Urban Technology at University of Michigan week 84
Interview with the Urbanism Club
Welcome to March, and to a different world. It’s hard to focus on the future of cities when the present includes unprovoked attacks on Ukraine, its cities, and its people unfolding in real time. We’ve been following events via the Guardian and Janes for detailed coverage. The reality of contemporary war is that, in addition to armaments, it’s a battle of infrastructures digital and physical, financial and social. Watching the news for even just a few minutes reveals questions of urban technology, but when I catch myself slipping into a detached, analytical frame of mind, I pull myself back to the bloody reality of the moment. We will not respond to these current events until peace is restored. There’s no other perspective that matters.
This week, a more hopeful exercise is what we have for you. The discussion below is an introduction to two students who are part of the University of Michigan’s Urbanism Club and their take on peacetime cities.
💬 Hello! This is the newsletter of the Urban Technology program at University of Michigan, in which we explore the ways that technology can be harnessed to nurture and improve urban life. If you’re new here, try this 90 second video introduction to our degree program.
⚡️ ANNOUNCEMENTS ⚡️
🏙 When the NUMTOTs get serious
Recently I gave a talk on smart cities at the invitation of the U-M Urbanism Club. Assembled in the basement of Angell Hall, we talked about smart cities dragged smart cities and then imagined another way into the question of technology in urban environments. If smartness is a thing we prefer in people rather than things, how does a digital and connected city help humans learn? What are the feedback loops that help tomorrow’s Ann Arbor be better than today’s? How are decisions made about the future of the city, and how can technology be used to create more opportunities for urban residents to have real choices about the ways in which they live together? After the talk we found time to discuss their views as emerging urbanists, and I left the discussion inspired by their excitement and priorities.
BRYAN BOYER: What's your year, major, and hometown?
SHANE GUENTHER: I’m a junior majoring in civil engineering with a focus in community policy and planning. I’m from Birmingham, Michigan.
NICOLE PLANKEN: I am a junior studying architecture and minoring in the environment. Architecture and environment go together when thinking about built communities, so that's what drew me to urbanism and cities. I grew up on Long Island and went into Manhattan all the time.
BRYAN: Why an Urbanism Club?
SHANE: In the winter of 2021, I realized that the University of Michigan did not offer a path for undergraduate students interested in cities and urban policy to pursue these topics, so I founded the Urbanism Club with the goal of facilitating interest in the development and management of cities. The wide range of academic backgrounds in the club has been encouraging, as our members come from almost 20 different majors.
NICOLE: We have about 25 people from different perspectives coming to all the meetings. I think a lot of people have a shared interest in cities, technology, and innovation, and also the cultural aspects of cities. There's just a lot of interest and people have a lot to say.
BRYAN: What are the hopes for the club?
SHANE: At the most basic level, I want the Urbanism Club to be a gathering point for students who are passionate about urban areas and what makes them thrive. Building off that, we aim to organize tangible actions to promote policies that improve the vitality of cities, such as advocacy, volunteering, and working with local organizations on current issues.
NICOLE: When originally it was founded, Shane and Hazel [Magoon] wanted a place to talk about urbanism and cities and development, so they invited guest speakers, and we still plan on having guest speakers because people are so interested. A lot of my friends come to the meetings and tell me they love learning about these topics, but if you’re not majoring in something like architecture, urban planning, or civil engineering, it’s not at the forefront of your mind. Some of my friends in the School of Information or in computer science come and say “this is the most interesting thing,” especially when we’re talking about smart cities and things like that.
It's great to learn from experts who have experience and can teach us things we wouldn't have been able to talk about on our own. Those guest speakers spark conversations: people will stay afterward to talk about what we just learned and how it applies to our majors or our lives, and how we see it in the real world. It’s all so relevant.
BRYAN: What makes a good city?
NICOLE: I think a good city has everything that its inhabitants would need within walking distance. It has reliable public transportation that gets you from point A to point B regardless of your abilities or your income. Everyone in the community can get everywhere they need to go, and everything is nearby. I lived in Manhattan this past summer, and I didn't leave Manhattan once—I didn't have a car, I just took the subway everywhere and it was the easiest thing in the world. It’s so walkable and you don't have to go far for anything you really need.
I also think safety is really important. So if people are comfortable—if it's a community space where you're not scared or lost, I think that makes a good city.
