docs/Related/national_action_plans/ITS_report_UK_annexes%20(en).pdf. 14Jason Margolis. “In Michigan, a testing ground for a future of driverless cars,” NPR, 2015.

www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/07/31/427733153/in-michigan-a-testing-ground-for-a-future-of-driverlesscars.
Technology and the Future of Cities

11

Table of City Infrastructure Technologies

Urban Sector Technologies / Concepts Objectives

Transportation Multi-modal integration via ICT 

applications and models

On-demand digitally enabled 

transportation

Design for biking and walking

Electrification of motorized 

transportation

Autonomous vehicles

Save time

Comfort or productivity

Low-cost mobility and universal access

Reduced operating expenses to 

transportation providers

Zero emissions, collisions, fatalities

Noise reduction

Lifestyles

Tailored solutions for the underserved, 

disabled, and elderly

Energy Distributed renewables

Co-generation

District heating and cooling

Low-cost energy storage

Smart-grids, micro-grids

Energy-efficient lighting

Advanced HVAC systems

Energy efficiency

Zero air pollution

Low noise

Synergistic resource management with 

water and transportation

Increased resilience against climate 

change and natural disasters

Building and 

Housing

New construction technologies and 

designs 

Life-course design and optimization

Sensing and actuation for real-time 

space management

Adaptive space design

Financing, codes, and standards 

conducive to innovation

Affordable housing

Healthy living and working 

environments

Inexpensive innovation and 

entrepreneurial space

Thermal comfort

Increased resilience

Water Integrated water systems design and 

management

Local recycling

Water efficiency via smart metering 

Re-use in buildings and districts

Active ecosystem integration 

Smart integration of water, sanitation, 

flood control, agriculture, and the 

environment as a system

Increased resilience

Urban 

Manufacturing

High-tech, on-demand

3D printing 

Small batch manufacturing 

High-value added activities requiring 

human capital and design

Innovation parks

New job creation

Training and education

Urban space conversion and re-use

Close integration of living and work

Urban Farming Urban agriculture and vertical farming Lower water use

Cleaner delivery

Fresher produce
Technology and the Future of Cities

12

2.1.2 Energy

Increasing demand in the face of aging infrastructure has presented the United States and its cities with the 

opportunity to transform energy generation, storage, and distribution (as well as demand management). Energy 

systems involve a broad range of technologies including conversion systems (e.g., power plants, distributed 

renewables), transmission systems (e.g., power transmission lines, gas pipelines), and end-use systems (e.g., 

furnaces, boilers, air conditioners, heat pumps, lighting). Associated investments can also address issues of 

greenhouse-gas emissions, air pollution, reliability (including resilience following disasters), and cost and access 

for low-income communities. 

Although energy systems are big, expensive, and long-lived, the growing trend towards electrification in cities 

offers remarkable possibilities for relatively rapid change. Electrification of many energy systems that currently 

involve natural gas or petroleum, such as building heating systems and personal transportation, is attractive for 

environmental reasons, but also may provide economic benefits. Efficiency gains and competitive pricing are 

being found in electric heat-pumps (for both heating and cooling) and in electric heaters with built-in thermal 

storage, which help manage the intermittency of renewable sources. Increasing numbers of electric vehicles 

that replace the same size and weight of internal combustion engines will require cities to plan for greater 

electricity demand with different time-of-use profiles, likely addressed through more efficient transmission, 

increased generation capacity, demand-side management, and distributed generation. However, through CAV 

technology the vehicles can be much lighter and smaller, with more variety, and can offset the electrical load 

with distributed generation. 

Progress in ICT and monitoring systems offers opportunities to increase energy efficiency in urban buildings 

beyond what is available through traditional means alone, such as insulation or retrofits. Recent technical 

advances ranging from cooler LED lighting systems to better sensors and dynamic thermostats may dramatically 

lower energy demand in cities. Apartment buildings can be more efficiently heated by funneling waste heat 

from one unit to a neighboring unit. Today the lack of adequate control technology leads to very high heat loss 

from buildings; the simplest example is the tradition of opening windows to adjust heating levels. Buildings can 

also use smarter systems to manage their load, reducing peak demand charges and potentially providing gride 

services through demand-side management.

Moving beyond buildings to districts, the idea of “District Energy” matches local production with local use. 

District energy uses technologies to coordinate the production and supply of heat, cooling, domestic hot water 

and power to optimize energy efficiency and local resource use. Modern district-energy systems can also 

combine district heating with district cooling and thermal storage or with combined heat and power using heat 

pumps and water circulation, rather than steam.15 For example, the Stanford Energy Systems Innovations (SESI) 

program represents a “transformation of university energy supply from 100 % fossil-fuel-based combined heat 

and power plant to grid-sourced electricity and a more efficient electric heat recovery system.” It is a large

district-scale example that employs the technology roadmap for building heating and cooling with thermal 

storage as recommended by the International Energy Agency.16

 15 “Energy-efficient buildings: heating and cooling equipment roadmaps,” International Energy Agency, 2011. 

www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication/buildings_roadmap.pdf; “District energy in cities,” United Nations 

Environment Programme, 2015. www.unep.org/energy/districtenergyincities. 16 Stanford Energy System Innovations. sustainable.stanford.edu/campus-action/stanford-energy-system-innovations-sesi.
Technology and the Future of Cities

13

Three U.S. cities (Burlington, Vermont; Greensburg, Kansas; and Aspen, Colorado) are using energy technologies 

to declare themselves 100% renewable-energy cities in 2015;

17 these cities are using combinations of 

hydropower, wind, biomass, and solar. The city of Portland, Oregon became the first U.S. city to use a municipal 

water system to create renewable energy, using gravity to feed water inside the city-owned pipeline to spin 

turbines to produce the electricity for 150 homes in a collaboration of the water bureau with the electric 

utility.18

A plethora of energy-storage projects are being implemented in city districts around the world, including 

Detroit, the area around a group of 25 North Carolina State government buildings, and Albuquerque, New 

Mexico.

19 Additionally, distributed generation and electricity storage offer increased resilience to cities from 

natural disasters.

2.1.3 Buildings and Housing

The building industry has new options that, especially when adopted in an integrated manner, can make new 

construction scalable, cheaper to build, more energy-efficient to operate, and faster to complete. The 

opportunity areas include: (1) pre-fabrication, (2) modular construction, (3) customization and personalization, 

and (4) technologies for sensing and actuation. Pre-fabrication methodologies have many advantages over insitu construction, such as higher precision, lower cost, and faster speed of construction. Used primarily for

commercial buildings, pre-fabrication in U.S. housing lags significantly behind Japan and Scandinavia. Modular 

construction techniques involve the standardization of interfaces between building components. This enables 

the fabrication of a structural “chassis” that includes all critical subsystems (HVAC, electricity, etc.) and that can 

be prefabricated and assembled on-site, with snap-on elements such as exterior building panels and interior 

elements (including furniture) that can plug into the chassis. The ability to personalize the “infill” enables 

customizability to specific user needs, avoiding the failure of past (e.g., in the 1960s) one-size-fits-all modular 

home construction. Finally, the integration of sophisticated sensing and actuation technologies for buildingsystems control will enable the benefits of understanding and responding to changing environmental conditions 

and the dynamic needs of the occupants. The integration of these four areas can enable a new planning and 

construction process that is more coordinated and timely, more personalizable, reconfigurable, quick to deploy 

and construct, yields higher-quality construction, and scalable to non-residential construction like commercial, 

institutional, and industrial buildings.

The C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, which includes 80 of the world’s cities, representing 550 million 

people and one quarter of the global economy, recently did a survey that showed that 67% of cities have made a 

commitment to green-building codes and have 5,000 certified Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design 

(LEED)

20 projects, 61% have enacted municipal green-building codes, and 73% have green-school policies in 

place. Together with the U.S. Green Building Council and World Green Building Council, they created a 

 17 Cole Mellino. “4 U.S. cities that have gone 100% renewable,” EcoWatch, 2015. ecowatch.com/2015/11/19/cities-100-

renewable-energy. 18 Cassandra Profita. “Portland now generating hydropower in its water pipes,” Oregon Public Broadcasting, 2015. 

www.opb.org/news/article/portland-now-generating-hydropower-in-its-water-pipes. 19 Department of Energy Global Energy Storage Database. www.energystorageexchange.org/projects. 20 LEED is a green-building certification program that recognizes best-in-class building strategies and practices. To receive 

LEED certification, building projects satisfy prerequisites and earn points to achieve different levels of certification. 

Prerequisites and credits differ for each rating system. www.usgbc.org/leed.
Technology and the Future of Cities

14

compendium of leading efforts of 67 cities worldwide, but only 12 such cities were in the United States.21

Austin, Texas established the first municipally operated green-building program in the world in 1990, created 

the United States’ first green-building rating system for homes in 1991, and established the goal, by a city 

council-passed resolution, to reach net-zero community greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.22

2.1.4 Water 

The useful life of much of today’s water infrastructures is ending.23 This situation offers the opportunity to 

investigate the creation of integrated water networks using an ecosystem approach incorporating water, 

sanitation, flood control, agricultural, and environmental needs at regional, watershed, and local levels. 

Demand on traditional large-scale water infrastructure can be reduced by increasing reliance on local solutions. 

Local investments in storm-water capture, recycling and reuse, groundwater management, and conservation can 

dramatically reduce water imports in a particular geographic area. 

The 2013 update of the Greater Los Angeles County Integrated Regional Water Management plan included a 

twenty-year plan to meet the region’s water supply needs. The largest changing component is storm-water 

capture. By appending single household and district-level (neighborhood) storm-water capture systems to the 

traditional regional ones, Los Angeles could further triple or quadruple its expected storm-water capture by 

2099.24 One such neighborhood-scale storm-water capture system in development is the Rory M. Shaw 

Wetlands Park in Los Angeles, which converts a 46-acre landfill site into a storm-water capture facility and multipurpose park. The treated storm-water is piped to adjacent infiltration basins.25 Similar “blue” (water-related) 

projects are planned for Detroit.26

Neighborhood (district) storm-water storage systems can also be deployed to reduce the amount of water 

treated to drinking water standards when that water could instead be used for other purposes. In the Saint 

Anthony Village district of Minneapolis, a half-million-gallon storm-water storage reservoir lies below an 

attractive pond with fountains. Since that water can be used locally for field irrigation, or washing of the 

grandstands at the local ballpark, it can dramatically save money by obviating treatments that would otherwise 

be used at regional level to create potable water and reduce phosphorus discharges to surface water that would 

occur in the treatment process.27

 21 It includes efficient mechanical, lighting, and envelope systems, a district combined heat and power plant, municipally 

supplied reclaimed water for irrigation, and water-efficient fixtures, as well as building materials, furniture, and cleaning 

products, and pest management procedures based on rigorous health and sustainability standards. “Green building city 

market briefs,” U.S. Green Building Council, 2015. www.usgbc.org/resources/green-building-city-market-briefs. 22 Ibid., 12. 23 “Buried no longer: confronting America’s water infrastructure challenge,” American Water Works Association, 2011. 

www.awwa.org/Portals/0/files/legreg/documents/BuriedNoLonger.pdf; “2013 Report card for America’s infrastructure,” 

American Society of Civil Engineers, 2013. www.infrastructurereportcard.org/a/#p/drinking-water/overview. 24 “Using graywater and stormwater to enhance local water supplies: as assessment of risks, costs, and benefits,” National 

Academies Press, 2016, p19-20. www.nap.edu/catalog/21866/using-graywater-and-stormwater-to-enhance-local-watersupplies-an. 25 Ibid., 50-51. 26 Detroit Future City. detroitfuturecity.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Eco-D-4.pdf. 27 “Using graywater and stormwater to enhance local water supplies: as assessment of risks, costs, and benefits,” National 

Academies Press, 2016, p21-22.
Technology and the Future of Cities

15

2.1.5 Urban Farming

New approaches to urban farming featuring soil-less (hydroponic, aquaponic, aeroponic) systems are deployed 

into greenhouses, rooftops, and building interiors and even integrated into façades of buildings. These offer 

glimpses of significant positive impact (lowering the cost and increasing availability of fresh food) when scaled to 

industrial levels of food production. NASA demonstrated aeroponic farming on the Mir space station to test 

food growth under scarce water conditions in orbit. Periodic misting of plant roots saved up to 98% of the water 

and 60% of the nutrients required of soil-based farming.

28 In addition, urban farming using compost closes the 

waste cycle and creates an effective carbon sequestration cycle.

Urban agriculture is reviving the Ironbound district in Newark. Aerofarms29 converted a steel plant into an 

indoor vertical farm that uses aeroponics to create two million pounds of lettuce a year in 30 harvests sold to 

local grocery stores, restaurants, and schools.30

Rooftop greenhouses are yielding year-round, local premium quality produce under the highest standards of 

food safety and environmental sustainability in Queens, Brooklyn, and Chicago. An advanced greenhouse in the 

Pullman district in Chicago’s south side is comprised of 75,000 square feet growing 10 million heads of leafy 

greens and herbs per year on a rooftop. It is also the world’s first LEED-Platinum certified manufacturing plant in 

its industry.31

2.1.6 Urban Manufacturing

Small urban manufacturers make a wide variety of specialized products, including sophisticated medical 

equipment, designer coats, or artisanal food products. They serve a spectrum of customers and markets, 

including small suppliers, contractors, large original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), and the general public.

Manufacturing of new technologies can support higher median wages, and open up opportunities for jobs of 

every level and skill. Manufacturing jobs pay an average of over $50,000 in comparison to retail or industrial 

jobs that can range from $25,000-38,000.32

These new technologies are cleaner than their predecessors and enable the development of neighborhoods 

where factories are built next to housing and transportation. For example, the Fremont, California Tesla auto 

plant will be built in a dense mixed-use residential, commercial, and retail district; there are also plans for the 

plant to have a new commuter train station built next to it.33 This new face of urban manufacturing is part of 

the “Maker Movement” that is helping redefine employment and foster inclusive, connected cities.

The Equitable Innovation Economies Initiative (EIE) is an example of an effort aimed at capitalizing on the 

growth of high–tech industries and innovation to create opportunities for low-income and underserved 

 28 “Experiments Advance Gardening at Home and in Space,” Spinoff, NASA. spinoff.nasa.gov/Spinoff2008/ch_3.html. 29 Aerofarms. aerofarms.com. 30 C.J. Hughes, “In Newark, a vertical indoor farm helps anchor an area’s revival,” The New York Times, 2015. 

www.nytimes.com/2015/04/08/realestate/commercial/in-newark-a-vertical-indoor-farm-helps-anchor-an-areasrevival.html?_r=2. 31 Gotham Greens. gothamgreens.com/our-farms. 32 “Making room for housing and jobs,” Pratt Center for Community Development, 2015. prattcenter.net/research/makingroom-housing-and-jobs. 33 Nathan Donato-Weinstein. “Lennar buying 100 acres as developers encircle Fremont’s new BART station, “Silicon Valley 

Business Journal, 2014. www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2014/06/02/lennar-buying-100-acres-from-union-pacificas.html.
Technology and the Future of Cities

16

communities.34 This three-year project was launched by the Pratt Center for Community Development in 

collaboration with the Urban Manufacturing Alliance (UMA) and PolicyLink. Four cities (New York City, 

Indianapolis, Portland, and San Jose) have been selected to develop a community of practice to enable cities to

address issues and challenges related to development of innovation-based economic activities, reframe 

economic development strategies, share best practices, and provide a database to compare economic 

development efforts in advancing equity. 

There are efforts under way to create distributed urban supply-chain management through the integration of an 

entire region’s set of manufacturers, logistics services, energy providers, and transportation systems to optimize 

at a level beyond what has been done to date within companies, product lines, or manufacturing lines. These 

build upon traditional manufacturing districts, such as the toy district and the garment district in Los Angeles.

Understanding and adjusting tradeoffs between physical and socioeconomic transformations in cities requires

well planned, integrated experimentation and implementation. That is difficult to do city-wide and much easier 

to do in a smaller area of a city. Districts are called many things and organized in many ways; a district does not 

necessarily have a predefined scale, nor must it fall within the political boundaries of a single city. For purposes 

of this discussion, a district has an area and population that are large enough for new technology 

implementations to have an impact, but also manageable from the point of view of clarity of intervention, 

tuning, collection of data, and assessment of progress and lessons learned.

The potential of a district-based approach first captured attention through “Innovation Districts.” These were 

primarily started to improve the local economy and create jobs in abandoned urban areas. According to a recent

Brookings Institution report,

35 Innovation Districts:

1. Enabled cities to grow jobs through the embracing of disruptive technology.;

2. Empowered entrepreneurs and start-up companies to use shared spaces to increase collaboration with 

mentors and investors and reduce overhead costs;

3. Provided improvements in infrastructure, education, and public space to the benefit of adjacent 

neighborhoods that were typically low-to-middle income neighborhoods; and 

4. Created revenue that helped improve the adjacent infrastructure, housing, public safety, schools, and 

other services. 

Today technological implementations are also “re-platforming” districts to become more energy-efficient or 

green, convenient and accessible or mobile, and connected or inclusive. These goals are interconnected, and 

they also involve the integration of distinct technologies and policies. We summarize in the Table of Three Key 

Dimensions some of the characteristics of these three dimensions being implemented today. 

In contrast to simpler first-generation Innovation Districts, we refer to these potential new districts as “Urban 

Development Districts” (UDDs). They are living laboratories from which fundamental knowledge about urban 

processes and practical implementation practices can be learned, adapted, and generalized to other districts, 

 34 Pratt Center for Community Development prattcenter.net/equitable-innovation-economies. 35 Bruce Katz and Julie Wagner. “The Rise of Innovation Districts,” The Brookings Institute, 2014. 

www.brookings.edu/about/programs/metro/innovation-districts.
Technology and the Future of Cities

17

recognizing that they will differ in many ways, such as new versus retrofit construction, warm versus cold 

climates, or congested versus open transportation routes. 

The greatest impact comes from the integration of technologies to optimize a district. For example, the use of 

autonomous vehicles would greatly reduce the need for parking spaces and space dedicated to roads. Freed-up 

space can make possible pedestrian paths, bike lanes, urban farming and manufacturing, or a different density 

of buildings, which may change the energy or water systems deployed, which could lower the cost of housing 

and entice migration back to the city. Cities can combine the technologies, build and calibrate models, simulate 

interventions, and deploy actual technology pilots in UDDs. They can share the results, insights, and algorithms 

within the city and with other cities. 

Table of Three Key Dimensions

Efficient / Green Convenient / Mobile Connected

Socioeconomic 

issues

Clean air

Clean water

Comfortable and 

affordable living

Safer neighborhoods

Affordable transportation

Better education and training

Social capital

Poverty elimination

Transport Reduce CO2

Reduce pollution

Reduce noise

Improve land uses 

Increase walkability

Decrease vehicular congestion

Eliminate traffic fatalities

Universal access

Reduce time 

Increase health comfort and 

productivity

Buildings Reduce CO2

Reduce energy use

Comfort

Home management

Health living and working 

environments

Affordable housing

Safety

Water Efficient consumption

Storm water 

management

Recycling

Access to water

Health Reduce asthma cases Access to hospitals Affordable and accessible 

health care

Eliminate food deserts

Energy Implement smart grid Diminished energy transport Universal access

Reliability

Human capital
Technology and the Future of Cities

18

2.2.1 Energy-Efficient “Green” Districts 

“Green” districts use design principles and technologies to create dense, mixed-use areas, typically using 

renewable energy sources. Various metrics are being considered to gauge success. The U.S. Green Building 

Council has extended its LEED rating system for individual buildings to a LEED for Neighborhood Development 

(LEED-ND), which applies to a kind of district and rewards reducing sprawl in housing development.

36 More than 

300 projects have earned the LEED-ND rating. In June 2014, the Clinton Global Initiative and EcoDistricts, an 

independent group funded by six foundations, began the Target Cities program to create energy-efficient, 

resilient, and sustainable, neighborhoods. Today, EcoDistricts is helping with pilot projects in 11 North American 

communities.37 For example, one of their projects is the Downtown Business Improvement District (BID) of 

Washington, D.C., a 138-block area that has set a goal to reduce the district’s energy consumption by 20% by 

2020. Downtown BID has identified transit, LEED certifications and registrations, green-power purchasing, and 

Energy Star programs as some of the priority projects. Another, the Seaholm District of Austin, Texas is an 85-

acre redevelopment area on the southwestern edge of downtown Austin, including the redevelopment of the 

Art Deco-style Seaholm Power Plant building to include major office and restaurant space and planned 

developments of 1,475 units of multi-family housing, offices, and retail; development in the area complies with 

LEED or Austin Energy Green Building criteria and features a new energy-efficient Downtown District Cooling 

System. 

