from Hacker News

A Tool Lets Urban Planners See The Potential Impact Of Their Ideas

by joshwa on 9/2/18, 5:33 AM with 24 comments

  • by jalessio on 9/2/18, 6:05 PM

    Surprised to find this on HN this morning! I'm Director of Engineering at UrbanFootprint (https://urbanfootprint.com/), the company featured in the Fast Company article. We provide data and tools for urban planners to assess and compare the impacts of land use and transportation decisions.

    A basic use case is a city updating its General Plan, which would start with a forecast of how much population growth is anticipated / needs to be accommodated. A planner then needs to assess where new residents will live, work, shop, and play. Perhaps even more essential, how are people going to travel between all of these activities? Will the new growth be auto-dependent, transit-focused, walkable? Is any of the existing or planned development in hazard areas such as flood of wildfire? What are the energy and water use impacts of the plans?

    We’re using Python and Postgres/PostGIS on the backend to answer these questions and a React SPA to serve it up and make it interactive in a browser.

    Also, if you happen to live in California, UrbanFootprint is available for free to your city through our California Civic Program (http://info.urbanfootprint.com/california-civic-program) so feel free to nudge them to get in touch ;)

  • by IIAOPSW on 9/2/18, 5:35 PM

    I believe the tool works, but I'm skeptical it will have any impact. There's a lot of "no shit sherlock" development that isn't happening. Building dense near the train station is literally textbook urban planning. It shouldn't take a complex simulation to prove it. The problem I see is that the electorate doesn't work the way the founders imagine.

    >When communities can see comprehensive data about multiple plans for the future, the startup’s founders say, it becomes easier to compare them and reach consensus.

    What actually happens is people like and dislike certain things and will post hoc justify entrenching their preferences in law.

  • by BenRoss001 on 9/4/18, 8:11 PM

    Cities Skylines with the Real Time Mod and Transport Manager President Edition mods added

    Gets pretty close to simulating what cities go through (Foreign Affairs not withstanding) and makes a great tool in communicating to residents and businesses (as the Swedes and Finnish discovered).

  • by HNNewer on 9/3/18, 10:13 AM

    I thought it was about Cities:Skyline, I found the game realistic and helpful for city planning

  • by paulcole on 9/2/18, 6:22 PM

    Sim City?