Designing with data: Shaping our future cities

Royal Institute of British Architects66 Portland PlaceLondon W1B 1ADT 020 7580 5533www.architecture.com

Arup13 Fitzroy Street,London W1T 4BQ T 020 7636 1531 www.arup.com

Cover imageHeron Tower © Hufton+Crow

Executive summary 2

Introduction 4

Data and design 5

Designing for citizens 6

Experimentation 11

City Analytics 12

Transparency 14

Implications for current practice 15

Smart benefits 16

Policy recommendations 18

Contents

Realtime Rome project MIT SENSEable City Labhttp://senseable.mit.edu/realtimerome/

2 Designing with data: shaping our future cities

Executive summary

The 21st century has seen unprecedentedtechnological advances and an explosion of dataavailable about our built environment and the peoplethat inhabit it. Some industries have already begunreaping the benefits of mining datasets to developinnovative ways of saving money and improvingproducts. Beyond the commercial sector, cityauthorities are beginning to realise the potential of doing the same to improve city managementoperations, to become ‘smart’ cities. However, little hasbeen done to explore the merits of using such data andnew technology for planning and design processes.This is to ensure that we do not say that architectsaren’t already using some form data to inform design.

This paper identifies four main approaches to workingwith data for architects, urban designers and planners:

• using data to help designers meet user needs;

• experimentation and modelling using data;

• analysing data to improve local and national policymaking and implementation;

• and using data to improve transparency to speed up development processes.

Better data, and the volume and speed with which it is now becoming available, affords practitioners newpossibilities to understand people and places moredeeply to inform their design. Data also offers theopportunity to speed up and improve the designprocess itself. These benefits must be captured todeliver urban areas that develop more sustainably and operate more efficiently.

Government action is needed to enable and enhancedesign data collection and analysis to providearchitects, urban designers and planners theinformation they need to create and manage the types of places people will want to live in and thrive.

This report makes the following recommendations to the Government to pave the way to designing with data:

1 There should be better coordination betweengovernment departments to work together to realisea smart future. This will prevent data duplication andhelp identify gaps in data provision to enable thegovernment to develop a more holistic frameworkfor data capture and analysis.

2 As part of its Open Data initiative, the governmentshould model and explore the potential benefits of a digital planning process. Digitising all informationsubmitted for planning and making this dataavailable to the public could unleash economicgrowth and help local authorities better inform their local planning strategies.

3 A joint Government, industry and academic Working Group should oversee the digitisation of planning. The Group should include builtenvironment professionals and academics andshould be facilitated by the Department forCommunities and Local Government and CabinetOffice, along with organisations such as the OpenData Institute and the Future Cities Catapult.

© Thomas Graham/Arup

Fifty years ago, it took a computer the size of a room to perform basic arithmetic calculations. Now a $600device can store the entire world’s music.1 We are in a new age of data. Online, we generate phenomenalamounts of data; on Twitter alone, 340 million tweetsare produced each day. In the physical world, hugequantities of new data about physical space and thesocial behaviour of people in urban spaces is beinggenerated through technologies such as sensors, smart meters, social media, and mobile phones.

The amount of data available about urban areas isincreasing. There are already 30 million networkedsensor nodes in transportation, automotive, industrial,utilities and retail sectors globally and this is set toincrease by 30% per annum.2 Transport for Londoncollects data on passenger movements through itspayment system, the Oyster card, covering 80% of the journeys made on public transport in London. Ourmobile phones relay our locations as we move aroundthe city. We generate data all the time through ourmovements around our cities.

With all this data becoming available, some citygovernments are starting to use data to help plan andmanage their cities more effectively to become ‘smartcities’. Chicago and New York are using data to helpthem tackle a range of city challenges, from identifyingfood deserts to detecting illegal building conversions.The city of Santander in Spain has deployed 12,000sensors measuring air quality, availability of parkingspaces, and light levels to better manage the city and provide services to citizens.3

Meanwhile, social media is making feelings andthoughts about the city explicit. Sentiment analysis of Twitter, Facebook and others, used by companies to find out people’s attitudes towards their productsand services, can also reveal what people are sayingand thinking about places and services.