Green districts will continue to proliferate. Early experiments and models indicate they are economically viable, 

environmentally beneficial, and can improve health and quality of life. A recent McKinsey study looked at 25 

building and energy technologies and concluded that, while construction costs were higher, operating costs 

were lower and payback was typically achieved in three to five years, while resulting in 20 to 40 percent lower 

energy consumption, 60 to 65 percent less freshwater consumption and wastewater production, 25 percent less 

solid waste going to the landfill, and 30-50% lower emissions.38 Cities are setting climate goals around waste, 

clean transportation, and renewable energy, with visible annual incentives their departments. For example, San 

Francisco’s climate goals are 0% waste, 50% of all travel by sustainable modes, and 100% renewable energy by 

2025.39

Cities can work with local district residents to revitalize their own neighborhoods and to enable residents to 

become owners and developers themselves. For example, the “Green Healthy Neighborhoods” program in 

Chicago leveraged open data, community involvement, and city government cooperation to create the “Large 

Lots” program.40 The program allows residents in some of Chicago’s most distressed neighborhood areas to 

purchase vacant lots on their block for $1. Using open data and the principles of open APIs, civic technologists 

worked with community organizations, the city of Chicago, and Cook County to create a Web-based system that 

enables residents to find lots using an online map and to determine if they are eligible to purchase them, and 

then guides the resident through a complex set of county and city applications. Loveland Technologies, a 

company based in Detroit and San Francisco, has developed software to map every parcel of land in the United 

 36 See: www.usgbc.org/articles/getting-know-leed-neighborhood-development. 

37 See: ecodistricts.org/target-cities. 38 See: www.mckinsey.com/insights/sustainability/building_the_cities_of_the_future_with_green_districts. 39 See: www.sfclimateaction.org. 40 See: largelots.org.
Technology and the Future of Cities

19

States to understand usage. Loveland started in Detroit with an effort to fight blight by marking foreclosed 

properties.41

2.2.2 Convenient, Accessible, “Mobile” Districts 

U.S. cities after World War II became increasingly dependent on cars and trucks as the primary means of 

transportation for people and goods.42 Although more Americans use public transportation, walk, and bike than 

ever before, the shares of different types of transportation have remained remarkably stable since 1960. The 

convergence of several new technologies and of changing behavior has the ability to change this situation 

dramatically, especially by blurring the lines between different modes of transportation and disrupting 

associated economic models of ownership and public provision.43 This creates new opportunities to re-think 

land use, improve environmental conditions, and foresee economic models for future transportation that can 

address many of the problems of the Nation’s transportation infrastructure today. For example, in incorporated 

Los Angeles County, there are 18.6 million parking spaces accounting for 14% of all land, but the amount of 

space dedicated to parking in the central business district (including multi-level parking structures) in Los 

Angeles is a staggering 81%, and the numbers are also high in other cities—25% and 31% in Phoenix’s and San 

Francisco’s respective central business districts. It is estimated that more than 30% of San Francisco and Los 

Angeles traffic in the central business district is due to people looking for parking spaces. While the eventual 

application of shared and CAVs can have a most dramatic effect, current near-term ideas yielding more 

convenient, accessible, or mobile districts can greatly reduce private vehicle-miles traveled.

44

Increasing walking and biking in cities represents an immediate and low-risk opportunity to reduce carbon 

emissions, energy and land consumption, and the cost of transportation in cities, while simultaneously 

improving the health and well-being of urban dwellers. The other benefits include increased social interaction 

and reduced crime (Jane Jacob’s “eyes on the street effect”).45,46

 41 See: makeloveland.com. 42 According to the American Community Survey indicate that 86% of Americans commuted to work using a car or truck and 

that 76% drove alone. www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/acs-15.pdf. 43 There are other kinds of technology use, such as the combination of open data and smartphones to help people optimize 

their use of public transit—technology that can also contribute to transportation-related planning. 44 McKinsey estimated as much as 50 to 80 percent less private vehicle kilometers traveled may be possible. 

www.mckinsey.com/insights/sustainability/building_the_cities_of_the_future_with_green_districts. 45 Today, the most walkable and bike friendly communities in U.S. cities have become the most desirable places to live and 

an increasing number of studies point to the linkage between housing prices and walkability. 

www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264275114001474. 46 A study by Brookings in 2012 of Washington, D.C. neighborhoods revealed that walkable places perform better 

economically, residents of these areas had more mobility choices and access to transit, walkable places benefit from being 

near other walkable places, and residents of places with poor walkability were generally less affluent and had less 

educational attainment. www.brookings.edu/~/media/Research/Files/Papers/2012/5/25-walkable-places-leinberger/25-

walkable-places-leinberger.pdf.
Technology and the Future of Cities

20

For example, the Seaholm district of Austin, Texas is implementing a new multi-modal transportation network 

with a planned Metro Rail stop, bus transit, bike sharing, car sharing, hike-and-bike trail connections, and a fivemile cross-city route connecting with the Lance Armstrong Bikeway.47 The 42-acre Talbot Norfolk Triangle (TNT) 

neighborhood in Boston, a low-income community, recently opened Talbot Avenue Station along the Fairmount 

Corridor Line, providing a strong basis for increased density through transit oriented development (TOD).48 Area 

residents taking advantage of the commuter rail line now reach downtown Boston in 20 minutes or less, a trip 

that takes 1.25-1.5 hours via bus, with both fewer vehicle miles travelled and increased walkability. 

New planned TODs like TNT with mixed-use zoning as well as the emergence of smart-phone enabled ondemand services with flexible routing that employ smaller vehicles (shuttles, vans, etc.) can alleviate automobile 

usage and augment mass transit needs with less investment and higher levels of demand responsiveness.

Currently these systems are run by private industry (Uber, Lyft, Bridj), but public-private partnerships could 

leverage existing mass-transit systems, extending the benefits to lower-income residents. Finding ways for cities 

to motivate private sector companies to share transit data can be most helpful in next generation city planning. 

2.2.3 Connected, “Inclusive” Districts 

Districts can use technologies from broadband access to transportation to more affordable or multi-use housing 

to help people be more connected to each other and to economic activity. Technology can help districts to be 

more equitable and inclusive as long as those goals are built in from the beginning and equity metrics are used 

as part of the measurement of success. 

For example, technology can be applied in UDDs to greatly enhance the lives of an aging population of 

individuals over the age of 60, a demographic category expected to double by 2050 with a majority living in 

cities. Older people are more vulnerable to environmental pollutants, especially airborne particulates, and 

respiratory conditions, such as chronic obstructive lung disease, are common for this population and can lead to 

disability, limited ability to be outside and to exercise, and hospitalizations. Many older adults have diminishing 

abilities to drive; available and affordable alternatives allow them to maintain their independence. Social 

engagement as people age helps to maintain cognitive capacities and prevent depression, a significant (30% 

prevalence in older adults) and debilitating disorder that is both preventable and treatable. Where physical 

mobility is limited, Internet-mediated communications and health monitoring strengthen families, create 

 47 See: www.seaholm.info. 48 See: www.tbpm.org.
Technology and the Future of Cities

21

opportunities for interaction with others, and allow older persons to continue to live independently while being 

in close touch with family. High-density living arrangements offer features that are consistent with preferences 

of Millennials as well as aging Baby Boomers, and addressing such risks as crime while enhancing the advantages 

such as mobility management and shared transportation benefits all age groups. A further analysis of this is 

presented in Appendix F. PCAST has completed a report on how technology can help people maintain their 

independence as they age.

49

Mapping technologies applicable to cities to actual urban challenges requires moving from science-based 

research and development to human-focused use cases. Cities are using sensors (often crowd-sourced) and 

real-time data to solve specific problems in domains such as health, transportation, sanitation, public safety, 

economic development, sustainability, street maintenance, and resilience. Pilot projects are showing the 

usefulness of sharing across city-agency and private-sector silos and of new kinds of analytics. Sophisticated use 

of data also allows cities to set more aggressive future metric goals. A number of forward-looking city plans 

involving sustainability and resilience rely upon advances in technology and data analytics that are only now 

emerging. A few example pilot projects occurring in cities worldwide are briefly described in the table below 

and expanded upon in Appendix B. 

Table of Example Data-Enabled Pilot Projects

Focus Area Program descriptions

Public Health and Asthma Several cities are developing strategies based on new technologies and data that 

allow them to track the challenges experienced by patients and identify more 

proximate causes of this common health challenge.

• Pittsburgh – Breathe Cam50

• Detroit, Los Angeles, Lowell (MA), Boston, and NYC – hospital-admissions 

data to identify areas with the highest incidence of asthma51

• Louisville, KY with IBM Smart Cities and Propeller Health – free GPS sensor 

and phone app for their inhalers52

• Chicago – Array of Things, analyzing non-emergency complain call data to 

identify environmental issues53

 49 See: www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/ostp/pcast/docsreports. 50 See: breatheproject.org/learn/breathe-cam. 51 See, for example: 

www.datadrivendetroit.org/web_ftp/Project_Docs/StateOfTheEnvironment/Health/AsthmaZipCode0709_Tri_county.pdf; 

www.health.ny.gov/statistics/ny_asthma. 52 See: air.propellerhealth.com. 53 The Array of Things project is funded through multiple National Science Foundation (NSF) awards totaling $3.25 million 

along with multiple internal grants from Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Chicago. It includes over $1 

million of cost-sharing from the City of Chicago and industry partners. Arrayofthings.github.io.
Technology and the Future of Cities

22

Focus Area Program descriptions

Reducing Air Pollution Some basic tools have been developed associated with the emerging Global 

Protocol for Community-Scale Greenhouse Gas Emission Inventories (GPC),54

developed under the recent agreement known as the Compact of Mayors.55

Eliminating Deaths and 

Serious Injuries on the 

City’s Streets

Data and analysis offer cities means to reduce the dangers of automobile-based 

transportation systems. Often referred to as Vision Zero, the idea can be summed 

up as, “when a child runs after a bouncing ball into a residential street and a 

speeding car strikes and kills him, the Vision Zero philosophy maintains [that] the 

death shouldn’t be seen as an unavoidable tragedy but as the result of an error of 

road design or behavioral reinforcement, or both.”56 

• San Francisco, New York City, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C. – Vision Zero57

• Los Angeles – High Injury Network and Safe Routes to School58

Fire Prevention The New York Fire Department (NYFD) started using data mining and predictive 

analytics to determine which buildings are most likely to erupt in a major fire.

Roughly 60 different factors have been built into an algorithm that assigns each of 

the inspect-able buildings with a risk score. The risk score now determines the 

order of inspection, as opposed to a process that returns to previously inspected 

buildings randomly or based on safety priorities.59

Street Services The city of Los Angeles is currently in the process of adding Global Positioning 

Systems, sensors, and cameras to their street sweepers. This will allow the city to 

open streets for parking more quickly, track water usage, tune or change routes to 

real-time priorities, and track coverage to make sure street sweeping is 

complete.60

Recycling The city of Los Angeles is rolling out a franchise-management system to integrate 

private waste companies into the cities’ system of service calls, data tracking, and 

billing to work together to deliver yard waste services to multi-unit dwellings and 

commercial locations.61

Load-Balancing of Street 

Systems

A number of apps have been published that let drivers and passengers identify 

shortest routes over city streets. Cities are sharing real-time data with these apps, 

and receiving reports from them, in an effort to optimize the use and management 

of city streets.

• Country wide – Waze

• Denver, Los Angeles – CitySight62

Energy Envision Charlotte uses smart meters to monitor the energy use of 61 buildings. 

Stanford and other universities are doing campus-wide energy management 

through smart meters and local energy management.63

 54 See: www.ghgprotocol.org/city-accounting. 55 See: www.compactofmayors.org. 56 See: www.city-journal.org/2014/24_2_ny-reckless-driving.html. 57 See: www.visionzeroinitiative.com. 58 See: saferoutes.lacity.org. 59 See: Govtech.com/public-safety/New-York-City-Fights-Fire-with-Data.html. 60 Peter Marx, Chief Technology Officer, City of Los Angeles, personal communication, January, 2016. 61 See: dpw.lacounty.gov/epd/swims/Residents/franchiseAreas.aspx. 62 See: news.xerox.com/news/Xerox-CitySight-Data-Analytics-Solution-Helps-Parking-Enforcement-Officers. 63 See: envisioncharlotte.com.
Technology and the Future of Cities

23

As cities increase in complexity, the need for professional management increases in equal measure. Historically, 

these professions were focused on real estate development and infrastructure engineering; today, we are 

seeing the development of professions focused on creating and managing services and operations. In 1898, Sir 

Ebenezer Howard published a seminal paper in London that started the garden-city movement (in response to 

the consequences of the Industrial Age) to provide citizens, especially factory workers, with healthier 

environments, and the first planned “garden city” of Letchworth (30 miles north of London) began construction.

Also in 1898, the United States began studying this early work from the UK and held its first urban planning 

conference in New York City, bringing together the disparate professions of architects, public health officials, 

and social workers.64 In that era, urban planning education evolved from the interactions of civil engineering, 

architecture, medicine, public health, and sociology. Harvard created its first course in 1909 and offered its first 

degrees by 1923.65 By the 1960s, urban planning included urban studies, becoming closely associated with the 

social sciences and economics as well. Today over 70 universities in the United States offer accredited graduate 

or undergraduate degrees in urban planning.66

Now the world’s universities have begun leading much of the teaching and research efforts for this fourth era of 

cites, transforming urban planning and design into a new field called urban science, which includes urban 

informatics and technologies, uses geographic information systems labs, and focuses on urban modeling and 

simulation and such issues as urban mobility.67 Urban science includes the new scientific ideas about cities as 

well as the growing amount of available real-time and historical data and computational methods to advance 

data-driven solutions. Cross-cutting topics range from urban design to civil engineering and from applied 

mathematics to statistics and public policy. The University of Warwick, Tokyo Metropolitan University, and 

Universidad Politécnica de Madrid offer degrees in urban science.68 In the United States, examples include 

Northeastern University,69 which initiated a master’s degree program in Urban Informatics in 2014, and New 

York University’s Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP),70 which graduated its first cohort of Urban 

Science and Informatics Master’s Degree students in 2014. These and other programs in U.S. universities 

expand on traditional urban planning and design curricula to include the relatively new field of urban informatics 

and incorporate both big picture concepts like data privacy and new technology infrastructure as well as realworld problems such as noise, buildings, transportation, resilience, and emergency response. 

The Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) of University College London, started in 1995, is recognized as 

the first urban science university research institute.

71 A survey done in 2013 by Michael Batty, the initial 

 64 Amanda Erickson, “A brief history of the birth of urban planning,” The Atlantic, 2012. 

www.citylab.com/work/2012/08/brief-history-birth-urban-planning/2365. 65 See: www-personal.umich.edu/~sdcamp/up540/timeline12.html. 66 See: www.planningaccreditationboard.org/index,php?id=30. 67 Michael Batty “Urban Informatics and Big Data,” 2013. www.spatialcomplexity.info/files/2015/07/Urban-Informaticsand-Big-Data.pdf. 68 See: www.wisc.warwick.ac.uk/training/doctoral-training-programme; 

www.tmu.ac.jp/english/academics/graduate/ues/cus.html and www.citysciences.com. 69 See: www.northeastern.edu/cssh/policyschool/graduate-programs/urban-informatics. 70 See: cusp.nyu.edu. 71 See: www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/casa.
Technology and the Future of Cities

24

Director of CASA, identified more than 40 centers worldwide and many more are conducting individual projects 

today with their local governments provided as paired partners. While the field of urban science research is 

young, present trends suggest that, by 2030, urban science institutes should connect thousands of researchers 

and represent more than $2.5 billion in annual R&D investment to advance sustainable, resilient, and smart 

urbanization and transfer that knowledge to the public sector.72 The SENSEable City Lab at MIT, started in 2004, 

is recognized as the first university urban science laboratory in the United States.73 The Urban Scaling Working 

Group at the Santa Fe Institute, which started in 2005, and the Urban Center for Computation and Data, a joint 

effort of the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory, started in 2012, are also leading research 

here in the United States.74

2.4.1 Urban Science Tools for Interactive City Modeling 

Early interactive modeling tools are already being used to create data-driven, interactive, tangible, 3D urban 

observatories and urban decision-support systems (DSS) designed to engage non-expert stakeholders for city 

development along green, convenient, and connected dimensions. 

One example is the CityScope project developed by the City Science Initiative at MIT Media Lab.75 CityScope 

combines physical scale models (made of LEGO bricks) and 3D projections of urban digital data to form a hybrid 

physical-virtual reality platform that enables multiple stakeholders to engage in urban decision-making. In 

observation mode, the CityScope visualizes urban data sets, real-time traffic flows, and social media as well as 

simulated data such as energy consumption or solar access, so that users can toggle between information layers.

In active mode, the CityScope allows users to physically move elements of the platform (such as buildings or 

roads) to simulate alternative urban outcomes. For example, if a user moves buildings onto an empty site, then 

the CityScope will visualize the corresponding increase in the population density and the effects on traffic, 

energy use, and the demand on city services. Working with the city of Boston and the Barr Foundation, the 

Media Lab customized the CityScope to address the problems, and experiment with an array of solution tradeoffs, to greatly improve transportation access in the historically disadvantaged Dudley Square district in Roxbury, 

Massachusetts (see Appendix E).

2.4.2 Practitioner Certification and Accreditation Programs

The Green Business Certification Institute (GBCI) offers credentials for practitioners who are versed in creating 

green buildings. It was established in January 2008, with the support of the U.S. Green Building Council to 

provide independent oversight of the LEED project certification and professional credentialing processes. The 

LEED Professional credential exams are recognized by the American National Standards Institute, the (private) 

 72 “Making sense of the New Urban Science,” Rudin Center, 2015. www.citiesofdata.org/wpcontent/uploads/2015/04/Making-Sense-of-the-New-Science-of-Cities-FINAL-2015.7.7.pdf. 73 See: senseable.mit.edu. 74 See: www.santafe.edu/research/cities-scaling-and-sustainability and www.urbanccd.org. 75 See: cp.media.mit.edu/city-simulation.
Technology and the Future of Cities

25

U.S. standards-setting coordination and oversight body.76 Today, 180,000 practitioners have LEED credentials at 

various levels, which are required to be renewed by exam every two years.77

Practitioners are going beyond single buildings to create equitable, resilient, and sustainable districts and

neighborhoods, but they lack an accreditation process. For the past four years, EcoDistricts.org has provided a 

training incubator, working with project teams from 37 cities to review and advance local projects and teach the 

intensive skills needed to regenerate urban districts. It is creating a new accreditation and certification process 

for green district projects (planned for launch in the spring of 2016). EcoDistricts accreditation will be a 

professional credential to build a network of protocol-trained practitioners. Their protocol will be the first of its 

kind to promote holistically district-level equity, climate protection, and resilience in urban redesign.78

The methods of recognizing education achievements are evolving to include new paradigms, as with the efforts 

in a number of cities to create digital badging of achievements by practitioners or students in a myriad of 

programs and opportunities that will be recognizable to future employers.79 Also, in the spirit of citizen science, 

schools and municipal programs are asking residents to address urban challenges through the use of data and 

systems that are becoming accessible to ordinary citizens, thanks to open data and the Web. 

Federal agencies, including the Department of Commerce (DOC), Department of Transportation (DOT), 

Department of Energy (DOE), and some early coordinated programs also involving the Department of Housing 

and Urban Development (HUD) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), are implementing nascent

technology-based programs for cities. The White House Smart Cities Initiative of September 2015 also 

announced the private, non-profit MetroLab Network, which pairs city governments with local university 

research labs using Federal R&D funding to foster research relevant to specific city problems. Some of the 

sample activities are listed in the table below and further described in Appendix C. 

