Rachel Haot is making waves both in government and in the technology community as a whole. New York City’s first chief digital officer is trying to make New York the country’s leading digital city by bringing industry and government together.
A Visualization of NYC’s Frantic Transit Patterns Over 24 Hours
Using data from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, this animation tracks public transportation on a weekday, starting at 4am. Sumus, the Canadian software company behind these visualizations, uses the General Transit Feed Specification data from various cities to create a whole series of videos that you can check out on YouTube. Be sure to watch full screen in 720 HD to see the movement of subways and buses (which appear to be color-coded to match the corresponding lines).
(via theatlantic)
TEDx Tackles the Future of Cities
Cities around the world are constantly sparking new questions: How can we ensure adequate housing for all? How can we live more sustainably? How can we live harmoniously in increasingly multiethnic environments? The questions are almost limitless, and it can be hard for those in the urban field to keep up.
Through the TEDx initiative, where local organizers host TED-style events, the future of the city will become a global conversation on Saturday, Oct. 13. TEDxDumbo is one of more than 60 TEDx chapters around the world organizing a special “City2.0” event that day.
A road map for urban agriculture in NYC | Grist
Although there are 700 urban farms and gardens spread throughout New York City’s five boroughs, urban farming there still feels ad-hoc, somewhat tacked-on in many places. The gains have been slow and future progress isn’t guaranteed.
To boost the long-term prospects of urban farming in the U.S.’s biggest city, theDesign Trust for Public Space and its partner, the Red Hook-based nonprofit Added Value, just launched a new report some three years in the making called “Five Borough Farm: Seeding the Future of Urban Agriculture,” along with a companion website. The project seeks to create a comprehensive “road map” with the goal of helping stakeholders — policymakers, community groups, farmers, and designers — “understand and weigh the benefits” of urban agriculture, while making a compelling case for significantly ramping up local government support for this growing field. Basically, if you’ve been looking for a thorough examination of all the policy aspects of urban farming, this is it.
The MTA’s Bus Time is now live for buses in Staten Island. Powered by technology from two NYC tech companies, Open Plans and Mobile Commons, New Yorkers can track buses in real-time using their computers, smart phones or via SMS.
The Mayor welcomed the news, saying, “ In an increasingly digital world, it’s more important than ever to provide New Yorkers with the 21st Century mass transit system they need and deserve. Today, the MTA took a positive step towards that goal by launching Bus Time in Staten Island – a real-time tracking service that will provide greater convenience and more flexibility to New Yorkers.”
Photo from: openplans.org.
How an Algorithm Helped Arrange the Names on the 9/11 Memorial:
The memorial’s arrangement preserves, for instance, the terrible blow suffered by the investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald. Before the morning of September 11, the firm’s headquarters occupied several floors high in the North Tower of the World Trade Center (WTC). In the first of the terrorist attacks of that day, a hijacked airliner struck the North Tower, just below Cantor’s offices. The firm was devastated; 658 employees died in the attack, along with 46 contractors, food-service workers, consultants and visitors.
Although no heading identifies them as such, the 704 names of those killed at Cantor Fitzgerald appear together on the memorial. Cantor’s loss was so great that its portion of the memorial surrounds almost half of the north pool. Within that grouping, as elsewhere on the memorial, the placement of names also reflects numerous other social and professional connections, thanks to input from families and co-workers and some heavy lifting by a custom-built computer algorithm.
(via Scientific American)
via jtotheizzoe:
(via jtotheizzoe)
Video of Reinvent NYC.GOV hackathon by Rebecca Davis at the New York Daily News
via nycdigital:
New York hires a ‘chief digital officer’
Source: CNET
After a high-profile search that began over six months ago, New York City has hired new media entrepreneur Rachel Sterne as its first “chief digital officer.”
It’s the latest major move made by the administration of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, himself a billionaire entrepreneur, to shove the establishment-heavy Gotham into the 21st century.
Sterne’s job won’t involve wrangling the scores of small tech start-ups that have popped up like mushrooms in the city over the past few years. Rather, her focus will be to help the city government use digital technology to better communicate with residents, work to bring social media and other new tools into municipal agencies, negotiate partnerships, and serve as a representative of the technology community to the government. One early task will be making the city’s official Web site, NYC.gov, more user-friendly and resource intensive.
Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-20029285-36.html#ixzz1By07ax7c