These new large volumes of data are often termed ‘big’data. The story of big data is one of clever analysis oflarge messy (unstructured) datasets to deduce deeperinsights into our world. Big data is predicted to createhuge value for industries and government over the nextten years: $300bn in value from data for US healthcareand €100bn savings for European governments inoperational efficiencies.4

Within the urban realm, big data has so far been mostlyused by city government for operational purposes: to save money and improve services. However, it hasbeen used rather less for planning and design to date.Research into big data has concentrated on otherindustries such as health, retail and transport. What we see from those industries is that big data has greatpotential to improve design through analytics, bettermatching of products to people’s needs, greater abilityto experiment, and transparency.

Urban designers have used data about places andpeople in their work for a long time. One traditionalsource of data for development proposals has beencensus data, which is fairly static, updated only everyten years. But better data can inform better designdecisions and there is great potential in the volumesand speed with which data is now becoming available.This paper aims to engage urban designers andplanners in the debate about how data is used in ourcities, and make recommendations to Government that will bind better design to the smart cities agenda.

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Introduction

Within the urban realm, big data has sofar been mostly used by city governmentfor operational purposes: to save moneyand improve services. However, it hasbeen used rather less for planning anddesign to date.

Data and design

How could big data on the urban realm be useful forarchitects, urban designers and planners? Drawing onexperience from architecture and other industries,5 wehave identified four ways for designers and planners touse data to improve their work. The first relates directlyto the design process, and the others build upon thisprocess to explore other ways that city data can begenerated and used to create better places.

Designing for citizens: using data to bettermatch user needsNew types of realtime data about how people usepublic spaces and infrastructure could allow a betterunderstanding of user needs and help create spacesthat better meet those needs.

Experimentation: enhanced testing andmodelling through using dataData and modelling tools could allow designers andplanners to save time and potentially money by testingdesigns before they enter the construction process.This could also help identify likely objections, and model solutions, saving time in the planning process.

City analytics: analysing big data to improvepolicy implementation and planningCities have the potential to use the vast amounts ofdata they hold to improve the planning and delivery of services to citizens, by using it to identify andaddress problems.

Transparency: reducing search andprocessing time through sharing dataBy making more data available, the Government is making it easier for designers and planners to get critical information on development sites faster.

This section explains these areas and illustrates the benefits.

© Hufton+Crow

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Designers have used observational data to researchspaces and as input to design for many years. The2003 redesign of Trafalgar Square by Foster andPartners with Space Syntax involved 170 observationpoints and surveys of 27,000 drivers to find out wherethey were coming from and where they were going.6

Now much of that data could be found in other ways.Mobile phones track our movements through the city.Parking sensors, congestion charge zones, Oystercards: all yield valuable data about how and whenpeople are moving around the city. Social mediarecords our thoughts and feelings about places and experiences; for example, London School ofEconomics’ mappiness app lets people share and map when and where they feel happiest.7 We canconsult with more people in more ways.

This creates the opportunity for designers and plannersto create places that are better attuned to the peoplewho use them, by better understanding their needsthrough several ways:

• Understanding how spaces and neighbourhoods are used at different times of day, by different types of people, and in response to different events.

• Understanding complex relationships betweendifferent variables, such as how people respond to traffic, weather, or public events.

• Understanding who users are and what they want:learning about what people are doing in places andwhat they are saying about spaces, as well as beingable to have conversations with more users aboutwhat they want from spaces.

• Help people make sense of spaces, by feeding backinformation to them while they are in those spaces –for example way-finding information.

Designing for citizens

How people use space and how that changesRealtime flows of data about people’s movements areincreasingly common, and formatted correctly, could beinputted into design. For example, TomTom, a leadingsupplier of navigation products, uses the locational dataof 16.7 million anonymous mobile phone users in orderto provide live information about traffic congestion totheir customers.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)Realtime Rome8 project used existing infrastructurefrom Telecom Italia to capture information from themobile operator’s network to create realtimevisualisations to reveal the relationship between cityevents, mobile phone use and people’s movements.Realtime maps like these can improve ourunderstanding of how neighbourhoods are used in the course of a day, how the distribution of buses andtaxis correlates with densities of people, how goodsand services are distributed in the city, or how differentsocial groups, such as tourists and residents, inhabitthe city.

More recently MIT has begun to explore further howinformation can lead to better design for public spaces.For example, their Dynamic Public Spaces project9

experimented with public spaces by using cameras and mobile sensors to capture activity in those publicspaces as it happened, while collecting social mediatraces in realtime. They also changed the design of the square using moveable elements. The digitalobservations helped them understand how peoplemoved through and behaved in the public square, andhow they might react to particular design elements –allowing for analysis and testing of design.