Table of Federal Government Initiatives

Agency Initiative

Department of Commerce • Smart Cities – Smart Growth Business Development Mission to China80

• Digital Economy program

• NIST – Global City Teams Challenge81

• EDA – Strong Cities, Strong Communities Economic Visioning Challenge82

 76 The LEED exams are ANSI 17024 accredited; see: 

ansi.org/news_publications/news_story.aspx?menuid=7&articleid=8169400a-20f7-491c-872e-fd164ceaee15. For general 

perspective on ANSI, see: www.ansi.org. 77 See: www.usgbc.org/articles/leed-facts. 78 See: ecodistricts.org/certification/protocol. 79 See: www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/PCAST/PCAST_worforce_edIT_Oct-2014.pdf. 80 See: 

energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2014/12/f19/Dept%20of%20Commerce%20and%20Dept%20of%20Energy%20Joint%20China%

20Mission%20Statement.pdf. 81 See: www.nist.gov/cps/sagc.cfm. 82 See: www.eda.gov/news/blogs/2015/08/20/SC2-Economic-Visioning-Challenge.htm. 
Technology and the Future of Cities

26

Agency Initiative

• EDA – Regional Innovation Strategies Program83

• Census – CitySDK (Software Development Kit) 84

Department of 

Transportation

• Smart City Challenge85

• Ladders of Opportunity Initiative86

• Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grants87

• Transportation Infrastructure Finance Investment Act (TIFIA) loans88

• Partnership for Sustainable Communities89

Department of Housing and 

Urban Development

• Connect Home90

• Sustainable Communities Initiative Resource Library91

• National Disaster Resilience Competition92

• Renew 300 (along with DOE and EPA) 93

• Promise Zones Initiative94,95

• Public housing programs96

• Partnership for Sustainable Communities

Department of Energy • Better Buildings Solution Center97

• Cities Leading through Energy Analysis and Planning (Cities-LEAP) 98

Environmental Protection 

Agency

• Partnership for Sustainable Communities

• Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (WIFIA) financing99

• Water Infrastructure and Resiliency Finance Center100

• Brownfields Program (grants and technical assistance)101

White House in conjunction 

with other Federal agencies

• Place-based policy framework

 83 See: www.eda.gov/oie/ris. 84 See: www.challenge.gov/challenge/city-software-development-kit-sdk-data-solutions-challenge. 85 See: www.transportation.gov/smartcity#sthash.2sp9IzfD.dpuf. 86 See: www.transportation.gov/ladders. 87 See: www.transportation.gov/tiger. 88 See: www.fhwa.dot.gov/ipd/tifia. 89 See: www.sustainablecommunities.gov. 90 See: www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/07/15/fact-sheet-connecthome-coming-together-ensure-digitalopportunity-all. 91 See: www.hudexchange.info/programs/sci. 92 See: portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/press/press_releases_media_advisories/2015/HUDNo_15-079. 93 See: portal.hud.gov/idc/groups/public/documents/document/renew300.pdf.pdf. 94 See: www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/01/08/fact-sheet-president-obama-s-promise-zones-initiative. 95 There is ample history of public policy efforts to creating enabling districts—for example, both Presidents Reagan and 

Clinton experimented with Enterprise Zones—with programs varying in their emphasis on process v. outcomes. 

www.house.leg.state.mn.us/hrd/pubs/entzones.pdf. 96 See: portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/program_offices/public_indian_housing/programs/ph/programs. 97 See: 

betterbuildingssolutioncenter.energy.gov/sites/default/files/news/attachments/DOE_BB_2015_Progress_Report_Solution_

Center.pdf. 98 See: energy.gov/eere/cities-leading-through-energy-analysis-and-planning. 99 See: www.epa.gov/wifia/learn-about-water-infrastructure-finance-and-innovation-act-program. 100 See: www.epa.gov/waterfinancecenter. 101 See: www.epa.gov/brownfields.
Technology and the Future of Cities

27

Agency Initiative

• Smart Cities Initiative102

• US Ignite103

• MetroLab Network (MLN)

• Networking and Information Technology Research and Development 

Program (NITRD),104 including Smart and Connected Communities 

framework105

 102 See: www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/09/14/fact-sheet-administration-announces-new-smart-citiesinitiative-help. 103 See: www.us-ignite.org. 104 See: www.nitrd.gov. 105 See: www.nitrd.gov/sccc.
Technology and the Future of Cities

28

3. A National Platform for Sharing Information, 

Software, Results, and Best Practices 

Many cities across the world are implementing examples of innovative problem solving. Drivers are using apps 

that work with city-provided road closure data to navigate city streets more efficiently. Emergency (911)-

dispatch centers are integrated with third-party smart-phone apps to help Good Samaritans know when, where, 

and how someone nearby needs CPR. Electricity, water, and natural gas meters are connected to the cloud to 

give subscribers fine-grained control over their resource usage. As discussed earlier, cities are using sensors and 

real-time data to solve specific problems in areas such as health, transportation, sanitation, public safety, 

economic development, sustainability, street maintenance, and resilience. Cities and communities can now use 

technology tools for much finer-grained access and management of their streets, above-ground assets, belowground assets, land, and building. These early successes reflect the early stages of the fourth transformation of 

modern cities. But there is an uneven implementation and distribution of solutions across cities, highlighting a

need for more effective approaches to data integration and sharing. The causes and consequences of this 

unevenness are summarized in the following table.

Causes Results

• Lack of universally accepted 

platforms and standards

• City incentives drive a focus on 

local issues, sometimes to the 

exclusion of more widespread

concerns

• Incomplete awareness of available 

applicable solutions

• Unknown ROIs

• Procurement is lengthy and not 

designed for iterative, agile 

technology-based solutions

• Inability to support larger 

communities of users outside of 

the city

• Idiosyncratic implementation

• Uneven distribution of solutions

• Expensive implementation

• Smaller cities are disadvantaged

• Rarely produce software usable 

by other cities
Technology and the Future of Cities

29

Though some de facto conventions are appearing through open data and other efforts, there are few private 

and no public mechanisms today to distribute the new knowledge and data associated with innovations 

comprehensively across the nation’s cities. There is no “app store” specific to city applications, though the 

equivalent/such functionality is emerging in commercial cloud services (e.g., Socrata’s Open Data Portal106

platform or Amazon’s State and Local Government marketplace107), proprietary enterprise, and Internet-ofThings applications. Over time we anticipate that the civic innovator community will build systems that work 

across and between multiple cities to deliver insights and capabilities unavailable today. A comprehensive 

information infrastructure for cities to use and share does not exist today and is needed to make significant 

progress. 

An information-sharing platform would help to extend these innovative activities beyond their local confines, 

benefiting all cities, including those that lack the capacity to innovate on their own. PCAST sees both the 

potential and the beginnings of such a platform and refers to it here as “City Web.” Following the pattern seen 

in other industries and sectors, existing systems available on the Internet can be used to create the app stores, 

marketplaces, online media, communities, and data and analytics products specific to city districts (and cities 

overall). Making the most of specific city-innovation experiences, the City Web would be a place for cities and 

their partners to make available descriptions and non-proprietary elements of solutions that have been 

implemented, tested, reviewed, rated, and used by other cities, thereby reducing the time and complexity 

needed for today’s procurement cycles. Beginnings can be seen in the sharing of best practices broadly through 

the National League of Cities,

108 for specific kinds of innovation (e.g., the Department of Transportation’s 

Research Data Exchange,

109 or for specific cities-focused communities of practice, such as foundation grantees 

pursuing common goals).

110 

The goal of the City Web is to allow the accumulation and replication of urban solutions and associated data and 

technologies in ways that benefit cities with different sizes, different technological know how, and different 

financial capabilities. 

Technical requirements placed on cities and their staffs will only increase over the coming years. Large, highcapacity cities such as Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago understand this trend, but they, too, face multiple 

demands with limited resources. The City Web would ameliorate these demands in the same way that mobile 

apps and app stores are allowing non-technical individuals to benefit from the capabilities provided by today’s 

powerful software and hardware. Mobile apps distributed by app stores make huge numbers of solutions 

widely available, transparently reviewed, and easily updateable.

The following table highlights some of the needs the City Web might address.

 106 See: www.socrata.com. 107 See: aws.amazon.com/stateandlocal. 108 See: www.nlc.org/find-city-solutions. 109 U.S. Department of Transportation Research Data Exchange www.its-rde.net.

110 Examples include Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities (www.100resilientcities.org/#/-_/) and Bloomberg’s What 

Works Cities (whatworkscities.bloomberg.org) 
Technology and the Future of Cities

30

Table of City Web Opportunities

Today Tomorrow Future

Goals Solve local issues.

Solve local issues and 

support future iterations 

and interoperability by 

moving to the cloud and 

app stores.

Solve local and general 

issues, support future 

iterations and 

interoperability, increase 

available options, and 

decrease entry costs 

through marketplaces.

Information sharing 

between cities

Vendors, consultants, 

social networks, 

nongovernmental 

organizations, and

conferences

Wiki and online 

community

Ratings, 

recommendations, 

reputation, etc.

Community-based 

software development

Limited; most 

implementations are 

proprietary and 

closed-source

Online repositories to 

facilitate open source 

code

Community management

Software applications

Individually procured 

bespoke, closed 

systems, proprietary 

systems, and/or 

locally-hosted servers

Software as a Service 

(cloud) and 

app stores (local)

Online

marketplaces

Data distribution 

systems

GIS repositories

Visualization

Data analytics

The City Web builds upon and extends five areas of emerging activity: 

1. A growing set of technology-savvy stakeholders that includes businesses, residents, civic 

organizations, and researchers;

2. New practices and standards for data creation, data annotation, metadata attributes, data 

searching, data sharing, and data privacy; 

3. Technical protocols and application program interfaces (APIs);

4. Data analytics to manage and optimize city services; and

5. Integrated modeling and scenario evaluation to support policy and planning.
Technology and the Future of Cities

31

The City Web, like the Internet and the World Wide Web, would facilitate innovation from the bottom up; would 

be neither built nor operated monolithically; and would have no central authority to control innovation.111

Taking a successful innovation in one city and applying it widely in other cities requires the development of 

standards (for interoperability and replicability) and the distribution of assumptions, knowledge, tactics, and 

data. These innovations must go beyond the predominantly proprietary Smart Cities platforms of today that are 

used by local governments to operate their services. The City Web also embodies the concept of a broader 

scope than today’s platforms, analogous to the open data movement in recent years in that the applications and 

capabilities would be created by, and open for use by, many stakeholders. Such an open platform will enable 

not only the local government and industry, but also businesses and civic organizations to create new 

applications, optimize their development projects, create sophisticated computational models, and gain new 

insights. 

This diverse set of stakeholders, ranging from citizens to non-profit organizations, and from businesses to local 

government agencies, is also creating data. Another advantage of the City Web is that it provides a powerful 

platform to anonymously combine the data collected from multiple cities and collected from multiple urban 

stakeholders. Running algorithms across a large set of this combined data can provide insights far beyond what 

can be seen from looking only at the data collected by individual stakeholders. 

The evolution of City Web is shown in the figure below and outlined in detail in Appendix A. 

Figure: Transformation to City Web Platform

The City Web will provide the platform that captures the results and facilitates experiments in other UDDs, often 

in other cities, to take advantage of the collective, accumulating breadth of knowledge. The two concepts are 

explicitly intertwined: Sharing information from the innovation ecosystem within UDDs can accelerate the 

 111 By contrast, anecdotal reports from city officials point to the challenge of being locked into single-vendor, interoperable 

systems.
Technology and the Future of Cities

32

evolution of the City Web, which then becomes a resource enabling better work within UDDs, which further 

improve the knowledge repositories in the City Web. 

The City Web provides an ideal repository for the large-scale networks (such as transit, waste-water 

management, electric grids, etc.) and the services (such as police, fire, etc.) used in these technology 

implementations. It could serve as a complementary data platform with high-resolution information at multiple 

levels (precursors can already be seen in cities like Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles). The accumulation and 

analysis of data would create a virtuous “learning loop” between the City Web and the results of the UDD 

implementations and experiments. 

PCAST recognizes that cities are extremely diverse environments. Even with the ability to use knowledge 

developed by numerous cities, different places will want to follow different paths and make distinct choices. 

The City Web can help cities to adapt lessons and best practices to local conditions. 

Standards are a common vehicle for propagating and benchmarking best practice, as well as for achieving 

interoperability. Helping to validate the idea that different kinds of technology are becoming increasingly 

important to the operation of cities is the emergence of international standards through the International 

Organization for Standardization (ISO), familiar to technology vendors and others for its quality-management 

framework112 and suites of standards for specific kinds of interoperability. During 2014-2015, ISO introduced a 

standard aimed at helping cities around the world gauge and improve sustainability (part of the green dimension 

discussed in this report), ISO 37120: 2014, as a part of a suite of standards and part of an effort to promote 

benchmarking and learning among cities.113 An international organization, ISO both builds on and informs local 

technology development and use activities; compliance with its standards (and other international standards) is 

key to participating in the increasingly global marketplace.

Specific kinds of technologies relevant to urban innovation are associated with specific sets of standards. For 

example, connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) are the subject of an evolving set of standards. Both the 

Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE International)114 and, within DOT, the National Highway Traffic Safety 

Administration (NHTSA) have developed standard systems for evaluating vehicular autonomy.115 The 

interoperability associated with CitySDK service development kits for cities originated in Europe in 2012;116 as 

noted above the Census Bureau launched a U.S. version, and Github provides international availability for these 

resources. 

Computing-related standards will be an important component of the City Web. But standards will also play an 

important role in the diversity of other products that will contribute to technology-enabled cities.

 112 See: www.iso.org/iso/home/standards/management-standards/iso_9000.htm. 113 See: www.iso.org/iso/news.htm?refid=Ref1848. 114 See: standards.sae.org/j3016_201401. 115 See: 

www.nhtsa.gov/About+NHTSA/Press+Releases/U.S.+Department+of+Transportation+Releases+Policy+on+Automated+Vehi

cle+Development. 116 See: www.citysdk.eu/about-the-project.
Technology and the Future of Cities

33

4. Opportunities for the Federal Government to 

Accelerate Progress

The Introduction to this report explains how cities are changing, both at home and abroad. Chapter 2 

summarizes some of the ways in which present and future advances in technology promise to improve the 

infrastructure that supports and enhances city life. It provides a partial summary of the many projects going on 

both in the United States and elsewhere to design, deploy, and experiment with technology for one or more 

aspects of city infrastructure. In light of all the ongoing activity, why should the Federal Government increase its 

participation beyond the Federal programs summarized in Chapter 2? Chapter 3 provides one answer—seizing 

the opportunity to share local and individual computing and information technologies for cities on a national 

scale. This Chapter elaborates on a number of other important reasons:

• Economic competitiveness. There will be significant markets and jobs associated with advances in cities. 

Other countries are becoming more active. The United States should seize this new, multi-trillion-dollar 

business opportunity, including technology exports.

• Creating new jobs to support expanded development and implementation of the technologies discussed 

in this report and the revitalization of specific districts and ultimately larger areas of cities.

• Extending the benefits to all city residents. Experimental research programs and private-sector 

investments often target younger and more affluent communities, in part because there are fewer 

complications, and in part because that is where the participants live. The Federal Government has both 

the responsibility and the opportunity to extend the benefits of technological advances to underserved 

city residents. Enhancing the quality of life for all city residents, in disadvantaged as well as more 

affluent areas, will help cities function better overall.

• Amplifying the results of investments the Federal Government already makes in cities. Many 

Government agencies, notably HUD, DOT, EPA, and DOE, fund aspects of city infrastructure.

Investments in forward-looking improvements will pay off over many years.

• Improving infrastructure that is critical for homeland security and for resilience to climate change and 

disasters.

While several Federal agencies increased their efforts to implement technology-based programs for cities in 

2015 (and previous years), the rest of the world is not standing still. National governments in the UK, Germany, 

China, India, Brazil, and Singapore have stepped up with considerable organization, funding, and other resources 

to become leaders and aim their companies at what is now recognized as a multi-trillion-dollar worldwide 

opportunity. Anticipating another 1.1 billion people moving into Asian cities in the next 20 years, the Asian 

Development Bank is allocating $18 billion a year in grants and loans to help transform cities. Efforts in other 
Technology and the Future of Cities

34

countries are generating showcase innovations; they are also improving the quality of life for some of the 

poorest people.117

As an example of other commitments, in China, the government has made eco-cities part of its newest five-year 

plan.118 In the Persian Gulf, entire new cities such as Masdar (United Arab Emirates) and Energy City, Qatar are 

being built with explicit sustainability goals.119 In the UK, the future of cities has been an ongoing major focus by 

the counterpart to PCAST, the Council for Science and Technology, since 2013, and the United Kingdom has now 

appointed a Minister of Cities.120 Appendix D summarizes a sample list of International programs under way. 

And despite progress in many cities in recent years, U.S. cities continue to lag European and Asian cities with 

respect to walking and biking access.121 The most walkable122 cities in the United States hover around 8-11% 

modal share for walking (Seattle, Philadelphia, New York, San Francisco, Washington, D.C.) with Boston leading 

at 14%. In comparison, cities like Paris (61%), Madrid (36%), and Berlin (29%) not only lead but also continue to 

improve their walkability.123 In biking, despite recent adoption and rapid growth of bike share programs and 

installation of bike infrastructure, the modal share of bike community averages hover around 1-2% for most 

cities. Portland leads the country at 6%, whereas Copenhagen is at 36% and has set a goal to exceed 50% by the 

end of 2015.124 

Despite the city and Federal efforts described in Chapter 2, in almost every area of innovation, from clean 

energy to walkability, cities in the United States are behind when it comes to urban innovation. They run the 

risk of falling further behind those in other countries and regions of the world where national governments are 

investing in the transformation of their cities, including the creation of new ministry positions and agencies 

dedicated to cities. The re-platforming of cities around the world is a race the United States cannot afford to 

lose, as it generates demand for new products, new companies, and new skilled jobs in the effort to produce the 

best environments to attract International residents and companies. 

Introducing into cities those technological infrastructure advances that are economically robust, inclusive, 

effective, and achievable is a complicated process. It requires the integration of many technologies and 

stakeholders, demonstration projects in city districts, coordinated interagency and public-private R&D 

investment, an information-sharing platform that would help to extend these innovative activities beyond their 

local confines and benefit all cities, standards setting, workforce development, international cooperation, and 

 117 See: www.adb.org/publications/managing-asian-cities. 118 See: chinabusinessreview.com/chinas-green-building-future. 119 See: www.mckinsey.com/insights/sustainability/building_the_cities_of_the_future_with_green_districts. 120 See: www.gov.uk/government/collections/future-of-cities. 121 Canada also hosts such examples as Zibi, 37-acres of industrial land between (and crossing the boundaries of) the cities 

of Ottawa and Gatineau in Ontario. It is a brownfield, mixed-use development optimized for hyper-local living and a 90% 

walkability score, in which any resident can easily walk to their place of work, home of residence or leisure activities. 12% of 

the Master Planned area is dedicated to public space, transformed from old industrial space. www.zibi.ca. 122 See: www.governing.com/gov-data/transportation-infrastructure/walk-to-work-cities-map.html. 123 See: En.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._cities_with_most_pedestrian_commuters. 124 See: www.census.gov/hhes/commuting/files/2014/acs-25.pdf and 

kk.sites.itera.dk/apps/kk_pub2/pdf/823_Bg65v7UH2t.pdf.
Technology and the Future of Cities

35

significant public/private investment. As shown in the following figure and elaborated in the sections that 

follow, the Federal Government has an essential role to play.

Figure: Opportunity Landscape

The fragmentation of Federal activities that help cities and/or foster innovation diminishes the potential for 

transformational change. An integrated approach to supporting new technologies that can improve the lives of 

people in cities—engaging multiple Federal agencies as well as State and city entities and the private sector—

would pay enormous dividends. 

Doing so would expand upon recent efforts to coordinate Federal support for individual cities. At the same 

time, a better integrated Federal effort to encourage technological innovation in cities would enhance ongoing 

Federal programs that focus on economic disparities and physical infrastructure. A coordinated effort has the 

potential to address many of the reasons outlined at the beginning of this chapter.

Given the many Federal agencies with missions and programs that relate to cities, and the many opportunities 

to leverage one another’s work, enhanced mechanisms for coordination of Federal activity are needed. Given 

the potential for city-to-city sharing of knowledge and experience, coordination outside the Federal Government 

is also needed. The key to success in this new era where districts can pilot and nucleate change comes with an 

integrated approach of combining the use of multiple new technologies, streamlining the regulations around 

land use and zoning (a local responsibility), carrying along or evolving the existing infrastructure (e.g., street 

grids and conduits), and sharing resources when possible. No single Federal agency has all the tools to help local 

governments make the most of the opportunity. An integrated approach of all the stakeholders, including many 

Today

•Near-term Local Technology Introduction

•Transformations Happening in Urban 

Development Districts

•City-based Pilot Projects

•Profession of Urban Science

•Current Federal Government Initiatives

What's Missing

•Multi-agency Public/Private Programs for City and 

District Technology Adoption

•Integrated Demonstration Projects

•Education and Training of Future Workforce

•Platform for City-to-City Collaboration

•Funding for City and District Innovation

•Coordinated R&D Across Government Agencies
Technology and the Future of Cities

36

agencies of the Federal government working together, can achieve much more than any one alone. This, of 

course, is one of the lessons of place-based policy.

Coordination will not happen by chance. Innovation will not come to most cities without incentives, 

encouragement, and assistance. To make progress in an effective way, PCAST recommends that a funded

interagency initiative, the Cities Innovation Technology Investment Initiative (CITII), be established. As outlined 

below, its responsibilities, in addition to interagency coordination of government programs, would be to sponsor 

both city/district and government-located demonstration projects, to facilitate workforce education and training 

programs, and to initiate a process to create a shared software and data platform under the direction of a 

consortium composed of all stakeholders.

4.3.1 Demonstration Projects

The Federal Government cannot fund all the innovation projects that will move U.S. cities forward, nor should it. 

Competitive programs are very effective in motivating groups to create meaningful projects for change. For 

relatively little spending, many local multi-stakeholder teams are energized to come together to produce well 

thought-out proposals under very tight deadlines. The promise of funding motivates the testing of a complex 

integrated system that would be impossible to create otherwise. But even the runner-up teams, which have put 

plans in place, are motivated to find funding to implement their ideas. While the transformations in cities are 

largely happening bottom-up, coordination and acceleration of activity is something that the Federal 

Government is uniquely suited to help do. The Department of Transportation Smart Cities Challenge125 was 

launched in December 2015 and is a promising forerunner to competitions that could be established for cities or 

districts.

The Federal Government can also benefit from its own in-house demonstration projects. Some agencies have 

natural districts such as campuses and military bases that could house innovative technology solutions to their 

infrastructure challenges.

