Civic engagement
Collab: A new digital tool for community participation
Sidewalk Labs and Digital Public Square teamed up on a new prototype to help people shape their communities.
5 May
Sidewalk Talk
Transportation
Four principles for the future of city streets
Cities can leverage design and technology to re-think our streets for pedestrians, bikes, and transit.
4 Apr
public realm
How can we bring transparency to urban tech? These icons are a first step.
Our “Digital Transparency in the Public Realm” project brought people around the world together to co-create a visual language to demystify the tech in cities.
4 Apr
Blog Post
The macro impact of micro-climates
A Sidewalk Talk Q&A with Goncalo Pedro about shaping our buildings and public spaces to make a more comfortable public realm.
9 Sep
Features
Bringing Up Baby … Downtown
To keep families, more North American cities are turning to a suite of planning and design innovations, from play space to stroller ramps to adventure parks.
7 Jul
Features
The secrets to a lasting mixed-income neighborhood
Like many global cities, Toronto has become increasingly segregated into wealthy enclaves and boroughs of poverty. But one area that bucked the trend offers lessons for the future.
6 Jun
Model Lab
Introducing Replica, a next-generation urban planning tool
De-identified location data can help answer key transportation questions — from a regional level all the way down to a city block.
4 Apr
15 Innovations That Shaped the City
GTFS: The Promise of Data-Driven Public Transit
Standardized transit data is a harbinger of a future where the fastest way to get around doesn’t require a private car.
11 Nov
Blog Post
Making the most of city parks and the public realm means learning more about how people use them.
Making the most of city parks and the public realm means learning more about how people use them.
6 Jun
Open-Source Tool
A first step toward creating a digital planning laboratory is populating it
Introducing Doppelgänger, Model Lab’s open-source population synthesizer.
6 Jun
MAP DEMO
How the L train shutdown will impact your commute
Our NYC Transit Explorer shows how long it takes to get anywhere in the city by bus or subway. Even during L-mageddon.
2 Feb
GUEST POST
The transformative potential of real-time transportation coordination
By Kevin Webb
1 Jan
Blog Post
The benefits of turning housing construction into housing production
Much residential housing is still built the same way it was 50 years ago, despite emerging technologies that can help reduce costs and increase affordability.
12 Dec
Blog Post
Improving urban mobility starts with better travel data
New digital tools can help us gain better insights into how people move around cities, and ask better questions about what we want our transportation systems to achieve.
12 Dec
BLOG POST
Circling for parking is terrible for cities. Let’s put an end to it.
By connecting drivers to spaces at the start of a trip, tech can help fight the curse of cruising.
9 Sep
FEATURE
The First Principles of Urbanism: Part II
Digital technology can be good or bad for cities. Which way it goes depends on how well technologists and urbanists work together.
9 Sep
FEATURE
The First Principles of Urbanism: Part I
Before we can predict how technology might shape cities, we have to identify the essential efficiencies — and costs — of urban environments.
9 Sep
Hackathons
Sidewalk held a two-day midsummer engineering hackathon. Here’s what we built.
A park meet-up router, a reference for urban designers, and a yellow cab counter.
9 Sep
Op-Ed
Building urban tech tools starts with listening to cities
The conversations we had about the future of mobility during the DOT Smart City Challenge were just the beginning of a longer collaboration.
6 Jun
BLOG POST
The great innovative power of crowded streets
The more connected a city, physically and digitally, the more inventive it becomes.
5 May