It has become much easier to use tools for observationand for designers to collect project data. The MITproject used low cost cameras and sensors ontemporary mounts. Designers at Arup have been usingapps like the Nike+ pedometer to calculate distancesand speed as part of analysing pedestrian movementsand waiting times in Australian city centres. As wearablecomputing devices like the Nike Fuelband, an activitytracker that is worn on the wrist, and other devicesbecome more prevalent, there will be furtheropportunities to exploit technology and data.

Mappiness London School of Economics’ app lets people share and mapwhen and where they feel happiest. Image: George MacKerron/LondonSchool of Economics. www.mappiness.org.uk

© Hufton+Crow

Realtime Rome project Image depicting average cellphone user distribution in Rome during Madonna’s controversial ‘Live to Tell’ concert on August 62006. The concert took place in Rome’s Olympic Stadium located just three kilometres from the Vatican City, in which Madonna appeared against a mirrored cross wearing scandalous clothing. The peaks in this image represent heightened cellphone use near the Olympic stadium and the Vatican. MIT SENSEableCity Lab http://senseable.mit.edu/realtimerome/

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Case study Collaborative Community Map

It is often difficult for planners to gather knowledge andexpertise from non-technical experts – those who live,work, or otherwise have an interest in the places beingplanned for. As a result, end plans tend to be based on a complex set of assumptions about a given place.Collaborative Community Map offers planners a way toengage with more people than just a select few, whoeither have an abundance of time to meet or a vestedinterest, by allowing people to participate in consultationactivities at a time and place that suits them. Apart fromoffering the possibility to capture views of the silentmajority, the map can also assist project teams inmapping constraints and concerns associated withplanning and design proposals, by enabling stakeholdercomments and their associated locations to bemapped. These can be drawn into a GIS tool foranalysis and visualisation.

A recent example is the Parking Strategy for the City of Subiaco, Perth, Australia. The map was used as aninterface through which residents, workers, studentsand visitors could identify the scale and nature ofparking related issues. This, along with local andinternational best-practice techniques, was used todevelop an interactive strategy for delivering a 10 yearparking management plan. The mapping survey toolwas available online for a month, and it was advertisedvia the council’s website, media, and project materialssent to residents and businesses that explained how to use the online survey. People without access to acomputer could request a hardcopy, which had thesame format as the online survey. Using the sameformat meant that the hardcopy could be transferred tothe online map by council staff enabling the city to havea single database of information.

Results and benefitsThe interactive map helped planners reach a biggerpool of people across a larger geographical scope,including those who did not live directly in the area but still used the facilities in question. It attracted 1,349visits and received 753 comments. Five traditionalcommunity workshops were set up following the onlineconsultation. Planners were able to invite people whoused the collaborative map directly, apart fromadvertising an open invite in the local paper. Thiscontributed to high attendance rates – a total of 57people. Despite the merits online consultation, theworkshops still proved an important participativemethod to reach people without internet access, orwho wished to communicate in person. However, themap enhanced the workshops by enabling planners to follow up on and further develop ideas proposedthrough the online tool.12

What people are thinking and saying aboutspacesIt is also much easier to find out what people thinkabout spaces, which creates new opportunities tomatch design to people’s needs and to improve onexisting designs. For instance, sentiment analysis oftwitter feeds could allow designers to see what peoplecurrently think and say about places. Transport API, atechnology firm, has built a transport sentiment analysismap, which allows people to search for realtime tweetsabout buses and trains in London.10 This could allowbus companies to find out in realtime what people aresaying about their services, or could allow designersand planners to find out what people are saying aboutthe places they are re-designing.

It is also easier to ask people what they want, and evento collaborate with them on design. There are severalnew consultation tools11 which allow for the collectionand analysis of feedback online. This allows designersand planners to have a greater understanding of thepublic given that currently only a particular set of peopletend to be able and interested in attending consultationmeetings. Of course not everyone participates in socialmedia, and not everyone has access to online tools soa combination of approaches is required.