4.3.2 Certification and Accreditation Programs to Create the Workforce of Tomorrow to 

Implement the New City Technologies

Making the most of new technologies in cities implies having a workforce with the necessary skills, not only 

within city governments but also within local communities. Training certificates, curriculum, and mini-degrees 

can help to create the workforce to implement technology-based innovation in their own communities and be 

certified to help others; creating a workforce (job creation) to lead this fourth era of cities. There are 

opportunities to build on the Administration’s Ready to Work,

126 Tech Hire,127 and other job-driven training128

initiatives, a broadening base of activities aimed at improving the fit between local training local employment 

opportunities; agency (notably DOE) efforts to foster training associated with innovative technology relevant to 

cities; and new and evolving capabilities to use technology both to deliver training and facilitate the match of 

people to training and to jobs.129 Technology suppliers, community colleges, and others should align in 

developing programs and associated credentials that will expand the workforce capable of deploying new 

 125 See: www.transportation.gov/smartcity. 126 See: www.whitehouse.gov/ready-to-work. 127 See: www.whitehouse.gov/issues/technology/techhire. 128 See: www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/job-driven_training_and_apprenticeship_progress_report.pdf. 129 See: www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/PCAST/PCAST_worforce_edIT_Oct-2014.pdf.
Technology and the Future of Cities

37

technologies in cities. Existing government programs at all levels can help to target those programs in ways that 

help create jobs in disadvantaged urban communities. 

4.3.3 Certification Standards and Goals Beyond the Building Level

Improving the quality of life in different ways at the district level would benefit from new district- and city-scale 

certifications that reward excellence in, for example, local energy management and other environmental 

outcomes. The objective of such certifications is to go beyond LEED-ND certification to create a rolling challenge 

for urban innovation as well as provide a means for setting specific targets and measuring progress. Such 

certifications should encourage innovative solutions for achieving the highest levels of performance, feature 

ways to combine function (e.g., energy-efficiency) with attention to equitable distribution of benefits (e.g., 

credit for use in disadvantaged areas), and plan for periodic revision of their parameters to ensure continued 

challenge and open-ended innovation.

With a well-recognized rating system, districts can more effectively identify and achieve high standards (for 

example for energy and/or water conservation or reductions in greenhouse gas emissions), with additional 

incentives through recognition by a public designation (e.g., “Energy Star Districts” or some other suitable term). 

A tiered recognition system would provide incentives for districts within cities to deploy energy-efficient 

technologies, distributed renewable power generation, healthy mobility (e.g., walkable neighborhoods, bike 

sharing, electric vehicles), micro-grids, and other known contributors to greenness, mobility, and socioeconomic 

enablement. Model neighborhoods that achieve, for example, carbon-neutrality and the highest levels of 

energy autonomy and resilience would be awarded “Platinum” status, earning attention and attracting 

businesses and residents. 

4.3.4 The City Web

Chapter 3 and Appendix A describe a vision of a national shared computing infrastructure, the City Web, that 

would accelerate the goal of using technology for the benefit of all urban areas, be they large or small, rich or 

poor. By virtue of shared interfaces, tools, data, and standards, the City Web would enable adaptation to 

change, cost savings, and decision support across the United States. The Government is the natural convener to 

bring together the many stakeholders, public and private, that could make that vision a reality.

The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) calls for the Federal Government to take a 

more integrated approach to supporting new technologies that can improve the lives of people in cities. Doing 

so would expand upon recent efforts to coordinate Federal support for individual cities. At the same time, a 

better-integrated Federal effort to encourage technological innovation in cities would support ongoing Federal 

programs that focus on economic disparities and physical infrastructure. A coordinated effort has the potential 

to: 

1. Help the United States seize a new, multi-trillion-dollar business opportunity, including technology 

exports; 

2. Create new jobs to support expanded development and implementation of the technologies discussed 

in this report and the revitalization of specific districts and ultimately larger areas of cities; 

3. Enhance the quality of life for all city residents, in disadvantaged as well as more affluent areas, helping 

cities function better overall; and
Technology and the Future of Cities

38

4. Improve infrastructure that is critical for homeland security and for resilience to climate change and 

disasters.

Given the many Federal agencies with missions and programs that relate to cities, and the many opportunities to 

leverage one another’s work, enhanced mechanisms for coordination of Federal activity are needed. 

RECOMMENDATION 1. The Secretary of Commerce, working with the Secretaries of Housing and Urban 

Development, Transportation, and Energy, should establish an interagency initiative, the Cities Innovation 

Technology Investment Initiative (CITII), which will encourage, coordinate, and support efforts to pioneer new 

models for technology-enhanced cities incorporating measurable goals for inclusion and equity. 

CITII is intended to foster durable coordination among agencies that can or do support innovation relevant to 

cities. Accordingly, representation from the Departments of Commerce, Energy, Defense, Homeland Security, 

Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, Treasury, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Army 

Corps of Engineers is essential. For connection to the research objectives discussed below, representation from

the National Science Foundation is desirable; also desirable are representation from the Department of 

Agriculture, for attention to urban agriculture, and from the Department of Labor, for attention to job-driven 

training opportunities. The Smart City Challenge launched by the Department of Transportation (DOT) in 2015 

models the envisioned combination of focus on innovation and competitive selection. PCAST’s encouragement 

of innovation in districts is intended to support a broad array of innovative efforts deployed in a set of areas 

within a set of cities.

(1a) Under the leadership of the Department of Commerce, CITII should create and develop, by 

December 31, 2016, an initial blueprint for how U.S. agencies can foster systemic innovation across 

many dimensions of cities. 

Although such agencies as the Department of Transportation and the Department of Housing and Urban 

Development have considerable emphasis on cities, the Department of Commerce, through the efforts 

of many of its components, has already taken some important steps to coordinate and lead in smartcities activities, an important segment of the larger landscape of technology innovation for cities, 

positioning it well to lead in creating a long term plan before the end of the Administration.

(1b) In advance of developing that blueprint, CITII should, through the use of competitions following the 

model of the Department of Transportation’s Smart Cities Challenge, undertake activities to accelerate 

adoption of new technology. It should fund five districts with funding in the range of $30-40 million

each, from existing sources in its constituent agencies, with at least two of the districts in low-income 

communities. 

(1c) CITII should work with Federal agencies that have campuses that could be Federal “districts of

experimentation,” such as the Department of Defense with military bases, to create living trial/test-bed 

and demonstration areas that can serve as model districts. These collaborations would recognize and 

encourage innovation in natural/self-defined districts composed of single-owner campuses owned 

and/or operated by the Federal Government. 

(1d) CITII, working in concert with the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the 

Department of Labor, should design training programs, including certificate programs, that can connect 

urban technology innovation to jobs development. 
Technology and the Future of Cities

39

(1e) Under the guidance of CITII, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the 

National Science Foundation (NSF) should initiate a convening process to establish the prospects and 

parameters for an independent, community-driven body to define, implement, and evolve the City Web 

(a City Web Consortium), similar to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)130 and the Internet 

Engineering Task Force (IETF),131 which emphasize standardization based on broad adoption of common 

and proven approaches. The Federal Networking and Information Technology Research and 

Development (NITRD) program should work with CITII to coordinate existing activities to share data, 

models, and software tools among cities and stakeholders. 

The new MetroLab Network of partnerships among cities and research Institutions, along with National 

Laboratories, could help facilitate the City Web Consortium. The City Web Consortium would work with 

private sector and research laboratory technologists and city Chief Technology Offiecers to develop and 

maintain the protocols of a decentralized cloud-based site (similar to the Internet) that brings together, 

via API access, the full range of shareable City Web assets, with an emphasis on the kinds of support for 

innovation addressed in this report along with existing technology-based innovations including

government apps and Open Data source-code collections on GitHub,, the Peer Network at Code For 

America, SourceForge, and a variety of open or commercial forums around the theme of innovations in 

cities.

(1f) The U.S. Chief Data Scientist (CDS) should work with Federal agencies in CITII to identify types of 

data useful in the design and implementation of projects that improve public safety, public health, 

citizen mobility, and other desirable goals. The CDS should help the agencies promote new ways by 

which various stakeholders can develop and share best practices and data, attending to privacy and 

security. CITII should also develop a framework of incentives to motivate all stakeholders to share their 

data with others. This should include a common use-based model for ensuring privacy and ethical data 

use. 

RECOMMENDATION 2. Because PCAST believes technology will play a crucial role in revitalizing low-income 

communities in cities across the United States, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) 

should embrace technological innovation as a key strategy for accomplishing its mission.

With its history in urban development, HUD should become an originator of new models for making cities more 

nimble and more adaptable to technological change. The Department will require the staff capacity and the 

funds on the scale necessary to support advances in urban technology and innovation. HUD should immediately 

appoint a Chief Technology Officer or Chief Innovation Officer. The Department should adjust future budget 

requests to establish programs such as innovation laboratories and other data and technology resources 

common to other agencies. 

Many early projects are being implemented in greenfield or depopulated brownfield districts. While costly, 

these projects can relatively easily integrate new technologies. In contrast, districts that are highly populated, 

with older, less efficient technologies not yet near the end of life, will face more challenges in introducing 

 130 See: www.w3.org. 131 See: www.ietf.org. 
Technology and the Future of Cities

40

multiple technologies together. Even the prospect of lower long-term operating costs may not be enough to 

justify both significant capital expenses and disruption, even for the prospect of making their districts more 

livable. Federal Government funding or loans could be very helpful in meeting the capital needs while reducing 

disruption by accelerating the switchover to the new systems. 

RECOMMENDATION 3. The Administration should seek legislation enabling two financing programs that will 

support cities and municipalities to develop Urban Development Districts (UDDs) and to introduce significant 

new technology in their communities.

(3a) The Administration should continue to seek approval by Congress of an innovative new Qualified 

Public Infrastructure Bonds (QPIBs), which, as originally proposed by the Administration in January 2015, 

would, if approved by Congress, provide an incentive for more private investment in technology-based 

innovation in cities. QPIBs extend benefits of municipal bonds to public-private partnerships. 

Although the proposed ATII program will help early innovators, additional debt financing will be needed 

to support more extensive innovation. Some of the borrowers will be public-private partnerships, either 

by design or due to the integration of public and private ownership of existing infrastructure systems.

Because tax-exempt financing is available only for wholly publicly owned infrastructures, QPIBs, 

proposed in the Fiscal Year 2016 and 2017 budgets and requiring authorizing legislation, would make 

tax-exempt financing available to public private partnerships.

(3b) The Department of the Treasury should create an Advanced Technology Infrastructure Incubator 

(ATII) Program. ATII would facilitate loan funding of technology-based innovation in Urban 

Development Districts at levels that allow for meaningful change and impact, particularly in low-income 

districts. This would be scored, based on risk, by the Office of Management and Budget at an 

appropriate small fraction of the value loaned.

ATII is intended to overcome two impediments to implementing new technologies in cities: (1) the 

difficulty of making large-scale capital investment (e.g., for new energy or water infrastructures) by 

public agencies and private companies that need to allocate existing resources for operating and 

maintaining legacy infrastructure systems—accelerating infrastructure renewal is hard to finance; and 

(2) the difficulty of achieving integrated infrastructure development in a current context dominated by 

siloed control and fragmented ownership. Eligible borrowers would include State and local 

governments, public agencies, public-private partnerships, and private companies. Loans would be 

repaid by rates or fees assessed on projects. It is expected that the integration and upgrade of these 

systems will result in cost savings that will allow for the repayment of debt on legacy systems.

A larger, scalable, model of funding requires legislative authorization. Acknowledging that hurdle but 

also contemplating the future, the ATII would expand the CITII program by offering loan funding to all 

CITII-competition finalists rather than the few winners supportable through discretionary agency budget 

funding. The program would require an initial appropriation of $10 billion, which would allow for the 

financing of at least $100 billion of infrastructure-retooling projects. It would makes loans to State, 

municipal, private, and non-profit entities that are implementing local demonstrations aimed at creating 

livable and connected districts and that are using the City Web. Loans would include features that are 

unavailable or costly in the private capital markets and that provide incentives for borrowers to pursue 

ambitious infrastructure innovation. First, the program would allow borrowers to delay draws on the 
Technology and the Future of Cities

41

loan for up to five years at no cost, enabling them to match financing with their construction cycle.

Second, borrowers would not be required to pay interest for the first five years of the loan, and they

would be permitted to capitalize interest for up to five years thereafter. This would allow projects time 

before they are required to generate cash flow to repay the loan. Loans would be offered for up to 30 

years at Treasury rates, and up to 50 years at Treasury rates plus a small term premium that will help 

reduce the cost of the loan to the Federal Government.

Although 2015 began to see an emphasis on R&D funding for cities, more attention needs to be paid to the 

interactions and issues that cut across agencies, to promote complementarity and synergy, and more 

interdisciplinary R&D. While efforts have already begun to foster coordination under the NSTC Subcommittee 

on Networking and Information Technology R&D (NITRD)

132 and NSF, the kinds of R&D expected to be key 

include computation, data, sensor platforms, and integration technologies, in particular, for transportation 

(especially motor vehicles and transit), energy (building and industry energy use, plus electricity acquisition, 

generation, and distribution), water, and other city-infrastructure services. Given earlier discussions regarding 

the interplay between technology and norms of behavior, it will also be essential to integrate social, behavioral, 

and economic sciences with these more traditional infrastructure sciences.

Coordination should start with an inventory of research projects across all agencies. Since the goal is to engage 

science and technology to improve the lives of people living in cities, it will be crucial to further develop research 

on the empirically based understanding of the linkages between social and economic human behavior, urban 

infrastructure and services, and other aspects of urban environments. Such research must be leveraged and 

further developed with the objective of identifying new technology-enabled solutions for urban problems and 

for assessing proposed solutions. There also needs to be a more formalized mechanism to propose technologyenabled grand challenges for cities and city districts. 

Every day cities face operational challenges and resource constraints that focus attention on what might be 

done now. By contrast, research with a much longer-term horizon is required to be competitive in replatforming our cities. Consequently, the emphasis should be on balancing and, indeed, integrating both the 

development of better tools based on current understanding of urban systems (short-term, engineering) and the 

pursuit of deeper understanding of the fundamental workings of cities as complex systems (long-term, 

fundamental research).

RECOMMENDATION 4. The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) should create the Urban Science 

Technology Initiative (USTI) Subcommittee to coordinate Federally funded research and development (R&D). 

Building on more limited coordination efforts such as those revolving around smart cities, USTI would connect 

different kinds of infrastructural and other physical technology R&D with data- and ICT-oriented R&D. USTI 

should begin its work by creating an inventory of relevant R&D projects and grant programs across all 

agencies. PCAST also recommends that the research work of USTI be informed by the implementation work 

of CITII, and vice versa, a process likely to be in place in the beginning through the participation of the same 

agencies in both interagency activities.

 132 See: www.nitrd.gov/sccc.
Technology and the Future of Cities

42

Appendix A. The City Web

An information-sharing and collaborative development platform would help to extend these innovative activities 

beyond their local confines, benefiting all cities. With the growing momentum of open data, increasing 

innovation leveraging the Internet and relatively new technologies such as cloud and software-as-a-service, and 

partnerships between cities, universities, and National Laboratories we see both the potential and the 

beginnings of such a platform and call it “City Web.” Following the pattern seen in other industries and sectors, 

existing systems available on the Internet can be used to create the app stores, marketplaces, online media, 

communities, and data and analytics products specific to city districts (and cities overall). Following specific city 

innovation experiences, the City Web would be a place for cities and their partners to make available 

descriptions and non-proprietary elements of solutions that have been implemented, tested, reviewed, rated, 

and used by other cities, thereby reducing the time and complexity needed for today’s procurement cycles. It 

should be the primary repository for publishing and sharing the data and implementations that result from work 

that is directly supported by government funding. 

The goal of the City Web is to facilitate and accelerate the accumulation and replication of urban solutions and 

associated data and technologies in ways that benefit cities with different sizes, different technological now 

how, and different financial capabilities. 

It is natural to point out that, as with daily life today, the technical requirements placed on cities and their staffs 

will only increase over the coming years. Large, high-capacity cities such as Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago 

understand this trend, but they, too, face multiple demands with limited resources. The City Web would 

ameliorate technology-adoption challenges in the same way that software-as-a-service, mobile apps and app 

stores are allowing non-technical individuals to benefit from the capabilities provided by today’s powerful 

software and hardware. Mobile apps distributed by app stores and software capabilities customized and 

provided as online services make huge numbers of solutions widely available, transparently reviewed, and easily 

updateable.
Technology and the Future of Cities

43

Today Tomorrow Future

Goals Solve local issues.

Solve local issues and 

support future iterations 

and interoperability by 

moving to the cloud and 

app stores.

Solve local and general 

issues, support future 

iterations and 

interoperability, increase 

available options, and 

decrease entry costs 

through marketplaces.

Information sharing 

between cities

Vendors, consultants, 

social networks, 

nongovernmental 

organizations, and

conferences

Wiki and online 

community

Ratings, 

recommendations, 

reputation, etc.

Community-based 

software development

Limited; most 

implementations are 

proprietary and 

closed-source

Online repositories to 

facilitate open source 

code

Community management

Software applications

Individually procured 

bespoke, closed 

systems, proprietary 

systems, and/or 

locally-hosted servers

Software as a Service 

(cloud) and 

app stores (local)

Online

marketplaces

Data distribution 

systems

GIS repositories

Visualization

Data analytics

The City Web concept builds upon and extends five areas of emerging activity: 

1. A growing set of technology-savvy stakeholders that includes businesses, residents, civic organizations, 

and researchers;

2. New practices and standards for data creation, data annotation, metadata attributes, data searching, 

data sharing, and data privacy; 

3. Technical protocols and application program interfaces (APIs);

4. Data analytics to manage and optimize city services; and 

5. Integrated modeling and scenario evaluation to support policy and planning. 

The City Web would facilitate innovation from the bottom up, being neither built nor operated monolithically 

and with no central authority directing or regulating innovation. Taking a successful innovation in one city and 

applying it widely in other cities requires capturing and documenting key specifications and proving value and 
Technology and the Future of Cities

44

interoperability in the field, leading to the development of standards (for interoperability and replicability) and 

the distribution of assumptions, knowledge, tactics, and data. An open approach emphasizing replication and 

interoperability will also be essential to moving beyond the often fragmented and proprietary Smart Cities 

platforms of today that are used by local governments to operate their services. Indeed, the City Web aims for a 

broader scope than today’s platforms by being open for use by many stakeholders, beyond the local 

government, such as businesses and civic organizations to create new applications, optimize their development 

projects, create sophisticated computational models, and gain new insights. 

Figure: Transformation to City Web Platform

Urban Development Districts (UDDs), as outlined in the body of this report, provide the physical space for 

experiments and innovations that grow understanding about how technology and innovation affect the urban 

landscape, including information and people flows, changes in the physical infrastructure, goods/vehicles 

movement, energy use, and other types of flows. UDDs provide a small enough real urban environment to 

conduct in-depth experiments that provide tangible results. The City Web will be the platform that captures 

those results and facilitates experiments in other UDDs, often in other cities, to take advantage of the collective, 

accumulating breadth of knowledge. The two concepts are explicitly intertwined: Sharing information from the 

innovation ecosystem within UDDs can accelerate the evolution of the City Web, which then becomes a 

resource enabling better work within UDDs, which further in turn improves the knowledge repositories in the 

City Web. 

The City Web provides an ideal repository for the large-scale networks (like transit, waste water management, 

electric grids, etc.) and the services (like police, fire, etc.) used in these technology implementations. It could 

serve as a complementary data platform with high-resolution information at multiple levels. The accumulation 
Technology and the Future of Cities

45

and analysis of data would create a virtuous “learning loop” between the City Web and the results of the UDD 

implementations and experiments. 

PCAST recognizes that cities are extremely diverse environments. Even with the ability to use knowledge 

developed by numerous cities, different places will need to follow different paths involving distinct choices. The 

strategy of using the City Web and the experimentation performed in Urban Development Districts to capture 

the details of implementation and measurement of impact and results will be essential in facilitating adaptation 

of best practices to local conditions. Below we detail each of the five key areas of emerging technology and 

activity that will be central to building the City Web.

The most important function of a City Web is to create a platform for urban innovations to help solve difficult 

and persistent urban problems. While we discuss in this section many issues directly related to technology, 

data, and optimization, the most important results of any initiative to improve cities are improvements to the 

general quality of life, inclusion, and opportunity of urban residents. Thus, the use of technology in cities must 

ultimately be judged by how much it improves the lives of people as social, civic, and economic agents. A 

platform can help to make such improvements easier through lowering the barrier of entry for cities in their 

efforts to deliver and manage services using online and mobile technologies. 

A differentiator today is the growing set of technology-savvy urban stakeholders, from citizens to non-profit 

organizations, and from businesses to local government agencies. Problem-driven collaborations between very 

different entities are always difficult. Our expectation is that a successful City Web, supported by public policy 

at multiple levels, would provide a powerful new platform to align diverse interests, coordinate action, and 

promote agreement on solutions. A platform accessible to a wide range of stakeholders makes possible greater 

transparency and with it better coordination and solutions that are simpler to test, validate, and improve upon.

Recent developments point to an interesting and powerful convergence between individuals and organizations 

with new technological skills and the problems of cities, articulated as a new bottom-up civic technology 

movement focused on user-centric design solutions. Civic-minded organizations, such as “Code for America,

133

have developed new models of collaboration, based on volunteers and individuals with know-how from 

academia and industry who regularly collaborate with city service providers and in some cases choose to be 

stationed in cities for extended periods of time. Companies such as IBM, Cisco, McKinsey, and Siemens have 

also led the way developing the concepts, technologies, and services toward making cities “smarter,” 

highlighting many of the important possibilities, especially from an engineering or management perspective. 