SHANE: Above all else, a city requires sufficient density to thrive. To paraphrase Edward Glaeser’s The Triumph of the City (the book that ignited my own passion for cities), density allows for the fixed cost of infrastructure, restaurants, and other attractions to be spread over a larger population. High density is the reason that the vast majority of everyone’s favorite shops, museums, art centers, concert venues, and other forms of entertainment are found in dense cities rather than the countryside or suburbs. Density naturally leads to walkability, and countless studies have shown that increases in walkability lead to increased economic activity, mental and emotional health, and reduced carbon emissions.
BRYAN: Are you interested in technology? Is it something that's meaningful to you?
NICOLE: A lot of people involved in the Urbanism Club are super tech savvy – half of the club are information and computer science students, people that are really interested in it. To me, cities and technology both have similar goals of making things accessible and getting people what they need instantly. I think technology is an essential component in cities, and it's an inseparable part of our lives.
SHANE: The potential benefits from the use of new technology and methods of collecting data, such as the University of Michigan’s Real-Time Water Systems Lab creating smart and adaptable water infrastructure, are plentiful [editor’s note: discussed in a previous newsletter]. I would say I am more interested in technology’s ability to optimize infrastructure and collect data to guide policy and planning.
BRYAN: What single urban issue is most important to you right now?
NICOLE: For me it's accessibility. A city can't function if only certain people can get where they want to go. Every member of the community has to have a means of access. Safe public transportation to get around is so important to the efficiency and sustainability of a city. It should also be affordable. That requires an awareness of who is in that urban environment. Who are you serving? And how are they going to get where they need to go? I think lawmakers should be more aware of that. A city has every type of person, so you can't just have one person's needs met.
SHANE: As I mentioned, density is the most important factor in determining a city’s success, so America’s current housing crisis is simultaneously an urban vitality crisis. Thankfully, there exists a simple solution: build. There are a plethora of reasons why the nation’s demand for housing hasn’t resulted in a corresponding increase in construction—without venturing too far into the policy weeds, our cities have numerous excessive and illogical regulations that are constricting the market’s ability to build the amount of housing our country needs. Eliminating or at least loosening this mess of regulations would go a long way toward providing the population with affordable housing. Thankfully, a handful of states and cities are leading the way. Oregon, Minneapolis, and Berkeley have recently eliminated single-family zoning, and after a years-long struggle, California passed two bills in September 2021 that will be hugely beneficial to their own housing shortfall of 3.5 million units. This legislation is not a full solution, but it is a welcome step in the right direction.
BRYAN: What is your favorite city, and why?
NICOLE: My favorite city has to be New York City. I'm biased, but I just love its culture. There's every type of person. There's nature, there’s parks, there's trees. There's public transportation. If you're able to take the subway you can get pretty much anywhere you need to go. It's a really accessible, walkable, beautiful city.
SHANE: The massive undertaking in Paris to add green space, eliminate on-street parking, convert hundreds of miles of roads to protected bike lanes, ban most cars from the city center, and add an enormous amount of green space is an incredible example of what can be done with proper leadership and policy. Of the cities I have personally spent time in, Chicago is currently my favorite. With an extremely affordable housing market, a reliable public transit system that eliminates the need for a car and allows for density, plenty of green space, and numerous restaurants and concert venues, it’s easy to see why it is among the few non-coastal metros that compete with the coastal super-cities.
Links
🧑🎓 Solving Public Problems looks to be an interesting online course led by friends at The GovLab.
🛵 “Noise reduces the lifespan of a Parisian by 9 months,” and camera-equipped sensors aim to change that.
🚶 Walking actual streets on a regular basis should be a requirement of all Dept. of Transportation jobs.
☄️ What is a metalabel? How will a metalabel help the creator economy exit “single player mode”?
🌏 Urban.US, the first (?) and most notable urban tech VC fund, is changing its name and embracing a systems-level approach. Candid thoughts here on the transition. Our take: urban tech without a ‘mission’ is impossible. You’re either for widespread decarbonization, justice, health, or you’re not. Great to see them be so direct about it.
These weeks: Pulling together some cool admissions materials. Interviews, interviews, interviews for teaching positions. Planning trips to Toledo, Grand Rapids, and Chicago for the summer. Worrying about people we’ve never met, in a country we’ve never been to, bombarded for reasons we do not understand. 🏃