Collaborative Maps Arup Collaborative Community Map City of Subiaco parking consultation.www.collaborativemap.org

Transport APITransportBuzz an interactive transport sentiment analysis map by TransportAPI. http://transportapi.com

© Arup

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Experimentation

Data is enabling experimentation to improve theperformance of city systems and places. More tools are available to professionals and the public toexperiment with scenarios and smart models of realcities. This enables designers and planners to save timeand potentially money by testing designs before theyenter the construction process. Visualisations also help the public and professionals to engage with dataabout their cities and think more deeply about therelationships between place and other variables, suchas movement or air quality. Through this, they can helpidentify likely objections and model solutions, savingtime in planning.

The City of Melbourne, Australia, measures pedestrianmovements using 18 sensors positioned around thecity. This data is used to give the City of Melbourne a better understanding of how people use theseprecincts so they can manage the way they functionand plan for future needs. This project enables thepublic to access that data through an interactivevisualization tool and by downloading the sensor data.16

The Centre for Advanced Spatial Analytics (CASA) atUniversity College London (UCL) in London hasdeveloped a series of city dashboards17 for citiesaround the UK, displaying attributes such as happiness,public transport feeds, or air pollution.

Simulation and parametric design tools have beenaround for a while, but they are getting more powerfuland easier to use. For example, tools like ESRI’sCityEngine allow designers to create 3D GIS modelsusing city data so new designs can be more easilytested and communicated. These tools, and others,further allow designers to generate building layouts,configurations of public space and infrastructure bydefining specific criteria and operational parameters. By using sensor-derived realtime data, differentconditions could be quickly tested and simulatedallowing more time for traditional design. The quality of analysis behind the parameters is key, as are the test assumptions of the model to ensure they areappropriate to the given situation.18

There are more ambitious efforts to produce simulationand predictive models for city regions. The EcologicalSequestration Trust is developing a new open-sourceurban-rural tool to understand how the flow ofresources in a region impacts on its economy, societyand ecology. This allows analysis of current conditions,as well as simulation of future conditions, as input topolicy making and design.

City DashboardUniversity College London’s Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) inLondon has developed a series of city dashboards for cities around the UK,displaying attributes such as happiness, public transport feeds, or airpollution. http://citydashboard.org/london

Making sense of spaceIt is not just about observation, however. Sensors open up new possibilities for practitioners to designexperiences in places. Technology offers new ways of interacting with physical and digital worlds. Themeparks like DisneyWorld have long been aware of theimportance of designing places that could deliver thekind of experiences customers would want to pay for.13

Our experience of cities can be aided and augmentedby digital technologies, whether it be Google Maps orbus information signs.

It is important for designers and planners to recognisethe opportunities for helping people make sense ofpublic space through technology. However, questionsstill remain on how to make information in public spacereadable and digestible for the public.15 Smartphonesare currently the main way of delivering information inpublic space. Touchscreens and large screens have aplace, but are not always appropriate. We have not yetfound the right interface between place, device and the human body. Google Glass, an augmented realityheadset, is a new approach to the human-computerinterface. However such devices and interfaces are notyet mature. This is an important area that deservesmore attention from designers and planners.

Using public data necessitates addressing privacy andsecurity issues. UK telecoms operators, for example,are legally required to store data for one year, but it isthen illegal to for them to keep it for more than twoyears. We need to identify ethical standards for howpublic data is used. The public need to be comfortablewith how their data is used and should have the right to opt out if they wish.

“We increasingly experience citiesmediated by digital technology… we needa discipline that doesn’t really exist yet, a merger of urban design and urbanplanning with urban informatics, withnetworked public space.”14John Tolva, Chicago Chief Technology Officer

© Arup

© Daniel Imade/Arup

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Many cities are starting to use the vast troves of datathey already hold to improve planning and delivery ofservices to the public, driven by the need to serve morepeople with fewer resources.

Two leading examples are New York City and Chicagoin the US. Both cities set up data analytics functionswithin their city governments to mine data for actionableinsights. Their analysts use data from a range ofsources across city government.

City Analytics

Case study Experimentation-enhancedtesting and modelling using data

Prof Peter Head CBEFREng FRSA, Director, ArupThe Ecosequestration Trust isdeveloping a regional-scaleinterface that will provide a newway to attract and connectregional investment funds, suchas public sector bonds, for low-

carbon and resilient development. This will helpcommunities and individuals secure funding tocreate the type of places and lifestyle changes thatthe fund supports. The platform will assemble arange of social, ecological and economic activitydata, which could allow multiple stakeholders –including architects and urban planners – toundertake collaborative integrated design. Thiscould help investments move forward more quicklythrough the planning process, and the access tocapital would help developers and the constructionindustry create jobs in the region faster. Additionally,the platform will record the social and economicbenefits that will result from the public privatepartnership (PPP) projects, to build an evidencebase of the effectiveness of this interface.