These efforts are not only bringing technology to urban problems, they are also bringing new problems to 

technology, making it possible to create new services and economic value from the point of view of 

entrepreneurs and businesses.

Civic non-profits are also increasingly using technology and data to make their point, in ways that can often 

supersede the ability of local governments or businesses to collect and interpret data and that can forge new 

collaborations between government and civil society. An example is Data Driven Detroit, 134 an organization that 

has compiled and organized much information about the city of Detroit, including its land use, vacant property, 

environmental quality, patterns of employment and other important indicators of quality of life in a struggling 

 133 See: www.codeforamerica.org. 134 See: datadrivendetroit.org.
Technology and the Future of Cities

46

urban area. Such civic-minded organizations can augment the capacity of cities to compile and understand their 

data, while creating networks of collaboration between many stakeholders. They can also contribute to the 

education and training of communities in new technologies and quantitative analysis on issues of direct 

relevance to their lives.

Explicit collaborations between city governments and universities or National Laboratories are also exploring 

many of these possibilities, bringing diverse aspects of research and development closer to local governments 

and to local residents. The nascent MetroLab Network135 is a good example of this kind of city-university 

partnerships. Originating in Pittsburgh with Carnegie Mellon University and an initial set of like-minded cityuniversity pairs in Boston, Chicago, New York City, Portland, Seattle, and South Bend, its partnership concept 

and expansion to over 20 cities to date was supported by the White House Office of Science and Technology 

Policy. Initial areas of the Network’s focus are public-private partnerships on infrastructure and services, as well 

as issues of democratic governance, public policy, and public management.

There are enormous benefits in coordinating the creation of knowledge with local action in all these ways. First, 

used well, data and technology can allow a quicker convergence to facts and results between organizations with 

different agendas, thus facilitating a truly democratic, transparent, and effective political process. Second, the 

use of technologies proposed here can also foster convergence between government, the private sector and 

scientific organizations by facilitating the evaluation and testing of proposed solutions. Finally, the possibility of 

the convergence between science, policy, technology, and entrepreneurship creates a new space for new 

advanced STEM education and training, connected to practical local problems with enormous economic scope 

for applications elsewhere 

A clear trend is the increasing amount of data made public by city governments. These data are already 

facilitating new insights and solutions for local governments, businesses, and technology developers and 

promise to play an essential role in understanding and planning cities in the future.

An essential ingredient in the use of these new data is the development of the ability for cities to set measurable 

objectives and acquire information that allows them to assess their progress. New digital services are enabled 

by both advances in technology and by the open data-sharing culture that has been catalyzed by recent Federal 

Open Government and Open Data136 initiatives. As a result, a growing number of city and local governments are 

publishing much of their data in more standardized (machine-readable) formats. That activity may be linked to 

broader progress in how cities use ICT: A key aspect of agile service development is working in the open and 

allowing interested stakeholders and the public to watch, learn, and participate in this work. The U.S. Digital 

Services Playbook includes 13 “plays” or resources to aid strong digital service delivery, including a section titled 

“Default to Open.”137 A discussion of the methods and benefits of agile and inclusive development in 

 135 See: metrolab.heinz.cmu.edu. 136 See: www.whitehouse.gov/open. 137 See: playbook.cio.gov/#play13.
Technology and the Future of Cities

47

government can be found online.138 The U.S. Office of Management and Budget TechFAR resources can be also 

be found online at GitHub.139

Nevertheless, of the nearly 20,000 incorporated cities and over 3,000 counties in the United States, only a very 

small fraction currently shares data or has created open data portals. There is a long way to go before local 

governments are able and willing to digitize, use, and share data universally. The struggle of the 1990s and early 

2000s was to move from paper processes to digital applications; individual information solutions were typically 

developed for particular departments or applications; and many cities have yet to make this transition. Where 

cities moved to digital processes one department and function at a time, they have been left with an 

accumulation of non-integrated solutions and fragmented data.

Progress would be helped by broadly adopted and implemented data organization and exchange protocols as 

well as for a greater effort in improving the quality and completeness of published data. This is easier said than 

done: The recent availability of standard open data portal products, such as Socrata’s cloud-based platform, has 

enabled many cities to rapidly publish hundreds of data sets.140 Although many dozens of open data 

applications have been developed, only a subset have proven useful, much less transformative, for 

transparency, cost reduction, or improved operations. 

 138 See: handbook.agilegovleaders.org. 139 See: github.com/usds/playbook/blob/gh-pages/_includes/techfar-online.md#shared-goals-of-modular-contracting-andagile-software-development. 140 See: socrata.com.
Technology and the Future of Cities

48

The number of cities opening data has grown quickly over the past 5 years, with now on the order of a 

hundred141 cities and places operating open data portals. The trend is clearly seen in larger cities or places with 

more resources. The use and publication of data require a level of capabilities, from implementing the 

movement from paper to digital processes, to archiving, curation and analysis (e.g., for sensitive issues). A quick 

glance at those in the box, City Open Data Portals, shows that many smaller places are starting to participate in

the movement towards open data.142

Even cities with large IT budgets share this struggle to generate and use data internally. This is the result of a 

variety of factors: What data are collected during city operations? Are they annotated and standardized so that 

they can be shared meaningfully with third parties, and what privacy policies and regulations govern their use? 

Where cities have transitioned toward machine-readable data, many of the data sources cannot be published 

fully, or in some cases at all, due to privacy or other kinds of sensitivity of the data. For example, for privacy 

reasons, identifying information must be removed from 911 and 311 call records prior to publication, and while 

the GPS-tracked locations of snowplows can be published, the same information about police vehicles cannot.

While privacy is centrally important, if cities are to support human development and equitable opportunity it is 

essential to understand how cities are actually working for particular individuals and locations. Meanwhile, 

 141 See: us-city.census.okfn.org. 142 See: www.codeforamerica.org/blog/2014/02/27/mapping-the-open-data-landscape (accessed January 2016).

City Open Data Portals

Many cities are making much of their data publicly available in open data portals. This includes 

improving data quality and completeness and publishing it according to standards that make it easily 

usable for analysis and the development of applications by businesses and civically minded 

organizations. Below is an example view of a crowd-sourced Website created by Code for America, the 

Sunlight Foundation, and the Open Knowledge Foundation to begin to catalog and categorize open data 

portals.
Technology and the Future of Cities

49

because data derived directly or indirectly from human activities are increasingly common, there are large 

amounts of data inside of cities that touch upon all aspects of daily life. Examples include:

• Data generated by city governments and utilities on the supply and demand of urban services (energy, 

water, public transportation, zoning, public spaces); 

• Dynamic maps of the urban fabric, ranging from those derived from frequent and high resolution 

remote sensing (sub-meter) and derived classifications of land use to existing maps from private 

technology companies, the movement of city and public vehicles, and crowd-sourcing efforts and 

methods, such as OpenStreetMap143 and Photogrammetry;

144

• Environmental quality data from sensors, individuals, and private company analysis (local weather, 

including insolation, wind and temperature, which are affected by the urban built environment; 

pollution, noise, disorder); and

• Social and economic data, such as 911 and 311 call data, small-area statistics from U.S. Census and other 

surveys, public real-estate transactions, crime maps, and local quality-of-life indices.

In these and other cases, information that would be valuable to improved city operation and efficiency is often 

unavailable due to regulatory restrictions or due to the legal and competitive considerations of data holders. 

Many universities have access to health, education, or corrections data for analysis for research purposes, 

where the data are protected by confidentiality agreements. 

Similarly, universities and national laboratories have powerful modeling tools and access to data about city 

buildings, demographics, employment, and transportation—but not utility usage or utility reliability data. In 

isolation, these data sources yield some insight into issues such as the interdependencies between access to 

transportation and opportunities for employment or education. Combined, such data could provide guidance 

for more effective programs aimed at energy costs, allowing for investment in addressing root causes (e.g., 

insulating walls) rather than ongoing symptoms (e.g., assistance with heating bills).

Exploration of new agreements and arrangements for enabling such analysis, and the benefits to utilities, 

residents, and cities alike, will be critical. Potential solutions range from establishing or designating trusted third 

parties that combine data for analysis to developing algorithms that support privacy-preserving analysis. Both 

functions are already served today, with Federal Government support, by National Laboratories and research 

centers at universities.

One of the fundamental functions of the City Web will be not only to capture and promote new technology and 

approaches to data curation, description, and exchange, but also to facilitate such exchanges between data 

stewards—cities, utilities, companies, service providers, agencies—and trusted third-party analysis services 

provided by National Laboratories and universities. 

New models to share data over the Internet across different systems and to create ecosystems of interoperable 

and coordinated applications and technologies allow for novel possibilities for the development of a City Web.

Through these technologies the City Web can be adapted to the needs of a particular city and simultaneously 

 143 See: www.openstreetmap.org. 144 See: www.photogrammetry.com.
Technology and the Future of Cities

50

generate building blocks and standards easily customized and adapted to other places, possibly in collaboration 

with businesses, researchers, and civically minded developers. 

Traditionally, an IT department of any organization—including a local government—would develop discrete 

applications and associated databases. As database and application technology evolved, packages of associated 

applications and databases enabled departments to share related data, such as payroll, personnel, and 

recruiting functions. Cloud computing and “software as a service” allowed many organizations to outsource 

their data centers, subscribing to application and database services rather than operating them locally. These 

developments have been revolutionary, yet it remains the case that enterprises consist of many departments, 

each running systems of integrated applications and databases.

Although this fragmentation is both technically and organizationally challenging, the concepts of APIs and 

standard data-exchange protocols and formats (e.g., XML, JSON, CSV), have been key to the success of cities in 

effectively utilizing data from across their organization. Standard data-exchange protocols are essential to 

pulling data from their native sources into an integrated, distributed system that can support analysis, 

applications, and publishing, such as through a Web portal. APIs define functions that can be built into 

applications to access and use data in these standard formats.

APIs and other Web resources allow any organization to share their data online in some chosen standard 

format. Applications in turn can become very modular, so that “mash-ups” that integrate different functions 

(often stand-alone applications that can be interconnected) and data can be easily developed, combined, and 

further refined.

This means that a vital property of a City Web is, like the Internet itself, to develop, curate and promote useful 

APIs, utilizing widespread data exchange protocols, so that new data and applications (and associated 

underlying business processes) developed in or for a particular city can be easily shared and further developed 

by others and so on. In so doing, the City Web aims at supporting the conditions for fast improvement in IT 

technologies for all cities, without the need 

for top-down coordination, e.g., via meetings 

or other slow, traditional methods. 

A good illustration of the power of APIs and 

standard data exchange, combined with 

data-description standards, is the Open311 

Ecosystem. The 311 system is a dedicated 

call service for reporting non-emergency 

issues in cities, such as noise complaints, 

potholes, or street-light outages. As noted 

on the Open311 Website, the system “first 

began with an API for Washington D.C.’s 311 

system, but it really become a community when the leadership of San Francisco and the support of 

organizations like OpenPlans, Code for America, and even the White House brought many cities, companies, and 

organizations together into a productive collaboration.”145 The key to this ecosystem lies in the combined 

power of data description standards (encoding types of 311 calls consistently across cities), data-exchange 

 145 See: www.open311.org.

Application Programming Interfaces (APIs)

APIs are specifications that define how data and commands 

are passed between application programs. Examples of 

successful APIs include those used by the many types of Web 

browsers which communicate through well-defined APIs to 

the many types of Web servers to deliver and display websites 

over the Internet. While there are many types of browsers 

and many types of Web servers, the APIs are documented and 

adhered to in order to allow virtually any browser on any 

device to work with any type of Web server.
Technology and the Future of Cities

51

protocols (formatting data to be machine-interpreted), and APIs (specific functions allowing any application 

developer to write a 311 application, such as reporting by mobile phone rather than voice call).

In the United States, Open311 has become the standard way to develop this urban service in many different 

cities and encourage innovation from many technology developers without creating lock-in or dependence on a 

single provider, as is required when the data and applications are bundled without external APIs. The system is 

now adopted internationally, including in cities such as Toronto, Lisbon, and, via World Bank initiatives, in 

developing nations such as Mozambique, Tanzania, and the Philippines. In this way a complex service, initiated 

in large cities, is becoming easily available and usable even in small cities146 and in developing nations.

A second illustration is in transport and mobility. The General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS), developed by a 

Google-led technical community as a common format for public transportation schedules along with geographic 

data, has similarly enabled independent parties to develop applications that allow users to compare time and 

cost of routes, check schedules and locations for public transit, etc. There are now dozens of transit APIs being 

used.147 For instance, Transit App148 has created a smart-phone application that integrates public transit data 

and APIs with those of new car sharing services (e.g., Uber, car2go, auto-mobile, and others) and bike-share 

services,149 easily creating entirely new possibilities for more sustainable mobility in cities around the world. 

These types of data and services is typically integrated with mapping services, e.g., via the Google Maps,150

Bing,151 or OpenStreetMap’s152 APIs and with digital satellite images, from Digital Globe,

153 NASA, or USGS.154

In the energy sector, the Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory155 has developed 

an API that provides solar energy generation information for hypothetical rooftop solar systems and can be 

easily integrated with weather APIs for estimating real time performance for these systems and with real estate 

information, e.g., from Zillow,

156 Trulia,157 or Walk Score.158

Data-exchange standards and APIs are critical to progress for an increasingly important source of new urban 

data, the Internet of Things. Buildings, for example, are moving toward digitally integrated control systems, 

where traditionally the disparate systems such as HVAC, elevators, doors, and lighting have been independent, 

non-interoperable, and without APIs for external application development or data exchange. 

Ultimately, the danger of viewing cities as collections of independent, vertically integrated systems (buildings, 

transportation, utilities, etc.) is that innovation at the intersection of sectors, where often the most promising 

 146 See: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3-1-1. 147 See: www.programmableweb.com/news/45-transit-apis-yahoo-traffic-smsmybus-and-bart/2012/02/14. 148 See: transitapp.com. 149 See: www.apitools.com/apis/ba-bike-share. 150 See: developers.google.com/maps/?hl=en. 151 See: msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh441725.aspx. 152 See: wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/API. 153 See: www.programmableweb.com/api/digitalglobe-maps. 154 See: github.com/developmentseed/landsat-api. 155 See: developer.nrel.gov/docs/solar. 156 See: www.zillow.com/howto/api/APIOverview.htm. 157 See: developer.trulia.com. 158 See: www.walkscore.com/professional/api.php.
Technology and the Future of Cities

52

solutions lie, is crippled by the discontinuities between these separate systems. This is true even if within each 

vertical there are open standards for (internal) interoperability.

An important goal of the City Web, then, is to bring a broader context and a new technological substrate to 

these activities, promoting the creation of systems that are not only open and interoperable within buildings, or 

between vehicles, but between independently developed sector solutions. By reducing the bespoke nature of 

these traditionally vertically integrated sectors, the City Web can promote and facilitate new approaches, 

technologies, and solutions at critical intersections.

Cities are taking increasing advantage of bigger data and the use of advances in applied mathematics and 

computer science (algorithms) to analyze that data to inform operations and other decisions. Common 

examples are efforts at optimization through the statistical prediction of certain types of events or conditions 

and the identification of statistical anomalies as events to be understood and/or acted upon. The most powerful 

of these predictions rely on not only open data but sensitive, internal data. For instance, police departments in 

Los Angeles and other cities in California and in Chicago have used predictive analytics to identify urban areas 

that are statistically more likely to experience violent crime during a given day (crime hot spots).159

Similarly, one of the common operations across most local governments is the need to perform inspections, 

such as for fire, elevator, or food safety. New Orleans and New York City are developing predictive algorithms to 

identify probable fire hot-spots and guide fire-safety inspections, while Chicago is using similar techniques to 

predict rodent infestation and food safety. In these cases, algorithms provide a statistical likelihood of the given 

safety issue and can thus be used to preferentially schedule inspections based on expected risk (see box on 

Data-Analysis to Improve Food Safety), which may provide improvements versus random inspections.

 159 These statistical predictions rely on algorithms that examine spatial and temporal factors from sources such as 911 calls, 

previous crimes, Census data, and other sources such as public social media, weather, or public transit-vehicle locations and 

extrapolate these trends towards probable crime hot-spots. While the true usefulness of these approaches is yet to be 

proven, patterns of burglary have been shows to be relatively predictable; possibly criminals require knowledge of places to 

be effective.
Technology and the Future of Cities

53

Each of these emerging applications involves 

common components: identification of leading 

indicators, data models, and algorithms to combine 

these into statistical predictions, and optimization 

algorithms to translate such predictions into 

inspection schedules. As these methods continue to 

improve it is expected that they can both save 

money and, more importantly, improve public 

safety.160

Making the most of such tools will involve their 

integration into summary tools; some have begun to 

emerge. Los Angeles developed a dashboard 

capability that is being adopted by dozens of cities 

(see box on The Mayor’s Dashboard).161 Chicago 

has packaged its data integration and analytics 

capabilities as open source, cloud-hosted systems 

that can be readily replicated without large IT staff 

or resources. Similar commercial products are 

offered by multiple vendors, as well as a wide 

variety of aggregators. A tool for making 

comparisons between cities is now being developed 

under ISO 37120.162

 160 Questions of whether such strategies can promote strategic behavior on the part of violators, or improve quality of life in 

target neighborhoods (e.g., subject to greater policing focus) must continue to be explored.

161 See: datala.github.io/bradley-tower. 162 See: open.dataforcities.org.

Data-Analysis to Improve Food Safety

With new sources of data from city processes, social 

media, and urban sensors it has become feasible to 

begin to identify leading indicators for common 

conditions or types of events and developing 

algorithms for statistical forecast, and quantifying the 

uncertainties behind these forecasts. One example, 

below, is the optimization of food safety inspections, 

statistically classifying food establishments with 

respect to probability of food safety violations. The 

graph shows that optimizing inspections based on risk 

improves the timeliness of finding food safety 

violations relative to the more traditional random 

inspection schedules, on average finding violations 7.4 

days earlier in the inspection cycle. (Credit: City of 

Chicago Department of Innovation and Technology).
Technology and the Future of Cities

54

We expect to see these capabilities mature with 

further research, development, and 

experimentation. 

Such tools illustrate some of the integration that a 

City Web could provide, although the City Web 

would extend beyond city government, per se: The 

City Web would provide a platform on which civic 

and commercial entities can partner with local 

governments in using analytics to address issues by 

combining data from multiple sources.163 Examples 

may involve the active management of city-service 

vehicle routes (using UberPool or Bridj algorithms) 

or applications to help individuals find space in 

homeless shelters (using AirBnB algorithms). 

Because their algorithms and data define their 

businesses, companies like Uber, Bridj, and AirBnB 

prefer to keep such assets proprietary. Current 

research supports capabilities for entities to use 

each others’ data and algorithms without their 

being published. Such capabilities could be of 

particular benefit to cities, with a City Web 

providing the virtual meeting ground for access to 

data and analytical tools from private and public 

sources.

Further opportunities to use emerging urban data and models also result from progress in visualization and from 

fast-increasing computational capabilities, which are being nurtured broadly through both the Federal 

Networking and Information Technology Research and Development program164 under the National Science and 

Technology Council and the new (2015) National Strategic Computing Initiative,165 which expands on DOE’s 

Exascale Computing initiative 

Large-scale computational models have long been used in traffic simulation and other, relatively narrow, urban 

applications. The vision of a City Web is associated with the development of more complex, integrated models. 

Although integrated models of cities have a history going back a few decades, they have had only limited 

influence on urban science and policy because they are used even less than narrower, function-specific 

 163 See PCAST report “Big Data: A Technological Perspective,” released May 2014.

www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/PCAST/pcast_big_data_and_privacy_-_may_2014.pdf. 164 See: www.nitrd.gov. 165 See: www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/07/29/executive-order-creating-national-strategic-computinginitiative.

The Mayor’s Dashboard: 

The Mayor’s Dashboard was originally created in 

the City of Los Angeles and is now being used 

by more than 20 different municipalities and 

two congressional offices. Developed using free 

open source software (FOSS) with an investment of 

$9 and five days of donated development efforts, 

the public Dashboard is hosted on Github.com 

and uses data syndicated through the city’s open 

data portal. Replacing manually created reports 

printed on paper, the dashboard works with any 

device capable of displaying HTML5 and is easily 

customized for management, education, and 

other uses.
Technology and the Future of Cities

55

models.166 The use of models that simulate an entire city in detail is constrained by their requirements for large 

amounts of computation, specialized expertise, and, depending on the application, tendency to run more slowly 

than in real time. 

The greatest progress has related to the modeling of natural phenomena. For example, it is becoming possible 

to model wind and water flow and solar irradiation through the 3D urban built environment, creating the 

conditions to track the effects of weather and climate on physical aspects of cities and evaluate some important 

facets of their environmental quality and potential resilience to extreme natural events. Also, computational 

simulations and forecasts of energy demand and regional transportation systems are increasing in fidelity and 

becoming more useful and accurate at giving city managers and planners better situation awareness, 

extrapolation to future situations, and support in building scenarios that can better clarify policy choices. These 

models typically describe short-term scenarios (minutes to weeks) for particular cities; more effort is needed to 

make these tools more general. Detailed epidemic simulations and other agent-based models are also 

becoming more common, giving policy-makers a window on other aspects of how urban societies may respond 

to extreme events and health crises. 

