Walkspan joins Living Lab Program to Pilot Smart City Technologies
The Downtown Brooklyn Partnership (DBP) announced Walkspan’s participation in their Living Lab Program, on Aug. 25. The program solves urban challenges through smart city technologies. Walkspan is a location intelligence technology firm dedicated to finding solutions to enhance the experience of walking, with highly detailed proprietary data.
Joining us in DBP’s Living Lab initiative are two other organizations: Aclima, which measures and analyze air pollution, and the Center for Urban Science and Progress of NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering, which studies traffic and space. The collaboration will use downtown Brooklyn as a testing ground for new technologies to improve livability and productivity.
Walkspan’s pilot study covers three adjacent business districts: Metrotech, Fulton Mall, and Court-Livingston-Schermerhorn. These districts are depicted on the map below.
Walkspan’s location intelligence driven technology facilitates the microscale assessment and recommendation system supported by decision filters to identify walkability solutions for downtown Brooklyn. Prime considerations for sidewalk assessment are features identified in extensive literature as important to the experience of walking, namely: sidewalk beauty, utility, safety, comfort, access, vibrance, interest, legibility, and social equity. Walkspan’s findings will be used to support DBP’s planning, operations and beautification program.
A comfort map will serve as the baseline in planning for more outdoor dining—now imperative during COVID-19 times as the risk of infection is higher in indoor spaces with poor ventilation according to health experts. All café types permitted under NYC regulations run along the yellow lines highlighted on the map. Planning and design of more outdoor dining along underutilized permitted sidewalks will ensure greater social distancing and will create a sense of place that generates vibrance, interest, and social engagement. The economic benefits powered by higher utilization of sidewalks will boost local businesses and the real estate market.
There is strong evidence that dense, walkable cities generate wealth. This is according to a 2016 report by Chris Leinberger, leading proponent of walkable urbanism and chair of the Center for Real Estate and Urban Analysis, George Washington University School of Business. He asserts that “all the fancy economic development strategies, such as developing a biomedical cluster, an aerospace cluster, or whatever the current economic development ‘flavor of the month’ might be, do not hold a candle to the power of a great walkable urban place.” Problems in smart city planning rely on information provided by Walkspan methologies.
Walkspan’s data is a foundation for efficient planning of the public realm of smart cities. To quote urban planner and Walkable City author, Jeff Speck:
“Get walkability right and so much of the rest will follow.”