Case study New York

The City of Chicago is looking at ways to improve policy and decision making through using data. Theyare using data analytics to make predictions at aneighbourhood and block level for policy interventionsin public safety, use of infrastructure, public health andtransportation.23 A good example is the work to identifyfood deserts in Chicago. Using transport informationwith other datasets, the city authorities were able toidentify places with little or no access to fresh food.Mayor Emanuel of Chicago recently announced a 20% drop in food deserts since 2011.24

Chicago and New York are among the leading cities inthe use of data to improve city outcomes. Here in theUK, there is also a lot of interest in using data better incity management and planning. For example, the recentTechnology Strategy Board’s ‘Future Cities’ competitionsaw 29 cities put forward plans for how they wouldtackle the integration of city systems in their cities,looking at how city systems can work together formutual benefit. All planned for a data platform as a tool to improve economic, environmental and socialoutcomes.25 Bristol, Manchester and Birmingham areamong the cities looking to take these plans forward.

In New York a terabyte of raw information, enoughto fill nearly 143 million printed pages, passesthrough the Mayor’s office daily.20 Drawing on thisdata, New York has been able to help their front linestaff become more effective. They have reduced theamount of time that building inspectors spendremediating dangerous illegal apartmentconversions, doubled the hit rate for discoveringshops selling bootlegged cigarettes (impacting taxrevenues), and began fighting a prescription drugepidemic by identifying pharmacies with unusuallevels of sales of certain types of drugs.

New York’s ‘311’21 service provides the public withhundreds of city datasets, including permitteddevelopment, restaurant inspections, annual poweruse by ZIP code, Wi-Fi hotspots and maps of publicparks and sanitation services. Citizens areencouraged to comment on the quality of servicesto improve service delivery and the overall operationof the city. The data allows the creation of mobilephone apps to solve common urban problems suchas congestion and road accidents involving cyclists.Popular city-based apps include ‘green-can’, whichenables users to locate the nearest recycling bin.The bin informs citizens about what type of waste itaccepts. This provides valuable feedback to the cityabout where recycling bins should be placed.‘Bikepool’22 is also a new way-finding tool thatassists cyclists in avoiding roads with high fatalities.The tool suggests alternative park routes, andpinpoints public sanitation facilities and rest-stops toencourage safer cycling. The benefit to the City is asafer greener environment.

Gaming applications continue to influence testing and modelling tools. From early examples such asCivilisation and SimCity – the inspiration for manyplanners – allow people to think through developmentof an imaginary city. Betaville uses gaming technologyfor collaborative planning of real cities. Inspired by opensource software development, Betaville is a multiplayerenvironment based on real cities in which ideas for newworks of architecture, urban design and developmentcan be shared and discussed in context19 byprofessionals and interested members of the public.

BetavilleBetaville Gaming technology for collaborative planning of real cities. GothamInnovation Greenhouse http://betaville.net

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Implications for current practice

We have demonstrated how data can be used bydesigners and planners in four ways: to design placesthat better serve the people that they are designed for,to allow more experimentation and testing beforeconstruction, to improve evidence-base building andanalytics for policy making, and to improve visibility andinformation sharing. The examples we have outlinedshow that there are numerous opportunities for data tobe put to use and feed into design. Current practicecould benefit from several UK government initiativeshappening at the moment in order to achieve this.

The UK government is pushing forward a number ofinitiatives connected to big data and smart cities. TheDepartment for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) issetting up a Smart Cities Forum for policymakers, cities,businesses and researchers to develop and coordinatepolicy more effectively. BIS has also commissioned theBritish Standards Institute to identify where standardscould help address barriers to implementing smart cityconcepts including data sharing between agencies.31

The Cabinet Office is leading on open data policy and looking at ways to encourage private data sharing.The Technology Strategy Board has sponsored theestablishment of the Open Data Institute (ODI) and the Future Cities Catapult. The ODI is an innovativeorganisation set up to promote and enable the use of open data for economic, environmental and socialbenefits. The Future Cities Catapult is intended to be a place where cities, businesses and universities cometogether to develop solutions to the future needs of our cities.