Better assimilation of data relating to current situations has begun to enhance the value of large-scale 

computational models, which remain limited in their capacity to address such important factors as individual 

human behavior and social dynamics. Models that are not refreshed by data quickly lose predictability over 

time, especially when changes of human behavior are important. Strategies for data assimilation in real time

can mitigate these issues and create the conditions for large-scale urban simulation to be more useful and 

informative. How good these models can become remains a topic of research and development. 

Integrated modeling has four main objectives: 

1. The integration of various disparate data streams in ways that make explicit reference to space, time, 

and the physical city and many of its socioeconomic characteristics; 

2. Closing the loop on urban management and policy by readily quantifying gaps between intended urban 

services and actual conditions and by identifying the emerging locations and impacts of congestion, 

pollution, noise, crime, and other urban challenges;

3. Providing the basis for simulation to inform longer-term urban planning and policy through scenario 

building and forecasts for comparing different policy options; and

4. Creating an environment to develop and test integrated urban theory and its implementation as policy 

and to discuss and evaluate the tradeoffs of the adoption of new technologies. 

Integrated modeling of urban areas that can exploit new urban data sources and integrate design and 

engineering models, tested at smaller scales, is on the horizon. It may build on models developed at different 

scales, from the district to the metropolitan area, that are integrated together as needed. Partnerships between 

universities, National Laboratories, and cities can develop these capabilities, providing interfaces that are tuned 

to specific end-users (operations managers, policy makers, etc.) for particular uses and analyses of the data and 

information. 

The City Web can help to transform urban modeling from an arcane or proprietary set of tools limited to narrow 

sets of specialists into the kind of broad tool that is visible and usable by anybody to better understand a city, 

 166 Early models, such as TRANSIMS from Los Alamos National Laboratory, created a replica of a real city’s built environment 

(buildings, roads, public spaces) and, as the name indicates, were principally models of traffic flow. Later developments 

used these integrated models to simulate epidemic outbreaks (such as influenza) and for scenario generation.
Technology and the Future of Cities

56

though there may also be advanced modules to enable science and policy and facilitate entrepreneurship. A 

City Web with interoperable open data formats, APIs, and modular components can support a large ecology of 

developers and users, including private corporations and open-source developers. Such an ecosystem should be 

conducive to many forms of technological and organization innovation and the use of the increasing variety of 

information about urban environments to create new value as a source of human development and economic 

growth.

The City Web expands beyond individual city efforts on open data, engaging such efforts through open data 

formats and open APIs and coalescing as a platform to creatively use new information technologies to solve 

urban issues, through wide collaborations among all sectors of society and many cities. In this fashion, the 

ecosystem of urban information innovations can leverage what has happened with the Internet to support 

innovation and the creation, adaptation, and evolution of a wide variety of urban analyses, insights, and valueadded services. Cities are systems of systems, characterized by complex interactions between different sectors, 

such as transport and energy. The City Web creates new opportunities for higher-level integration and potential 

optimization across urban networks (such as mass transit and bike-share programs). It would naturally offer 

high-level support for goals such as sustainability, resiliency, accessibility, equity, transparency, security, and, of 

course, efficiency. 

To realize the City Web there must be research, development, and demonstration that go beyond today’s open 

or sharable data, APIs, and early successes in predictive analytics. For example, partnerships between cities and 

research institutions have potential not only to innovate and demonstrate such new capabilities but also to use 

research institutions as trusted third parties where data can be combined and analyzed under rigorous controls. 

PCAST believes that the City Web is a timely concept for several reasons. First, there is tremendous innovation 

that has resulted from open data initiatives. Tools and platforms are being developed that are beginning to 

expand from early adopter cities as the value of data-savvy city operations and policy becomes more apparent. 

To capitalize on this momentum, the City Web must enable new data-sharing capabilities that allow these 

initiatives to penetrate key areas of urban life, whether related to energy, health or socioeconomic equity 

related to transportation, safety, education, and general access to a decent life and opportunity.

Second, across every important urban infrastructure sector—transportation, buildings, communications, energy, 

water—advances in technology are creating new service models and associated opportunities for integration of 

infrastructure elements through data exchange. The City Web would provide opportunities for these currently 

independent advances to create solutions that exploit the many common technologies, methods, and 

approaches between sectors and to enable innovation across sectors through open interfaces and data 

standards.

The City Web will be built by many of the same institutions, companies and individuals that have previously 

created the Internet, the World Wide Web, and the open data movement. Today the opportunity is for the civic 

organizations, businesses, universities, and National Laboratories to apply similar principles and approaches and 

many of the same technologies to work with local governments to create the City Web.
Technology and the Future of Cities

57

Appendix B. Data-Enabled Pilot Projects

Respiratory conditions and asthma, in particular, are the focus of present efforts from many cities across the 

Nation. Data collected by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) at the national level indicates that asthma 

affects about one in 12 adults, especially the elderly, and nearly one in 10 children. 167 It also accounts for more 

than $56 billion in annual costs, 14.2 million physician office visits and 439,000 in-patient discharges. 

Statistically there is a higher incidence of asthma in larger cities, with Los Angeles and Philadelphia topping the 

list.168 Demographic studies also show that the incidence of asthma is statistically associated with 

socioeconomic challenges, especially poverty and low-quality housing.

169,170

Traditional studies do not get to the heart of the problem. Asthma is generally associated with factors that are 

very local, for example, mold or pests inside the home or heavy traffic or proximity to industrial facilities 

outside. A number of cities are developing strategies based on new technologies and data that allow them to 

track the challenges experienced by patients and identify more proximate causes of this common health 

challenge. 

The diversity of approaches171 and their potential integration in terms of a systemic new approach to combat 

asthma form a particularly compelling case for the initiatives advocated in this report.

For example, Pittsburgh is exploring a program called Breathe Cam with panoramic cameras that provide near 

real-time views of Pittsburgh. Citizens can use the Breathe Cam online to zoom-in on sources of emissions, use 

computer vision to quantify the amount of pollution emitted, make recordings of pollution events, and scroll 

back and forward in time to compare visibility and identify systematic polluters. 

Detroit, Los Angeles, Lowell (Massachusetts),

172 Boston, and New York City173,174 are using hospital-admissions 

data to retroactively identify areas of the city with the highest incidence of asthma.

175 And Louisville, Kentucky, 

in collaboration with IBM Smart Cities and Propeller Health, is providing residents with a free GPS sensor and 

phone app for their inhalers.176

 167 See: www.cdc.gov/asthma/asthmadata.htm. 168 See: www.nerdwallet.com/blog/health/diseases/asthma-best-place-to-live. 169 See: www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/time_to_rethink_the_inner_city_asthma_epidemic. 170 See: www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/01/20/378608279/the-inner-city-might-not-be-to-blame-for-highasthma-rates. 171 See: datasmart.ash.harvard.edu/news/article/monitoring-air-quality-and-the-impacts-of-pollution-679. 172 See: www.forbes.com/sites/athenahealth/2015/12/07/how-one-city-is-fighting-asthma-and-saving-money. 173 See: www.nyc.gov/html/nycha/downloads/pdf/hud-asthma-release-2.pdf. 174 See: www.downstate.edu/bhr/reports/Brooklyn-Health-Report-Asthma-2.pdf. 175 See: 

www.datadrivendetroit.org/web_ftp/Project_Docs/StateOfTheEnvironment/Health/AsthmaZipCode0709_Tri_county.pdf. 176 See: air.propellerhealth.com.
Technology and the Future of Cities

58

The city of Chicago is working with the Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Chicago, with funding 

from the National Science Foundation to deploy the Array of Things—a city-wide network of 500 lamppostmounted sensors with an important air quality component.

177 This initiative has some parallels to the network 

of sensors developed by LinkNYC and Sidewalk Labs in New York City, using retrofitted sites of old public phones 

for new purposes,

178 including sensors in collaboration with Argonne National Laboratory and providing Wi-Fi at 

thousands of locations in the City.

The city of Chicago is also analyzing its non-emergency complaint-call data to identify environmental issues 

connected to the incidence of asthma, such as pestilential infestations. Data scientists identified more than 30 

leading indicators predicting rat infestation by analyzing 12 years of 311-call data ranging from calls about rat 

infestation to graffiti and flooding, as well as data from weather services and social networks. Maps generated 

by predictive analytics enable inspections and treatment that are significantly less skewed by frequency bias, the 

observation that more wealthy residents are more likely to use 311 than those in distressed neighborhoods.179

The analyses allow rodent-abatement teams to look forward seven days, predicting where infestations will likely 

happen and helping the city of Chicago to get out ahead of them.180

Containing and addressing global challenges like air pollution and greenhouse-gas emissions are most effectively 

done locally, in cities, as stressed recently by former New York City Mayor, Michael Bloomberg.181

In practice, this process requires that cities are able to account (quantitatively) for all their energy use and 

emissions. The tally must be precise enough that progress towards reducing emissions can be assessed on an 

ongoing basis. Although a number of U.S. cities have undergone such accounting exercises,182 international 

standards are only now emerging that allow for comparative progress between places and over time. At 

present, it remains a daunting task for most cities to account for all their local energy use and related emissions 

and use these data in ways that help guide strategic analysis, policy, and future quantitative assessments. 

Although some basic tools have been developed associated with the emerging Global Protocol for CommunityScale Greenhouse Gas Emission Inventories (GPC),183 developed under the recent agreement known as the 

Compact of Mayors,

184 these are fairly basic185 and require further development. To compound these issues,

cities that do not control their utilities struggle with even the most basic problem of obtaining data on energy 

 177 See: Arrayofthings.github.io. 178 See: www.link.nyc. 179O’Brien and. Sampson. “Public and private spheres of neighborhood disorder: Assessing pathways to violence using 

large-scale digital records.” Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 2015. 

dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/17553309/JRCD_O'Brien_Sampson%202015.pdf?sequence=3. 180 Alexander Slagg. “Chicago leverages 311 and big data to tackle its rat problems,” StateTech, 2014. 

www.statetechmagazine.com/article/204/11/chicago-leverages-311-and-big-data-tackle-its-rat-problems. 181Michael Bloomberg, “What Paris talks have accomplished so far,” BloombergView, 2015. 

www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-12-06/what-paris-talks-have-accomplished-so-far. 182 “21 U.S. cities will measure, disclose CO2 emissions,” ReliablePlant. www.reliableplant.com/Read/12980/21-us-citieswill-measure,-disclose-co2-emissions. 183 See: www.ghgprotocol.org/city-accounting. 184 See: www.compactofmayors.org. 185 See: www.compactofmayors.org/resources/tools-for-cities.
Technology and the Future of Cities

59

consumption and transmission. A similar problem occurs around transportation and other fuels used in heating, 

which are difficult to account for in terms of consumption over space and time. But general quantitative 

procedures and an information infrastructure, data protocols, and analysis tools for localizing energy use and 

emissions quantitatively at the district level can help all cities collectively achieve these goals. Sharing real-time 

detailed data with cities can also offer immediate application and success. 

The economic success of cities is tightly tied to transportation systems. While railroads, airlines, and shipping 

systems have reached a high degree of safety, automotive transportation systems within cities remain a leading 

cause of death and serious injury for pedestrians, bicyclists, passengers, and drivers.

Data and analysis offer cities means to reduce the dangers of automobile-based transportation systems. Often 

referred to as “Vision Zero”, the idea can be summed up as, “when a child runs after a bouncing ball into a 

residential street and a speeding car strikes and kills him, the Vision Zero philosophy maintains [that] the death 

shouldn’t be seen as an unavoidable tragedy but as the result of an error of road design or behavioral 

reinforcement, or both.”186 Data-based analysis can reduce the number of opportunities for human error and 

other types of failures resulting in death or serious injury.

Vision Zero is being implemented using data analytics across a number of departments in San Francisco, New 

York City, and Los Angeles, among others. In Los Angeles, data were collected to create a visualization of the 

High Injury Network for use by all stakeholders,187 such as families concerned about how to get their children to 

school.188 An effort named the “Safe Routes to School” started in 2012 with the city’s Department of 

Transportation developing a prioritization methodology using disparate data on collision rates, the number of 

children living within walking and bicycling distance of each school, and equity and health indicators to identify 

schools with highest need. The Top 50 schools are located on or near the city’s High Injury Network, a network 

that comprises six percent of the streets and which accounts for 65 percent of pedestrian fatal and severe injury 

collisions. Data useful to decision-makers, whether municipal planners or individual drivers and pedestrians, are 

being distributed through websites and third-party mobile apps. These recent technical enablers are now 

allowing for greater work on the root causes of serious injuries and fatalities along multiple lines. 

New York City has roughly one million buildings. The New York Fire Department (NYFD) started using data 

mining and predictive analytics to determine which ones are most likely to erupt in a major fire. Roughly 60 

different factors have been built into an algorithm that assigns each of the inspectable buildings with a risk 

score. The risk score now determines the order of inspection, as opposed to a process that returns to previously 

inspected buildings randomly or based on safety priorities. Fire prevention is particularly important to highpoverty neighborhoods with vacant or unguarded buildings that are most susceptible to fires.189 The computer 

system under development at NYFD called Firecast. FireCast 3.0 will examine 7,500 factors across 17 city agency 

 186 See: www.city-journal.org/2014/24_2_ny-reckless-driving.html. 187 See: www.visionzeroinitiative.com. 188 See: saferoutes.lacity.org. 189 See: Govtech.com/public-safety/New-York-City-Fights-Fire-with-Data.html. 
Technology and the Future of Cities

60

data streams and use artificial intelligence to track trends city-wide. For example, trash violations can now be 

correlated with fire threat levels. The FDNY now has an analytics unit and data scientists.190

The city of Los Angeles is currently in the process of adding Global Positioning Systems, sensors, and cameras to 

their street sweepers. This will allow the city to open streets for parking more quickly, track water usage, tune 

or change routes to real time priorities, and track coverage to make sure street sweeping is complete.

Computer vision may facilitate reporting cracks in pavement, broken sidewalks, missing paint, missing signage, 

and using street sweeping as the continuous eyes for prioritizing infrastructure improvement.191

The University of Chicago’s Harris School of 

Public Policy is working with Argonne 

National Laboratory and the Urban Center 

for Computation and Data to explore 

algorithms using eight years of crime-event 

data and current and forecasted weather 

to predict the probability of violent crime 

for each Census block across the City of 

Chicago and for each hour within a 72-

hour horizon.192 The key objective to this 

work, as well as to commercial systems 

such as recently announced by Hitachi,

193

is to enable police departments to deploy 

patrols more effectively based on better 

knowledge about “hot spots” with greater 

probability of crime during a given shift. 

Similar work was recently published by the 

Harvard University Center for the 

Environment194 using 13 years of Chicago 

crime data to link environmental pollution 

and crime.

 190 See: www1.nyc.gov/site/analytics/meet-team.page. 191 Peter Marx, Chief Technology Officer, City of Los Angeles, personal communication, January, 2016. 192 See: harris.uchicago.edu.

193 See: www.fastcompany.com/3051578/elasticity/hitachi-says-it-can-predict-crimes-before-they-happen. 194 See: www.chicagomag.com/city-life/January-2016/The-Answer-My-Friend.

Crime Prediction

Using machine learning algorithms and eight years of 

Chicago crime data, the University of Chicago is developing 

a general-purpose tool for predicting crime probability on a 

census tract resolution based on place-based history and 

weather forecasts.
Technology and the Future of Cities

61

The city of Los Angeles is rolling out a franchise-management system to integrate private waste companies into 

the cities’ system of service calls, data tracking, and billing to work together to deliver yard waste services to 

multi-unit dwellings and commercial locations. This will double recycling efforts by allowing the city to expand 

tracking of waste and recycling beyond single-family homes, integrate private and public data systems, lower the 

need for more landfill, and use the collected data for infestation tracking. 

This effort is similar to those taken in a variety of cities to spur the use of recycling and to divert materials from 

increasingly expensive landfills. 

A number of apps have been published that let drivers and passengers identify shortest routes over city streets.

Cities are sharing real-time data with these apps, and receiving reports from them, in an effort to optimize the 

use and management of city streets. Waze is a social media wayfinding app used by more than 1.5 million 

people in Los Angeles that consumes road closure, safety, and other data from the city and, in turn, provides to 

the City all of the crowd-sourced user reports of collisions, obstructions, and hazards every two minutes. These 

data are then integrated into the 311, contract administration (road construction permits), public safety, and 

emergency management systems as early alerts for potential service calls and reports of violations. 

These systems are being extended into mobility marketplaces to include multiple transportation modalities.

CitySight in Denver and Los Angeles has been built by Xerox that includes real-time availability and pricing from 

public transportation, ride sharing (e.g., Lyft and Uber), taxi, bicycle share, walking, parking, and private vehicles. 

This marketplace presents users with all available options prioritized according to the user’s requirements of 

lowest transit time, lowest price, or lowest ecological impact. The marketplaces will be available on the Web, in 

apps, and on kiosks at physical transit points such as the airports, train stations, and public transit interchanges.

These apps rely upon real-time location services provided by the user’s smart-phone or from automatic vehicle 

location systems installed on the buses and other vehicles from which data is distributed through the cloud or 

private networks.
Technology and the Future of Cities

62

Appendix C. Selected Federal Government Initiatives

The United States Secretaries of Commerce (Penny Pritzker) and Energy (Ernest Moniz) led a Smart Cities–Smart 

Growth Business Development Mission to China in April 2015. It promoted U.S. exports to China by supporting 

U.S. companies in launching or increasing their business in the marketplace for Smart Cities–Smart Growth 

products and services.195

The Department of Commerce (DOC) has been focusing on the role of data as a factor that unifies its disparate 

components, and in 2015 it launched a Digital Economy program, both developments that increase its capacity 

to contribute to efforts to use technology to improve cities. DOC has been actively involved in cities through 

such components as the National Institute of Standards and Technologies (NIST), Economic Development 

Administration (EDA), and the Bureau of the Census, in addition to more targeted engagement via the National 

Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), National Telecommunications and Information 

Administration (NTIA), and International Trade Administration (ITA). NTIA, for example, supports growth in 

broadband capacity across cities and other communities.196 Overall, DOC has a lot of distributed technology 

capacity to partner with other agencies.

NIST: As an evolution of the Cyber Physical Systems effort under the aegis of the interagency Networking and 

Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) program, NIST launched the Smart America 

Challenge in 2013 with the aid of Presidential Innovation Fellows and then the Global City Teams Challenge 

(GCTC) in September 2014 "to establish and demonstrate replicable, scalable, and sustainable models for 

incubation and deployment of interoperable, standard-based Internet of Things solutions and demonstrate their 

measurable benefits in Smart Communities/Cities."197 The program’s goal is to help communities improve 

efficiency and lower costs by learning from each other’s experiments. The first round primarily promoted 

collaboration and started the process of developing international standards. It involved 64 teams of more than 

50 cities and 230 global organizations. The results were demonstrated in an expo in June 2015, attended by 

1,400 people. Following on its success, GCTC launched a second round of proposal requests in September 2015 

and a kickoff workshop in November 2015, with a commitment of $5 million in FY 2016,

198 that will culminate in 

deployments in June 2017. The teams are international in scope and NIST has partnered with NSF, ITA, the 

Department of Transportation, States, and various trade associations, private sector corporations, universities, 

 195See: 

energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2014/12/f19/Dept%20of%20Commerce%20and%20Dept%20of%20Energy%20Joint%20China%

20Mission%20Statement.pdf. 196 See: www2.ntia.doc.gov. 197 See: www.nist.gov/cps/sagc.cfm. 198 See: www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/09/14/fact-sheet-administration-announces-new-smart-citiesinitiative-help.
Technology and the Future of Cities

63

and non-profits. NIST’s work on Cyber Physical Systems and the Internet of Things199 connects it to both 

industry and the research community, as well as to other parts of the Federal Government.

EDA: The Economic Development Administration (EDA), which supports infrastructure improvements and 

related development in distressed communities,200 is leading the Strong Cities, Strong Communities Economic 

Visioning Challenge featuring a multi-phase competition to award funding and expertise to projects that could 

best create targeted economic development in cities. Greensboro, North Carolina; Hartford, Connecticut; and 

Las Vegas, Nevada generated a combined 143 proposals and were chosen to run their own competitions in the 

second phase. Eighteen proposals received a total of $2.5 million and were announced in August 2015, which 

included 3 winners (a center for universities, firms, and communities to coordinate educational and business 

goals in Greensboro, a health care and medical technology cluster in Hartford, and an Unmanned Aerial & 

Robotics Resource Center in Las Vegas).

201 EDA further announced another $10 million in grants for FY 2016 for 

cities solving pressing issues in innovation and resilience.202 EDA supports innovation and capacity-building 

through such vehicles as i6 Challenge grants to help start-ups, Seed Fund Support for geographically clustered 

“firms, workers, and industries that do business with each other and have common needs for talent, technology, 

and infrastructure,”203 and Science and Research Park Development Grants.204 Through such programs EDA 

contributes to Federal support for the Smart Cities initiative.

