Episode 13: It started with data-wrangling

In this episode we speak with David Wasserman - Civic Analytics Practice Leader at Alter Planning in Seattle (WA) USA, and Chair of the Technology Division at the American Planning Association. From data ingestion, to political soundbite. From data overload, to digital know how. Join us as we get a first hand glimpse of the changing face of planning practices for place intelligence. David references a range of resources in his interview, including: The APA Technology Division Resource List https://empirical-urbanist.io/ https://altago.com/services/civic-analytics/ Alta Flow Map Example - https://flowmap.altago.site/1PtM0BYQ0Yq0NL-ZGCC9o3yQ6o8hQVrd5IfolMO7Zxwc?v=46.866280,-96.784150,11.99,0,0&a=1&as=1&b=1&bo=75&c=1&ca=1&d=1&fe=1&lt=1&lfm=ALL&col=BluGrn&f=50 Papers of Interest: https://www.planning.org/planning/2020/oct/art-of-learning-by-example/ https://issuu.com/apatransport/docs/2022_sotp/s/16021621 https://www.planning.org/publications/document/9232733/

In this next edition of our Street Lab series we tackle even more change for the public realm and our streets - the introduction of public-area mobile robots (PMR). Thankfully we had Bern Grush from the Urban Robotics Foundation join us to breakdown where this agenda is at, where it is likely to be heading and what it means for our streets. Will we take stock and 'ready' ourselves for this discussion, or react and engage only after we wake up one morning and find we have been napping on the issue?

In our third part of a series exploring the evolving nature of our streets, we head deeper into the world of e-mobility. In this episode Adam sits down with recent Churchill Fellow, Nikki Huddy, who is a decorated planner and advocate for place-based solutions in our communities, particularly regional Australia. Fresh from her reasearch tour of the United States, Nikki shares what she found and learned, and what this might mean for Australia. You can view Nikki's reseach report here.

In this episode we share a recording of a webinar hosting by the life_Enabled team. “Let’s ‘add’ a digital overlay, to the planning we have already done”, seems to be the norm. And this may not be the best outcome for our communities. Where are we at, and what's next for digital infrastructure planning? Our panel exploring the topic includes Catherine Hill from Jacobs,  Jon Obrien from GWI, Heath Gledhill from Aurecon and Ian Hatton from ENE.HUB.

The National League of Cities is an advocacy organisation that has been representing cities in the United States for almost 100 years. With more than 2,700 city members, Joshua Pine - NLC's Program Manager for City Innovation and Data - has his hands full. We checked in with Joshua to hear what's happening on the city innovation front post-pandemic.

In second part of a series exploring the face of our streets, Adam chats with Graham McCabe (Director, Transport Advisory, Urbis) about vehicles space and time. The discussion looked at the physical aspects of this important public space - trends in vehicle size, electrification and the opportunity with reshaping space allocation. And with an additional load mounting in the right-of-way in the form of 5G mmWave technology, the complexity of our streets continues to challenge us. Please note: the quality of the audio in this episode was impacted by an unstable connection.

The purpose of this webinar was to look into how Digital Twin capability can support our aspirations of enhancing our natural landscapes and built environment projects, while ensuring digital technology and data insights provide a supporting and enabling role. Our panel included Clarissa Phillips from Jacobs, Kate Williams from FrontierSI, Todd Lankford from Indara and Yazid Ninsalam from McGregor Coxall.

After a decade in private practice and a decade of imagining better ways for people to work with data together, Lucy Booth went from planner to tech entrepreneur. But as we share in this episode, the planning instincts of a planner are hard wired, and the relentless pursuit of 'solutioning' always remains.

In this episode of the show we explore yet another PlanTech journey, this time from the New South Wales Government. We are joined by James Strutt from the Department of Planning and Environment, who shares the evolution of Land iQ - one of the governments core platforms enabling a range of capabilities that staff can leverage to optimise asset planning processes. James shares views as they related to the business case, use cases and potential scale-up opportunities of the tool.

So, when it comes to measuring place – where are we at? In this webinar we work through answering a range of questions, such as what are the fundamental attributes of place analytics? We also discuss how place data gets analysed, and what can be done with it. The panel exploring this topic included Adam O’Connor from Countculture, James Peet from ENE.HUB, Lucinda Hartley from Neighbourlytics, and Norion Ubechel from Place Intelligence.