So far, architects and urban planners have beenlargely absent from these discussions despitebeing great users and visualisers of data. If theeconomic, social and environmental benefits of big data are to be extended to the spatialdisciplines of planning and design, then theyneed to be connected to the open data and smart city debate for three reasons.

1 We need to move beyond technology-driven ideas of the city and incorporate more urban theory andpractice into the design of solutions for the complexsystems that are cities.32 This extends to city

analytics. Whilst big data has the potential to uncoverrelationships between different variables, theory isneeded to provide a framework for understanding its significance. For example, in New York City, thestatistical finding that shopkeepers keeping theirdoors open reduced the incidence of crime couldalso have been predicted by urban theory (NYC’sown Jane Jacobs wrote about the need for ‘eyes on the street’ many years ago33). We need to beaware of what big data can do, when it is needed,and how it should be used – to test hypotheses and provide evidence.

2 We now experience urban spaces mediated throughdigital tools. We use our mobile phones to navigate,access transport information, or to socialise in publicplaces. There is great potential for designers andplanners to use digital tools to help people makesense of urban spaces. However, the tools are notyet well developed, partially because the relationshipbetween smart infrastructure and space is not yetfully understood. Designers and planners need toengage with technologists to understand how thesetechnologies could impact on the design of urbanspaces, and how people experience them.

3 The needs of urban designers and planners for data are underrepresented in the current open datadiscussions. More work needs to be done to definethese needs, such as how data should be captured,shared and made accessible. Beyond the realtimedata we have discussed, there is also a huge amountof useful data in submitted planning documents thatis difficult and time consuming to access. Currentpractice demands that documents are submitted toplanning in formats that are not machine- readable(PDF), so they have to be sifted through by hand.Processes and protocols for sharing data thereforeneed to be developed, that would respect individuals’intellectual property whilst allowing multiplestakeholders to collaborate. Standards for makingdata available also need to be agreed. It is notuncommon for adjacent local authorities to usedifferent standards, forms and practices for makingdata available.

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One of the key benefits of adopting a smart approachto data is the ability to see lots of datasets in contextwith each other, and to detect temporal and spatialpatterns. This transparency saves time and cost byreducing the time needed to find and process key data.The London Heat Map is a case in point. The interactivetool developed by the Greater London Authority (GLA)allows people to identify opportunities for DecentralisedEnergy projects in London, such as Combined Heatand Power (CHP) or district heating networks.26 Publicorganisations, property developers, social landlords orinvestors can also use it to view spatial information thatcan help them identify and develop Distributed Energyopportunities, such as data on: major energyconsumers, fuel consumption and carbon emissions,energy supply plants, community heating networks,and heat density. The London Heat Map will evolve overtime alongside the Decentralised Energy for Londonprogramme and become more useful and sophisticatedas boroughs and other stakeholders start inputtingmore energy data into the map.

Fortunately it is now possible to access increasinglymore amounts of public data. Open data is a conceptcentred on the idea that certain information should befreely available for people to use and reuse withoutrestriction. Whilst the academic world realised the needto open up data back in the late 1950’s,27 governmentshave only recently recognised the power and benefits of this. The EU expects its 2011 open data strategy to deliver a €40 billion boost to its economy eachyear.28 In the last few years, national and municipalgovernments around the world have been establishingonline data portals to catalogue and distribute their own open data, with the UK in the early vanguardestablishing data.gov.uk in 2009.

An increasing number of individual governmentdepartments and agencies are now publishing theirdatasets online, such as the Ordnance Survey, theEnvironment Agency and Transport for London. Thishas made it easier and faster for designers to obtaincritical information about development sites, such asmaps, predominant land uses, or flood plain locations.The recently released Shakespeare Review of OpenData (2013)29 suggests open data has the potential todeliver a £2 billion injection to the UK economy in theshort-term, and a further £6-7 billion further down the line.

The UK government has recently made changes tohow it licences its data in order to facilitate reuse ofpublic sector information, through its publication of the Open Government Licence v2.0. Public sectoragencies and city governments are encouraged toshare data at no or marginal cost.30 Many UK citieshave set up open data portals and are looking at howto better share data, but there is little standardisation so far on the spatial data that is collected.