Census: The Census Bureau rolled out CitySDK (Software Development Kit) in June 2015, a project developed by 

White House Presidential Innovation Fellows to provide an efficient and easy way for public organizations to 

access and use Census data. That day, they also launched the open data challenge, a contest to get public and 

private company organizations to use the data in most interesting ways. Five finalists using open Census data 

were showcased on August 13, 2015 to show other Federal agencies ways to work with Census data. For 

example, a finalist in Minneapolis combined mobility, housing, hospital, safety, and community data to allow 

people with disabilities to find the best places to live and travel in Minnesota.205

The Department of Transportation (DOT) has recently funded support for future experiments in parts of New 

York City and Tampa for connected vehicles. In December 2015, the Department of Transportation launched the 

Smart City Challenge to solicit proposals in 2016 and select, through a nationwide competition, a medium-sized 

city to receive $40 million in funding to implement “bold, data-driven ideas to improve lives by making 

transportation safer, easier, and more reliable” and particularly with support infrastructure for Intelligent 

Transportation Systems (ITS) and Electric Vehicles (EVs) and integrating in new norms of behavior.206 It is 

expected that the other finalist proposals will be publically highlighted and likely to benefit, as a result, from 

engaging the private sector. 

 199 See: www.nist.gov/itl/ssd/cyber-physical-systems.cfm and www.nist.gov/el/nist-releases-draft-framework-cyberphysical-systems-developers.cfm. 200 See: www.eda.gov/about/investment-programs.htm. 201 See: www.eda.gov/news/blogs/2015/08/20/SC2-Economic-Visioning-Challenge.htm. 202 See: www.eda.gov/oie/ris. 203 See: www.eda.gov/oie/files/ris/2015-RIS-FAQs.pdf. 204 See: www.eda.gov/news/press-releases/2015/03/30/ris.htm. 205 See: www.challenge.gov/challenge/city-software-development-kit-sdk-data-solutions-challenge. 206 See: www.transportation.gov/smartcity#sthash.2sp9IzfD.dpuf.
Technology and the Future of Cities

64

DOT has traditionally been an instrumental participant in connecting city residents to economic opportunity, 

and also creating transportation industry jobs, through their Ladders of Opportunity initiative207 and 

Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grants that are awarded to fund capital 

investments in surface transportation infrastructure.208 Since 2009, TIGER has provided nearly $4.6 billion to 

381 projects in coordination with the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

209

In July 2015, the Department of Housing and urban Development (HUD) and the White House launched Connect 

Home, a pilot program in 27 cities to offer over 275,000 low-income households access to Internet service at 

home, funded by the private sector.210

In March 2015, HUD announced that it had created a Sustainable Communities Initiative Resource Library to 

house the products of HUD’s Sustainable Community Initiative existing 143 community grantees. This new 

online library became a repository for dozens of local and regional comprehensive plans, model codes, tools, 

and reports so all communities can learn from the successes of these innovators. The library serves as a 

showcase for the range of activities that grantee cities, counties and regions have taken since the first grant was 

awarded in 2010.211

In June 2015, HUD launched the second and final phase of the National Disaster Resilience Competition for 

finalists to compete for almost $1 billion in funding for disaster recovery and long-term community resilience. In 

the previous year, $181 million was set aside for communities in New York and New Jersey.212

In July 2015, HUD, DOE, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced Renew 300 with a goal to 

target 300 MW of renewables, primarily community and shared solar installations, for low-and-moderate 

income housing by 2020. Federally assisted housing includes HUD’s rental housing portfolio (Public Housing, 

Multifamily Assisted) and the Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Rural Development Multifamily Programs, as 

well as rental housing supported through the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC). While solar photovoltaic 

(PV) generation will be the primary renewable energy source utilized under this initiative, solar thermal, wind, 

geothermal, biomass, combined heat and power, and small-hydro projects, are also included.213,214,215 Fifty

grantees, including 17 Public Housing Authorities (PHAs), had by the summer of 2015 pledged to install 

renewable energy technologies on-site, totaling 185 MW, enough to power 30,000 homes from solar, 

geothermal, and combined heat and power systems.216

 207 See: www.transportation.gov/ladders. 208 See: www.transportation.gov/tiger. 209 See: www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/docs/TIGER_PLANNING_SUSTAINABLE_COMMUNITIES.pdf. 210 See: www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/07/15/fact-sheet-connecthome-coming-together-ensure-digitalopportunity-all. 211 See: www.hudexchange.info/programs/sci. 212 See: portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/press/press_releases_media_advisories/2015/HUDNo_15-079. 213 See: www.hudexchange.info/news/office-of-economic-resilience-update-april-28-2015. 214 See: portal.hud.gov/idc/groups/public/documents/document/renew300.pdf.pdf. 215 See: www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/07/07/fact-sheet-administration-announces-new-initiative-increasesolar-access. 216 See: blog.hud.gov/index.php/2015/07/20/powering-a-brighter-future-in-public-housing. 
Technology and the Future of Cities

65

Since the beginning of the Administration, HUD has led the development of many of the Administration’s “placebased initiatives,” cross-agency efforts to transform the Federal government into a more effective partner for 

local communities. These collaborative initiatives have led to progress against the challenges facing America’s 

communities partially by taking a more comprehensive approach to community development and focusing on 

executing locally driven goals. Today over 1,800 communities nation-wide–including cities, towns, counties, and 

regions–are implementing place-based initiatives. Specifically, HUD is home to the following place-based 

initiatives:

• The Promise Zones Initiative focuses on improving the lives of “middle-class Americans by partnering 

with local communities and business to create jobs, increase economic security, expand educational 

opportunities, increase access to quality, affordable housing, and improve public safety.”217,218 Promise 

Zones continue a line of Federal focus on districts that goes back at least to the Reagan Administration 

and its interest in Enterprise Zones. HUD has also had a number of programs focused on enabling urban 

environments, particularly targeted at the most disadvantaged populations. These include a strong 

traditional focus on public housing programs,

219 including those targeted at improving buildings and 

housing conditions.

• HUD’s Office of Economic Resilience is part of the Partnership for Sustainable Communities shared 

among HUD, DOT, and EPA. The Office of Economic Resilience helps communities and regions build 

diverse, prosperous, resilient economies by enhancing quality of place; advancing effective job-creation 

strategies; reducing housing, transportation, and energy consumption costs; promoting clean-energy 

solutions; and creating economic opportunities for all. The Office administers three grant programs to 

help communities achieve these goals: Capacity Building for Sustainable Communities, Sustainable 

Communities Regional Planning Grants, and Community Challenge Grants. 

• The Strong Cities, Strong Communities Initiative was launched in July 2011 as an intensive, inter-agency 

partnership between the Federal Government and local governments in distressed cities. The SC2 

concept was developed through engagement with mayors, members of Congress, foundations, nonprofits and other community partners who are committed to addressing the challenges of local 

governments. SC2 and its partners are working together to coordinate Federal programs and 

investments to spark economic growth in distressed areas and create stronger cooperation between 

community organizations, local leadership, and the federal government. SC2’s work has enabled pilot 

communities to more effectively utilize more than $368 million in existing Federal funds and 

investments. More significantly, the initiative has succeeded in strengthening local capacity for 

communities to meet challenges and take advantage of opportunities to grow their economies.

• The Choice Neighborhoods program supports locally driven strategies to address struggling 

neighborhoods with distressed public or HUD-assisted housing through a comprehensive approach to 

neighborhood transformation. Local leaders, residents, and stakeholders, such as public housing 

authorities, cities, schools, police, business owners, nonprofits, and private developers, come together 

to create and implement a plan that transforms distressed HUD housing and addresses the challenges in 

the surrounding neighborhood. The program is designed to catalyze critical improvements in 

neighborhood assets, including vacant property, housing, services and schools. Communities must 

develop a comprehensive neighborhood-revitalization strategy, or Transformation Plan. This 

 217 See: www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/01/08/fact-sheet-president-obama-s-promise-zones-initiative. 218 There is ample history of public policy efforts to creating enabling districts—for example, both Presidents Reagan and 

Clinton experimented with Enterprise Zones—with programs varying in their emphasis on process v. outcomes. 

www.house.leg.state.mn.us/wrd/pubs/endzones.pdf. 219 See: portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/program_offices/public_indian_housing/programs/ph/programs.
Technology and the Future of Cities

66

Transformation Plan will become the guiding document for the revitalization of the public and/or 

assisted housing units, while simultaneously directing the transformation of the surrounding 

neighborhood and positive outcomes for families. Choice administers both Planning and 

Implementation grants. 

• In August 2015, HUD launched the HUD Resource Locator,

220 an innovative mobile app and website to 

further expand and enhance traditional HUD customer service. The resource locator offers real-time 

HUD housing information at the fingertips of people looking to quickly connect with building managers, 

public housing authority representatives, and property management companies to inquire about 

housing availability and other housing-related questions. The HUD resource locator is one of several 

services provided by HUD’s Enterprise Geographic Information System (eGIS). This tool uses GIS 

technology to pinpoint where resources are located and allow anyone with a smart-phone or tablet to 

get relevant contact information. For example, the new app can be used during a disaster when families 

need to find housing, or when social service providers are helping persons experiencing homelessness 

look for available housing assistance. The resource locator uses housing data from HUD and the U.S. 

Department of Agriculture.

• In December 2015, HUD issued its Assessment Tool to be used by certain HUD program participants to 

complete their Assessment of Fair Housing (AFH), as part of the guidelines of the recently released 

Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule. The Assessment Tool equips program participants with the 

data to identify fair-housing issues and related contributing factors in their jurisdiction and region. The 

data exposes trends of unequal access to opportunity. It includes datasets such as racially/ethnically 

concentrated areas of poverty, measures of racial segregation in residential areas, school proficiency 

index, a low poverty index, a labor-market index, a transit-trips index, a low transportation cost index, 

and an environmental health index. 

The Department of Energy (DOE) has been pursuing research in a number of areas such as green buildings and 

data centers; building-energy retrofitting; building management; carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS);

energy-efficiency technologies; clean air and clean water technologies; waste-treatment technologies; smart 

grids; and green transportation. In May 2015, DOE unveiled the Better Buildings Solution Center online tool 

based on 200 solutions that have been implemented and tested over the past four years, when the initiative 

started.221

DOEs Cities Leading through Energy Analysis and Planning 222 (Cities-LEAP) project,

223 surveyed 200 U.S. cities 

and interviewed officials from 20 of these in depth, finding that cities are “challenged to quantify and measure 

progress towards emissions and energy goals, and would benefit from new tools and methodologies that 

provide a holistic understanding (across sectors) of energy-related actions or suites or actions in order to 

prioritize goals.” Cities-LEAP also found that cities identified “data and integration of data sets as barriers, 

 220 See: resources.hud.gov. 221 See: 

betterbuildingssolutioncenter.energy.gov/sites/default/files/news/attachments/DOE_BB_2015_Progress_Report_Solution_

Center.pdf. 222 See: www.nrel.gov/docs/fy15osti/64128.pdf. 223 See: energy.gov/eere/cities-leading-through-energy-analysis-and-planning.
Technology and the Future of Cities

67

[including] data access, transfer of data from utilities, quality of data, using meters and sensors, sub-meters,

tools, and models to integrate and combine data.”224

DOE has plans to go beyond components such as land, buildings, utility networks, or roads to look at city 

districts as complex systems, such as transportation networks (cars, buses, trains, etc.) that interact in complex 

feedback loops with other sectors, to look at an integrated understanding of cities and associated metropolitan 

areas as a whole. This will involve measurements and sensors, computational modeling, and multi-scale 

analytics, with the particular goal of applying the knowledge gained to specific city decisions.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has programs that can help in funding “green” innovation in 

districts, with targeted support for the handling of water,225 storm water, and wastewater as well as air pollution

and numerous mechanisms for fostering resilience in cities and other communities. For example, the Water 

Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (WIFIA)

226 Program provides financing for water and wastewater 

infrastructure. Innovative financing has become available as well through the Water Infrastructure and 

Resiliency Finance Center227 established under the Build America Investment Initiative. The Clean Water State 

Revolving Fund (CWSRF)228 and the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund (DWSRF)229 are two Federal-State 

partnerships that respectively provide communities with financing for a wide range of water quality 

infrastructure projects and for ensuring safe drinking water. 

EPA, along with other Federal agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and private-sector entities, has formed 

the Green Infrastructure Collaborative to help communities more easily implement green infrastructure.230 The 

collaborative members are working to promote green infrastructure with a focus on benefits ranging from 

improving air quality to reducing energy use to mitigating climate change.

Finally, EPA supports advances in the connected quality of districts and cities through its attention to 

environmental justice (EJ), defined as “the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of 

race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of 

environmental laws, regulations, and policies.”231 The EJ interest can be seen in the Brownfields Program, 

authorized by the 2002 Small Business Liability Relief and Brownfields Revitalization Act, which targets 

redevelopment of blighted and other distressed areas through grants and loans that can support clean-up, 

redevelopment, and job-training.232

In September 2015, the White House announced a Smart Cities Initiative including new Federal steps and 

stakeholder collaborations to help communities tackle challenges with technology-driven approaches, in 

 224 “City-Level Energy Decision Making: Data Use in Energy Planning, Implementation, and Evaluation in U.S. Cities,” 

NREL/TP-7A40-64128, 2015. www.nrel.gov/docs/fy15osti/64128.pdf. 225 See: www3.epa.gov/environmentaljustice. 226 See: www.epa.gov/wifia/learn-about-water-infrastructure-finance-and-innovation-act-program. 227 See: www.epa.gov/waterfinancecenter. 228 See: www.epa.gov/cwsrf. 229 See: www.epa.gov/drinkingwatersrf. 230 See: www.epa.gov/green-infrastructure/green-infrastructure-collaborative. 231 See: www3.epa.gov/environmentaljustice. 232 See: www.epa.gov/brownfields. 
Technology and the Future of Cities

68

addition to giving greater visibility and coherence to older Federal efforts relevant to innovation in cities.

Federal agencies expanded or created technology-based programs, and the launch of the nonprofit MetroLab 

Network (MLN) was announced. MLN, originating with the City of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University 

and now involving at least 20 different city-based collaborations, has attracted private foundation as well as 

Federal support, fosters collaboration on technical problems among teams of city governments, local 

universities, and other research institutions and further individual programs are in the planning stage. Its 

enduring value is in the sharing of successful projects via the coordination of multi-city, multi-university research 

efforts.233

Also as part of the Smart City Initiative, NSF announced a new $35 million in FY 2015 R&D funding (plus another 

$7.5M in FY 2016) and the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) 

Program announced a new framework for Smart and Connected Communities234 to help guide Federal agency 

investments and foundational research.

 233 See: www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/09/14/fact-sheet-administration-announces-new-smart-citiesinitiative-help. 234 See: www.nitrd.gov/sccc.
Technology and the Future of Cities

69

Appendix D. Selected Smart Cities International 

Projects

Program, City, 

Country Organization Goals

Masdar City

Abu Dhabi, 

United Arab 

Emirates235

Mubadala 

Development 

Compay, 

Government of 

Abu Dhabi

Masdar is a planned city project in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab 

Emirates. Its core is being built by Masdar, a subsidiary of 

Mubadala Development Company, with the majority of seed 

capital provided by the Government of Abu Dhabi. Designed by 

the British architectural firm Foster and Partners, the city relies on 

solar energy and other renewable energy sources. Masdar City is 

designed to be a hub for clean tech companies. The first tenant is 

the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, a university 

partnership with MIT’s Technology and Development Program.

Amsterdam 

Smart City 

Project,

Amsterdam, 

Netherlands236

City of 

Amsterdam with 

100+ partners

Amsterdam Smart City (ASC) is a unique partnership between 

companies, governments, knowledge institutions and the people 

of Amsterdam. It is a frontrunner in the development of 

Amsterdam as a smart city. Where social and technological 

infrastructures and solutions facilitate and accelerate sustainable 

economic growth, improving the quality of life in the city for 

everyone. ASC believes in a habitable city where it is pleasant to 

both live and work. In six years ASC has grown into a platform with 

over 100 partners, which are involved in more than 90 innovative 

projects. 

Andorra Living 

Lab, Andorra237

Actua Tech 

Foundation, MIT 

Media Lab

Collaboration between the Andorran government and the MIT 

Media Lab to developing a living lab to test the use of data for 

addressing urban design, tourism, and innovation for the country 

of Andorra. Actua Tech is a partnership between Andorra Telecom 

and FEDA (National Utility Company).

 235 See: www.masdar.ae. 236 See: amsterdamsmartcity.com. 237 See: actua.ad/en/#.
Technology and the Future of Cities

70

Smart City 

Barcelona, 

Spain238

City of Barcelona Smart-city areas include public and social services, environment, 

mobility, companies and business, research and innovation, 

communications, infrastructure, tourism, citizen cooperation, and 

international projects.

Smart Cities, 

China239

Ministry of 

Housing and 

Urban-Rural 

Development 

(MoHURD)

103 cities, districts, and towns in China have been earmarked by 

the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development to be 

developed into smart cities this year. In an effort to promote 

urbanization and boost the national economy at a time when 

China's GDP growth has experienced a recent slide, the ministry is 

looking to transform cities combining government investments, 

modern infrastructure, and information technology to make them 

more competitive. The ministry is calling for the listed cities to 

issue detailed proposals about how they will begin reconstruction 

within an overall design plan.

HafenCity 

Project, 

Hamburg, 

Germany240

Port of Hamburg, 

HafenCity 

Corporation, 

HafenCity 

University, MIT 

Media Lab

Cooperation agreement between the HafenCity University and the 

MIT Media Lab to develop smart cities planning in the HafenCity 

District (Port of Hamburg) and neighboring districts. Projects 

include use of urban data analytics to create interactive city 

planning tools.

Smart Cities, 

India241

Office of the 

Prime Minister of 

India

The Indian government plans to identify 20 smart cities in 2015, 40 

in 2016 and another 40 in 2017. The 100 potential smart cities 

nominated by all the states and union territories based on stage 1 

criteria will prepare smart city plans which will be evaluated in 

stage 2 of the competition for prioritizing cities for financing. In 

the first round of this stage, 20 top scorers will be chosen for 

financing during the initial financial year. The remaining will be 

asked to make up the deficiencies identified by the Apex 

Committee in the Ministry of Urban Development for participation 

in the next two rounds of competition. 40 cities each will be 

selected for financing during the next rounds of competition.

 238 See: smartcity.bcn.cat/en. 239 See: www.mohurd.gov.cn. 240 See: www.hcu-hamburg.de/research/citysciencelab. 241 See: www.smartcitieschallenge.in.
Technology and the Future of Cities

71

Rise Prize, 

India242

Mahindra Mahindra to fund two Challenges: (1) Solar, (2) Driverless Car, one

Million Dollars 

Songdo, 

Korea243

Government of 

Korea, Gale 

International, 

Posco, Morgan 

Stanley

Songdo International Business District (Songdo IBD) is a new smart 

city or "ubiquitous city" built from scratch on 600 hectares (1,500 

acres) of reclaimed land along Incheon's waterfront, 65 kilometres 

(40 mi) southwest of Seoul, South Korea and connected to Incheon 

International Airport by a 12.3-kilometre (7.6 mi) reinforced 

concrete highway bridge, called Incheon Bridge. Along with 

Yeongjong and Cheongna, it is part of the Incheon Free Economic 

Zone.

MK: Smart 

Initiative, 

Milton Keynes, 

UK244

City of Milton 

Keynes

MK: Smart is a large collaborative initiative, partly funded by 

HEFCE (the Higher Education Funding Council for England) and led 

by The Open University, which will develop innovative solutions to 

support economic growth in Milton Keynes. Central to the project 

is the creation of a state-of-the-art ‘MK Data Hub’ which will 

support the acquisition and management of vast amounts of data 

relevant to city systems from a variety of data sources. These will 

include data about energy and water consumption, transport data, 

data acquired through satellite technology, social and economic 

datasets, and crowdsourced data from social media or specialized 

apps. 

Catapult 

Driverless 

Vehicle Project, 

UK245

Innovate UK Intelligent Mobility project using self-driving technologies for 

people and goods movement.

Smart Nation, 

Singapore246

Programme 

Office in the 

Prime Minister's 

Office

The Smart Nation initiative adopts a people-centric approach by 

rallying citizens, industries, research institutions, and the 

government to co-create innovative solutions. Major applications 

of the Smart Nation include Smart Mobility and Smart Living.

 242 See: www.sparktherise.com/home. 243 See: songdoibd.com. 244See: www.mksmart.org. 245 See: ts.catapult.org.uk. 246 See: www.pmo.gov.sg/smartnation.
Technology and the Future of Cities

72

Lee Kuan Yew 

Centre for 

Livable Cities,

Singapore247

Singapore 

University of 

Technology and 

Design

The Lee Kuan Yew Centre for Innovative Cities (LKY CIC) at the 

Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) focuses on 

the integrated use of technology, design and policy to study 

solutions for cities. The LKY CIC works with architects, designers, 

engineers, social scientists, and urban planners to understand the 

complex and critical issues of urbanisation, and to explore 

sustainable and innovative urban solutions.

Singapore-MIT 

Alliance for 

Research and 

Technology 

(SMART), 

Singapore248

MIT, 

Government of 

Singapore

The Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) 

is a major research enterprise established by the Massachusetts 

Institute of Technology (MIT) in partnership with the National 

Research Foundation of Singapore (NRF) in 2007. Research areas 

include: BioSystems and Micromechanics, Environmental Sensing 

and Modeling,Infectious Diseases, Future Urban Mobility, and Low 

Energy Electronic Systems.