Transparency

London HeatmapThe interactive tool developed by the Greater London Authority (GLA) allowspeople to identify opportunities for Decentralised Energy projects in London.www.londonheatmap.org.uk (reproduced with the permission of the GLA)

Smart benefits

A smart approach to architectural and urbandesign could have a profound effect on our citiesand communities, on how they are designed andhow they look and operate once they aredesigned. An intelligent use of data could help todesign places which respond effortlessly to publicneed or reduce and reuse excess energy. From anarchitectural perspective, the clear benefits datacould help to realise are better designed placesand better design processes.

“A smart approachcould help theconstruction industryrealise low carbon,resilient developmentthat is future-proofedand flexible to

accommodate climate change andeconomic growth. A common languageand accessible platform that wouldenable datasets to be evaluated inrelation to one another could helpdesigners understand and respond todynamic change. For example, smartdata could help test the impact of likelybuilding fabric improvements through theGovernment’s Green Deal or regenerationschemes, to show how the GLA’s HeatMap would adjust to these variables. The data could also be used to model the impact of new renewable energygeneration and future development onthe map. This would enable the creationof a resilient low carbon transition planfor London that would take into account a range of considerations.

If consistent data could be shared whilst protecting intellectual property,stakeholders would also be able topartner beyond the developmentboundary. A common data platformwould enable opportunities onlyachievable through economies of scaleand collaboration. For instance, whereCombined Heat and Power (CHP) isproposed, heat could be more freelyshared with neighbouring residentialdevelopments, schools, or publicbuildings with a relatively high heat load.This would enable the optimum amountof electricity to be generated off the CHPfor office or commercial uses thattypically have a low heat demand.”Alan Shingler, Partner, Head of Sustainability, Sheppard Robson

“Throughout the designprocess we assemblehuge amounts of data –to inform designdecisions and tosupport planningapplications. Sometimes

this is site specific, such as density andarea calculations, but often it has a widertechnical relevance to variables liketransport accessibility, air quality, noise or flood risk assessments. Although thisinformation is all available online it tendsto be buried in scanned documents andPDFs. This data could be used moreintelligently if it was collected and storedin more appropriate formats.

Every planning authority across thecountry is scrambling to evaluate landsupply and make strategic decisionsabout where housing should be located,but policy makers do not necessarily havesufficient base information to make gooddecisions about site suitability andhousing quality. If essential data forexemplar schemes and for comparisonwas available and accessible, we couldbuild a much better process for deliveringhousing quality.”Richard Partington MA (Cantab) DipArch RIBA, Director, Richards Partington Architects

London HeatmapThe interactive tool developed by the Greater London Authority (GLA) allowspeople to identify opportunities for Decentralised Energy projects in London.www.londonheatmap.org.uk (reproduced with the permission of the GLA)

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© Paul M

cMullin

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Policy recommendations

There are great opportunities for designers andplanners to use data and digital tools for betterdesign. However, we are only at the beginning of the journey and there is further work to bedone to bring built environment professionals,technologists and Government together to workout how best to capture these opportunities-including making data available, and developingtools to use that data in design. We have threerecommendations to begin this process.

Better coordination between governmentdepartments to work together to realise a smart futureThe opportunities made possible through more andbetter data are starting to be realised by the UKgovernment. But the focus is operational and needs tolook beyond the management of cities to their designand development. Government departments thereforeneed to talk to each other to ensure data duplication isavoided and that gaps in data collection are identified.This would help the government develop a more holisticframework for smart data capture and analysis thatincorporates lower level data, particularly that relating to the built environment.

18 Designing with data: shaping our future cities

Facilitate the digitisation of the planning processAs part of its Open Data initiative the governmentshould model and explore the potential benefits of adigital planning process. Government should scopehow it can standardise the digitisation of all informationsubmitted for planning, and of standardising designdata collection across local authorities. This public datashould be open to unleash economic growth; and localauthorities should be encouraged to use open data toinform local planning strategies.

The UK Government should commit towork with professionals to incorporateand develop smart design data specific to the built environmentTo oversee the digitisation of planning Governmentneeds to work closely with the built environmentindustry. The Department for Communities and LocalGovernment and Cabinet Office, along withorganisations such as the Open Data Institute and theFuture Cities Catapult, should jointly set up a workinggroup with built environment professionals andacademics.

This working group should:

• Establish what data would be useful to support thedesign process and identify key design data acrossscales and stages of design.

• Identify relevant data formats

• Identify and prioritise design data capture methodsthat can be integral to current data collation practicesin order to accelerate market innovation and creatediversity.

• Identify the skill and tool gap for realising design datapotential and address it.

• Develop a legal framework that would protectintellectual property disclosed on the design dataportal to encourage data sharing.

• Collaborate with leading academic institutions toexplore the research and development of varioustoolkits that will help practitioners collect andmanipulate big data in a meaningful way (efficiently,creatively, sensitively to local context).

• Communicate the value of smart design data to the government, to ensure its development isincorporated in smart and open data initiatives.

These steps will help the government enable relevantsmart data collection, and enhance its analysis tocreate and manage the types of places people will want to live in and thrive.

Recommendation 1: Recommendation 2: Recommendation 3:

© Daniel Clements

© Thomas Graham/Arup

1 Kevin Kelly: Web 2.0 Expo andConference, March 29, 2011. Videoavailable at:www.web2expo.com/webexsf2011/public/schedule/proceedings.2 McKinsey: ‘Big Data: The Next Frontier for Innovation’www.mckinsey.com/insights/business_technology/big_data_the_next_frontier_for_innovation3 NPR: ‘High-Tech Sensors Help Old Port City Leap Into Smart Future’ by Lauren Frayerwww.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2013/06/04/188370672/Sensors-Transform-Old-Spanish-Port-Into-New-Smart-City4 McKinsey: ‘Big Data: The Next Frontier for Innovation’www.mckinsey.com/insights/business_technology/big_data_the_next_frontier_for_innovation5 ibid 6 Norman Foster ‘Architecture and Shelter –The Aesthetics of Scarcity’www.fosterandpartners.com/data/practice-data/essays/Arquitectura-Lo-Comun-Norman-Foster-Architecture-and-Shelter-The-Aesthetics-of-Scarcity.pdf7 www.mappiness.org.uk8 http://senseable.mit.edu/realtimerome9 http://senseable.mit.edu/guggenheim10 http://transportapi.com11 www.collaborativemap.org/home12 For further project examples visitwww.collaborativemap.org13 www.wired.com/design/2013/08/design-and-the-digital-world/14 www.archdaily.com/409057/architecture-s-brave-new-digital-world/15 Dietmar Offenhuber & Carlo Ratti:‘Reading the City – Reconsidering Kevin Lynch’s Notion of Legibility in theDigital Age’.http://senseable.mit.edu/papers/pdf/2012-OffenhuberRatti-ReadingTheCity.pdf16 www.pedestrian.melbourne.vic.gov.au17 http://citydashboard.org18 Design Observer: ‘Who’s Your Data’ byCarl Skeltonhttp://places.designobserver.com/feature/urban-design-in-the-new-soft-city/37904/

19 http://betaville.net/20 New York Times: ‘The Mayor’s GeekSquad’, by Alan Feuer http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/24/nyregion/mayor-bloombergs-geek-squad.html 21 www1.nyc.gov/apps/311/22 www.bikepool.co/23 John Tolva ‘Open data in Chicago:progress and direction’, Chicago CTOwww.ascentstage.com/archives/2012/01/open-data-in-chicago/24 http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2013/08/16/city-hall-food-deserts-shrunk-20-percent-since-2011/25 Arup report for TSB: Solutions for Citieswww.innovateuk.org/documents/1524978/2138994/Solutions+for+Cities+-+An+analysis+of+the+Feasibility+Studies+from+the+Future+Cities+Demonstrator+Programme/5d8ad270-4623-4057-a0e8-2e303033122f26 www.londonheatmap.org.uk27 The World Data Centre was formed bythe International Council of Scientific Unions28 EC ‘Digital Agenda: Turning governmentdata into gold’,http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-11-1524_en.htm29 www.gov.uk/government/publications/shakespeare-review-of-public-sector-information30 www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/information-management/uk-government-licensing-framework.pdf31 Department for Business, Informationand Skills: Information Economy strategyhttps://www.gov.uk/government/publications/information-economy-strategy32 Yaneer Bar-Yam ‘The Limits ofPhenomenology: From Behaviorism to DrugTesting and Engineering Design’www.necsi.edu/projects/yaneer/phenomenology/index?utm_content=buffer61e1b&utm_source=buffer&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Buffer33 Jane Jacobs The Death and Life of GreatAmerican Cities

References

20 Designing with data: shaping our future cities