Kista Science 

City, 

Stockholm, 

Sweden249

Krista Science 

City AB

Kista Science City is a creative melting pot in Stockholm where 

companies, researchers and students collaborate in order to 

develop and grow. The foremost sector in Kista is ICT (Information 

and Communication Technology). Kista Science City AB is a whollyowned subsidiary of the Electrum Foundation and an operative, 

non-profit organisation. The goal is to make Kista Science City a 

place where people and business can continue to develop. Strong 

cooperation between business, academia and the public sector is 

encouraged in order to ensure continued growth in Kista Science 

City.

Smart City at 

TAF (Taiwan Air 

Force), Taipei, 

Taiwan250

Office of the

Premier of 

Taiwan, MIT 

Media Lab

Collaboration between the Office of the Premier of Taiwan and the 

MIT Media Lab to develop Living Lab experiments at the former 

Taiwan Air Force (TAF) base in central Taipei. Experiments include 

low-speed, self-driving vehicles as well as urban innovation 

incubators.

 247 See: lkycic.sutd.edu.sg. 248 See: smart.mit.edu. 249 See: international.stockholm.se/city-development/the-smart-city. 250 See: www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/business/2016/01/11/455759/MIT-team.htm. 
Technology and the Future of Cities

73

Appendix E. Tools for Urban Development Districts 

City dashboards that utilize data feeds from open and closed sources have become increasingly common within 

city governments. Mayors use them as a barometer of urban performance across many dimensions including 

levels of congestion, pollution, crime, noise, waste, and even pothole repairs. Although some are open source 

and accessible to anyone with an Internet connection, these tools are typically designed for experts, are often 

one off solutions, utilize only low-resolution data, and do not fully utilize standards to enable scaling. Cities 

attempting to regenerate neighborhoods have begun to invest in Innovation Districts, in some cases empowered 

with special economic zone status. This presents a new opportunity for cities to leverage urban data (e.g.,

through the City Web) to create a new set of tools that can be applied to Urban Development Districts (UDDs) to 

maximize their benefit. The CityScope project developed by the City Science Initiative at MIT Media Lab is a 

data-driven, interactive, tangible, 3D urban observatory and urban decision support system (DSS) designed to 

engage non-expert stakeholders for city development.

As a three-dimensional urban observatory the CityScope combines physical scale models (made of LEGO bricks) 

and 3D projections of urban digital data to form a hybrid physical-virtual reality platform that enables multiple 

stakeholders to engage in urban decision-making. The CityScope has two modes of interaction. The first is 

passive observation and the second is active, participatory planning. In observation mode, the CityScope 

visualizes urban data sets, real-time traffic flows, and social media as well as simulated data such as energy 

consumption or solar access, so that the users can toggle between information layers (see Figure 1). This allows 

users of the CityScope to identify potential challenges and opportunities when optimizing existing urban 

systems. 

Figure 1: CityScope with satellite data, Twitter user activity, wind flow simulation, and mobility 

networks (clockwise starting from upper left).
Technology and the Future of Cities

74

In active mode, the CityScope allows users to physically move elements of the platform (such as buildings or 

roads) to simulate alternative urban outcomes. For example, if a user moves buildings onto an empty site, then 

the CityScope will visualize the corresponding increase in the population density and the effects on traffic, 

energy use, and the demand on city services (see Figure 2).

Figure 2: CityScope Interactive platform

Working with the City of Boston and the Barr Foundation, the Media Lab customized the CityScope to address 

the problems of transportation access in the historically disadvantaged neighborhood of Dudley Square in 

Roxbury, Massachusetts. The project was built upon a previous study conducted by Barr on the deployment of 

new Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) lines for the City of Boston, including a new line that would intersect through 

Dudley Square. BRT systems typically cost a fraction (approximately one-tenth) of subway lines and comparable 

throughput efficiencies of 50-60%. The introduction of BRT would vastly improve commute times, job access, 

and the overall quality of life for Roxbury residents, although a dedicated lane would need to be created in order 

to maximize these benefits. A tool was needed to engage transportation planners, city officials, transit agencies, 

and most importantly the citizens themselves that would allow the community to co-create a new 

transportation system while understanding all of the trade-offs. 

BRT systems operate efficiently because dedicated lanes provide congestion-free access and travel priority to 

the riders of mass transit; they displace regular travel lanes (for private cars and trucks) thus increasing travel 

times for automobiles. BRT systems also utilize enclosed pre-pay stations, which allow for improved boarding 

and disembarking times. These stations are also elevated, to allow for fast handicap access. These components 

help to reduce the bus-stacking problem (built up delays that bunch up buses). The CityScope developed for 

Dudley Square was divided into three components to address these trade-offs at the regional, neighborhood, 

and street scale. 

The CityScope, at the regional scale, allows users to enter points of interest (home, work, shopping, etc.) and to 

compare their commute under today’s transit system and what it would be with the new BRT line (see Figure 3). 

It also allows participants to visualize increased job and housing access. At the neighborhood scale, users were 

able to visualize the impact of new stations (location, walking distance), dedicate lane routing, and capital and 

operational costs (Figure 4). Finally, the street scale CityScope allowed users to visualize the trade-offs between 

standard bus systems, improved bus systems, and gold-standard BRT systems including boarding times, total 

commute times, parking spaces eliminated, travel time for automobiles, etc. (also Figure 4). This set of new 

tools was designed to work in concert with key stakeholders from the community, non-governmental 

organizations, government, and planners to engage in constructive discussion, and to encourage participation 
Technology and the Future of Cities

75

through new technology. By developing an understanding of BRT concepts, trade-offs, and impacts, users can 

use these tools to design their own proposals and thus contribute their own ideas for future scenario planning. 

Figure 3: CityScope at the regional scale (left) and neighborhood (right)

Figure 4: CityScope at the neighborhood scale interaction (left) and street scale (right)
Technology and the Future of Cities

76

Appendix F. A Vision for Older Adults in Cities

Most developed nations have an aging population, a combination of greater life expectancy and lower fertility 

rates. Globally, the number of individuals over 60 is expected to more than double as soon as 2050, to more 

than two billion. The majority of those will live in cities. 

Many people see this as a gloomy policy challenge, leading inevitably to “debt, disease and despair” in the 

words of Paul Irving, of the Milken Institute. But in the same article, focused on the “Action Plan for Successful 

Aging” in Singapore, he proposes an alternative viewpoint, paraphrased as follows: Increasing life span can be a 

positive force for economic and social opportunity, enhanced cohesion and intergenerational harmony. Older 

adults represent a massive human capital asset waiting for a call to action, and a growing consumer market. We 

need to maximize the promise of disease prevention and wellness to extend health span and lessen the impact 

of disability on productivity and quality of life. Technology can help us do this, and if we do the longevity 

dividend confers abundant possibilities.

Cities can provide the ideal environment to make good on this more optimistic promise of successful aging, for 

individuals and for society, as well as providing the supports and comforts people need at the end the life. The 

same factors that can make the city of the future more green, mobile, and connected or inclusive can combine 

to make the city a good place for older people. 

Cities can be very attractive places to live one’s older years. Cities in their current form ideally can offer rich 

cultural environments, easier transportation, availability of delivery services, and opportunities to develop new 

as well as ongoing and enriching social networks, such as through senior centers, cultural organizations and 

religious communities. Social interaction has been shown to be a key determinant of maintaining cognitive and 

functional heath.

As a result of these factors, many cities are experiencing an influx of empty nesters, who are downsizing and 

choosing the convenience of urban living. Other cities already have large numbers of older people who are 

aging in place, which can create “naturally occurring retirement communities.” Cities offer the population 

density and efficiencies of scale that support successful aging.

But it could be so much better, enhanced by the policies driving greener, mobile, and connected cities. 

Green

Older people are vulnerable to environmental pollutants, especially airborne particulates. Respiratory 

conditions, such as chronic obstructive lung disease, are common for this population, and exacerbations can 

lead to disability, limited ability to be outside and to exercise, and avoidable hospitalizations. All of those lead to 

accelerated frailty and isolation. The environmental conditions for cities can be improved by redesigning the 

built environment. Ideal built environments can encourage physical activity for everyone, which also will benefit 

elders as walking is an excellent form of exercise, with demonstrated impact on vitality, mood, sleep, strength, 

as well as cognitive function. Furthermore, the built environment can encourage intergenerational interactions, 

more vibrant communities, and more active engagement for older people, even those with some degree of 

disability. 
Technology and the Future of Cities

77

Mobile

Many older adults have diminishing abilities to drive, and having affordable alternatives allows them to maintain 

their independence. For many older people, mobility is further limited by physical or medical conditions. In 

cities today, buses, light rail, subways, and—for those who can afford it—taxis are options when driving is no 

longer an option. Older people in urban areas generally have many more options than for people living in 

suburbia. Walkable neighborhoods also can allow people to get around without driving, especially if those 

neighborhoods are intergenerational, inclusive of opportunities for intellectual and social engagement, free of 

crime and have option for people to easily access transportation.

An age-friendly city of the future would have additional transportation options. Autonomous vehicles could be 

summoned through mobile devices and tablets, thereby safely and inexpensively transporting people. Shared 

rides could be exchanged through online platforms that would also provide social connectedness. And more 

mass-transit options could be available with real-time arrival technology (so that people do not have to wait in 

the cold or heat). 

As people live longer, some will want—and others will need—to continue gainful employment. Mobility gives an 

older person more options for flexible work, inside or outside the home, contributing to one’s sense of self and 

to the economy at the same time. It also gives employers more ability to hire older workers on flexible time 

schedules with workable transportation arrangements.

Connected

Older adults benefit from social engagement as they age, which can help them maintain cognitive capacities and 

prevent depression, a significant (30% prevalence in older adults) and debilitating disorder that is both 

preventable and treatable. The American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) studies demonstrate that selfreported loneliness is extremely common and predictive of higher rates of illness and hospital use. Isolation is a 

problem as most older people in the United States do not live in close proximity to family members. Internetmediated communications, health monitoring, and easy sharing of experiences strengthen families, create 

opportunities for interaction with others, and allow the older persons to continue to live independently while 

being in close touch with children and grandchildren.

In the city of the future, access to broadband and Internet-mediated activity would be widely available. Cities 

would leverage this by offering easy access to training and technology trouble shooting. This could be done with 

volunteers from high schools, who would also strengthen the intergenerational connections. But some 

innovative cities have engaged tech-savvy elders who volunteer their time or are paid for providing a public 

service. Connectedness can be expanded by virtual senior centers such as New York City’s Older Adults 

Technology Services (OATS) that can connect adults to cultural attractions and other nearby adults, training for 

older adults in computer skills so they can take greater advantage of online services, and internet-mediated 

services that allow them to identify volunteer opportunities.251

Health care services can be offered through telehealth and telemedicine. This means health care will be 

seamlessly available through Skype-like services, which will minimize unnecessary transportation and allow 

more time for social or employment related activities. Easy access to an answer to questions or concerns can 

also help identify a medical problem that needs attention, such as reassuring someone that he or she does not 

 251 See: oats.org.
Technology and the Future of Cities

78

need immediate medical attention. Remote monitoring technologies can watch for falls (and assess fall risk), 

eating and sleeping habits, and other health related factors. These can can be unobtrusive, respect privacy and 

permission requirements, and provide important predictive information to enhance safety.

Summary

Many U.S. cities are seeking to become age-friendly, with a global movement organized by the World Health 

Organization (WHO). The New York Academy of Medicine and AARP are organizing communities across the 

United States. These cities range from New York City to Macon, Georgia to Des Moines, Iowa to Portland, 

Oregon. Most of the innovations of age-friendly cities have not focused on technology, but have focused on 

community resources, built environments, and public programs. The lessons learned by these cities can be 

spread more broadly with technology innovations that support green, fluid, and connected cities.

As one noted gerontologist said, a society that is good for elders is a society that is good for everyone. 

Accordingly, improving cities for older adults will benefit not just older adults but all people that live and work 

there.
Technology and the Future of Cities

79

Appendix G. Additional Experts Providing Input

Andrew Abrams

Chief 

Transportation Branch 

Office of Management and Budget

Elizabeth Cocke

Director

Affordable Housing 

Research and Technology Division

Department of Housing and Urban 

Development 

Rohit Aggarwala

Professor 

School of International and Public Affairs

Columbia University

Principal at Bloomberg Associates

Daniel Correa

Senior Advisor for Innovation Policy

Office of Science and Technology Policy

Jose M. Baptista

Vice President, Platform Services Operations

100 Resilient Cities

Rockefeller Foundation

Joseph Coughlin

Director

MIT AgeLab

Eran Ben-Joseph

Professor and Department Head

Department of Urban Studies and Planning

MIT 

Matthew Dalbey

Office Director

Office of Sustainable Communities

Environmental Protection Agency 

Austin Brown

Senior Policy Analyst for Energy R&D

Office of Science and Technology Policy

Ankur Datta

Senior Policy Advisory 

Department of Treasury 

Kevin Bush

Senior Analyst 

Office of Public and Indian Housing

Department of Housing and Urban 

Development 

Kevin Dopart

Program Manager

Connected Vehicle Safety and Automation

Department of Transportation

Nicholas Chim

Co-Founder

Flux

Mark Dowd

Deputy Assistant Secretary for Research and 

Technology

Senior Advisor to the Secretary 

Department of Transportation

Peter Chipman 

Senior Sustainability Officer

Office of Federal Sustainability 

Council of Environmental Quality 

Linda Doyle

Intelligent Transportation Systems Joint 

Program Office

Department of Transportation 
Technology and the Future of Cities

80

Kerry Duggan

Assistant Director for Policy

Office of the Vice President

Maggie Goodrich

Chief Information Officer

Public Safety 

Los Angeles Police Department and Los 

Angeles Fire Department 

Michelle Enger

Chief 

Housing Branch

Office of Management and Budget

Christopher Greer

Director 

Smart Grid and Cyber-Physical Systems 

Program Office

National Coordinator for Smart Grid 

Interoperability 

National Institute of Standards and Technology

Michael Flowers

Urban Science Fellow

Center for Urban Science and Progress

New York University

Richard Gunn

Chief Executive Officer

Project Frog

Andrey Fradkin

Postdoctoral Fellow

National Bureau of Economic Research

Jonathan Hall

Head of Policy Research

Uber Technologies

Salin Geevarghese

Deputy Assistant Secretary for International 

and Philanthropic Innovation 

Department of Housing and Urban 

Development 

Jed Hermann

Senior Advisor to the CEO

Corporation for National and Community 

Services

Erwin Gianchandani

Acting Deputy Assistant Director

Computer and Information Science and 

Engineering Directorate

National Science Foundation

Peter Hirshberg

Chairman

City Innovate Foundation

Stacey Gillett

Government Innovation

What Works Cities Initiative

Bloomberg Philanthropies

Kent Hiteshew

Director

Office of State and Local Finance

Department of Treasury 

Edward Glaeser

Fred Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics

Department of Economics

Harvard University 

Michael Holland

Chief of Staff

Center for Urban Science and Progress

New York University
Technology and the Future of Cities

81

Scot Horst

Chief Product Officer

U.S. Green Building council

Vinod Khosla

Founder

Khosla Ventures

Maggie Hsu

Advisor

Downtown Project

Constantine Kontokosta

Deputy Director, Academics

Assistant Professor of Urban Informatics

Center for Urban Science and Progress

New York University

Calvin Johnson 

Deputy Assistant Secretary

Office of Research, Evaluation, and Monitoring 

Department of Housing and Urban 

Development 

Khee Poh Lam

Program Director 

Consortium for Building Energy Innovation

Carnegie Mellon University

Mark Johnson 

Director

Advanced Manufacturing Office

Department of Energy 

Hans Larsen

Former Director

Department of Transportation

City of San Jose

Courtney Jones

Special Assistant

Office of Policy Development and Research 

Department of Housing and Urban 

Development 

Kent Larson

Principal Research Scientist 

MIT Media Lab

Lucy Jones

Science Advisor for Risk Reduction

U.S. Geological Survey 

Special Advisor to the Mayor of Los Angeles on 

Resilience 

Jonathan Levin

Holbrook Working Professor of Price Theory

Department of Economics

Stanford University

Marcia Kadanoff

Chief Strategy Officer

City innovate Foundation

Benjamin Levine 

Interim Director

MetroLab Network

Ian Kalin

Chief Data Officer

Department of Commerce

Jonathan Levy

Deputy Chief of Staff

Department of Energy

Richard Kauffman 

Senior Advisor to the Secretary of Energy 

Department of Energy 

Nathaniel Loewentheil

Senior Policy Advisor

National Economic Council

Clifton Kellogg

Executive Director

Detroit Working Group

Office of Management and Budget

John MacWilliams

Associate Deputy Secretary 

Department of Energy
Technology and the Future of Cities

82

Celinda Marsh 

Program Examiner

Science and Space Branch

Office of Management and Budget 

Timothy Papandreou

Director 

Office of Innovation

San Francisco Municipal Transportation 

Agency

Tara McGuinness

Senior Advisor

Directors Office

Office of Management and Budget

DJ Patil

Chief Data Scientist

Office of Science and Technology Policy 

Matthew McKenna

Advisor

United States Department of Agriculture

Aristides Patrinos

Deputy Director for Research

Center for Urban Science and Progress

New York University 

Carlos Monje

Acting Under Secretary of Transportation for 

Policy 

Assistant Secretary for Transportation Policy

Department of Transportation

Robert Pepper

Vice President

Global Technology Policy 

Cisco Systems, Inc.

Daniel Morgan

Chief Data Officer

Department of Transportation 

Marcia Pincus

Program Manager

Environment (AERIS) and ITS evaluation

Department of Transportation

Jayne Morrow

Former Executive Director

National Science and Technology Council 

Office of Science and Technology Policy

Balaji Prabhakar

Chief Scientist and Co-Founder

Urban Engines 

Professor of Computer Science and Electrical 

Engineering

Stanford University 

Katherine O’Regan

Assistant Secretary for Policy Development and 

Research

Department of Housing and Urban 

Development 

Seleta Reynolds

General Manager 

Los Angeles Department of Transportation

Franklin Orr

Under Secretary for Science and Energy 

Department of Energy 

Sokwoo Rhee

Associate Director

Cyber-Physical Systems Program

National Institute of Standards and Technology
Technology and the Future of Cities

83

Andrew Right

Executive Director

Build America Transportation Investment 

Center

Department of Transportation

Joel Scheraga

Senior Advisor for Climate Adaptation

Office of Policy

Environmental Protection Agency 

Caroline Rodier

Associate Director

Urban Land Use and Transportation Center

University of California, Davis

Tarak Shah

Senior Advisor to the Under Secretary for 

Science and Energy

Department of Energy 

Paul Romer

Professor of Economics

Director

The Urbanization Project

New York University

Egon Smith

Managing Director

Intelligent Transportation System

Joint Program Office

Department of Transportation 

Amir Roth 

Technology Manager

Building Technologies Office

Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy

Department of Energy 

Jeffrey Brian Straubel

Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer

Tesla Motors

Brent Ryan 

Associate Professor

Urban Planning Program

MIT

Arun Sundararajan 

Professor of Information, Operations and 

Management Sciences

Leonard N. Stern School of Business 

New York University

Kamran Saddique

Chief Executive Officer

City Innovate Foundation

Luke Tate

Special Assistant to the President for Economic 

Mobility 

White House Domestic Policy Council

Janette Sadik-Khan

Principal

Transportation

Bloomberg Associates

Sebastian Thrun

Research Professor

Stanford University 

Robert Sampson

Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences 

Director 

Boston Area Research Initiative 

Harvard University 

Harriet Tregoning

Principal Deputy Assistant Security

Office of Community Planning and 

Development Resilience

Department of Housing of Urban Development

Katy Sartorius

Special Advisor

Department of Energy 

Christopher Urmson

Director

Self-Driving Cars

X 
Technology and the Future of Cities

84

Aden Van Noppen 

Advisor to the Chief Technology Officer

Office of Science and Technology Policy

Brian Worth 

Federal Public Policy Manager 

Uber

Sarah Wartell

President 

Urban Institute

Elizabeth Yee

Vice President, Strategic Partnerships and 

Solutions

100 Resilient Cities

Rockefeller Foundation

Geoffrey West

Distinguished Professor and Past President 

Santa Fe Institute

David Yeh 

Consultant

Performance and Personnel Management 

Division

Office of Management and Budget

John Williams

Director of Innovation and Technology 

Office of Innovation and Technology 

Small Business Administration

Corinna Zarek

Senior Advisor to the Chief Technology Officer 

for Open government

Office of Science and Technology Policy 

Sir Alan Wilson

Professor of Urban and Regional Systems

Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis

University College London

Daniel Zarrilli

Director

Mayor’s office of Recovery and Resiliency

Mayor’s office of Sustainability

New York City

Viktoria Gisladottir

PCAST Spring 2015 Intern

Lindsay Gorman

PCAST Fall 2014 Intern

Zeyi Lin

PCAST Fall 2015 Intern

Carlton Reeves

PCAST Summer 2015 Intern

Jonathan Gheur

Principal

Signature Creative

President’s Council of Advisors on Science and 

Technology (PCAST) 

www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/pcast