Urban Sustainability

Creating A Better Tomorrow.

Altamash Ali | Academy Capstone | November 12, 2017

OVERVIEW
With the human population expected to peak at the end of the century, urban developers

have been left with the important responsibility of finding ways create an urban environment

capable of sustaining future generations. Although professionals like economists predicted this

downward trend long ago, it has been the urban developers who have begun to take initiative in

developing new, sustainable solutions. Researchers believe that it is only through the innovation

of current urban design practices and the development of new urban technology will government

officials be able to temporarily relieve the populations strain on global resources. However, to

develop a more permanent solution, they will have to turn to the study of design and data science

to properly immerse themselves in the art of urban imagination and social innovation.

The increased consumption of natural resources around the world has created a sense of

urgency in going about finding solutions to slow or reverse this trend. Often failing to see the

complexity of city infrastructure and systems, humans are now beginning to increasingly rely on

artificial intelligence to ease this process. By capitalizing upon this new technology, city

planners can foster the growth of smarter and more self-sufficient cities. In addition, through the

proper analysis of big data and proper implementation of urban intelligence, researchers can

assist city officials by providing them with important information about energy usage, water

consumption, and waste treatment. Lastly it is important to recognize the use of city intelligence

in traffic dynamics. Similar to how researchers find ways to maximize the efficient usage of

natural resources, they can use the same technology to find ways to minimize travel time and

traffic congestion. In the end, by minimizing the amount of fuel that is burned as well as

reducing the amount of excess resources that go to waste, urban planners can serve to promote

and maintain a sustainable urban environment.

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INNOVATIVE URBAN DESIGN THROUGH DATA VISUALIZATION
10 billion: the number scientists expect our population to peak at by the end of the 21st

century. To put that into perspective, that will be an extraordinary 3 billion more people who will

be consuming food supplies, expending energy resources, and producing waste than the 7 billion

who already do so today. The underlying question remains: Will the rate at which our civilization

is innovating be enough to support the population growth of the coming century? While

economists have frantically been looking for an answer, urban developers have already started to

take initiative in developing smarter and more efficient solutions. Through the innovation of

current urban design practices, implementation of urban monitoring techniques, and the

development of new urban technology, city planners will be able to temporarily relieve the

populations current strain on global resources with hopes of turning it into a permanent solution.

It is only through the study of design and science can one immerse themselves in the art of urban

imagination and social innovation.

Advancements in computer vision and urban monitoring techniques have given scientists

a more efficient means of detecting problems in the current urban environment. Through the use

of new data visualization techniques and Global Information Systems (GIS), analysts have been

able to predict the worlds next environmental predicament or energy crisis before it actually

occurs. Improvements in monitoring techniques have also allowed city planners to use satellite

imagery to detect the roots of poverty in certain regions. Though traditional monitoring tools

have been labeled as ineffective due to their high cost requirement, high labour input

requirement, and poor spatial resolution (given the complex spatial structure of urban

landscapes), much hasnt changed with the advent of the newer technology planners use today

(Seiferling). This is evident in a recent study conducted by MITs SENSEable City Lab in which

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they used LiDAR to illustrate the different methods by which urban planners can quantify and

map trees in the urban city landscape. LiDAR, a high-resolution active sensor, has proven to be

well-suited for most landscapes but often falls short in some instances, once again, due to the

usual high costs and intensive labor requirements. Nevertheless, the study found that the use of a

planned arrangement of trees not only provides natural infrastructure and services for the city,

but also serves to reduce air pollution, support biodiversity, mitigate heat island effects, increase

land value, improve aesthetics, and even improve human health (Seiferling). Apart from the

listed environmental and health benefits, the effects of these green streets have been found to

extend to cultural and psychological behaviors as well. For example, the previous study also

found that a high abundance of street trees [has been] linked to urban scenes that were

perceived to be safe (Seiferling). For most people, because they do not pay much attention to

the placement of trees on streets, or, as a matter of fact, trees is general, it is quite eye-opening to

see that their placement is not arbitrary, but rather strategic and for the purpose of attaining

certain health benefits and maximizing their impact on the environment. Essentially, the goal of

computer vision scientists has been to teach computers to quantify real-world features and their

spatial distribution within a landscape for a multitude of applications. These applications can

range from quantifying urban appearance and urban change to socio-economic indicators which

has been made possible using machine learning models. New data visualization techniques have

been able to turn raw data into important findings which can eventually be used to achieve the

United Nations: Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Eradicating poverty remains one of the biggest challenges in the world as it tops the list

of Sustainable Development Goals. Traditional approaches to measuring and targeting poverty

rely heavily on census data, which in most low-and middle-income countries are unavailable or

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out-of-date (Steele). There exist many other approaches which can be used to calculate

indicators of living standards, however, because each presents its own advantages and

disadvantages, they remain widely unreliable and inaccurate. For example, consumption data

can be highly noisy due to recall error or because expenditures occurred outside the period

captured in surveys, but provide a better shorter-term concept of poverty. Asset-based measures

have been regarded as a better proxy for the long-term status of households as they are thought to

be more representative of permanent income or long-term control of resources (Steele). This

called for a more a flexible approach to modeling poverty as indicators representing asset-based,

consumption-based and income-based measures didnt always produce similar results. Recent

work has shown that sources of high-resolution derived from remote sensing, geographic

information system data (RS data), and mobile operator call detail records (CDRs) can provide

an accurate and up-to-date indication of living conditions. They were recently used in a study

conducted in the impoverished country of Bangladesh. GP, which is the largest mobile network

provider in the country, had about 48 million customers (99% of the population) at the time

making it a good network to be used for analysis (Steele). Some basic metrics which the CDR

measured range from phone usage and social networks to user mobility and handset usage.

Researchers also used Voronoi tessellations to approximate the coverage areas provided by

cellular towers. Using the models created by these tessellations, the researchers used hierarchical

Bayesian geostatistical models (BGMs) to predict the three poverty metrics at unsampled

locations across the country. Interestingly, the Voronoi polygons themselves formed the

neighborhood structure for this spatial random effect, and neighbors are defined within a scaled

precision matrix (Steele). The matrix serves to represent the processes which may affect overall

poverty estimates. Essentially, they found that the models employing a combination of CDR and

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RS data served better for the purpose and generally provide an advantage over models which

relied on data source alone. These finding have, nonetheless, caused many urban planners to

believe that the solution to poverty lies in the way they model city infrastructure and organize

land use.

Similar to how data visualization techniques can create effective arrangements for trees

on streets, on a much wider scale, they can also be used to determine land use organization in

cities. The advent of geo-located information and communication technologies opens the

possibility of exploring how people use space in cities, bringing an important new tool for urban

scientists and planners, especially for regions where data are scarce or not available

(Lenormand). A quick and systematic approach to determining land use patterns has been

derived from mobile phone records. In a recent study conducted by the University of Cambridge,

researchers were, once again, able to find a correlation between organization by land use and the

livability of neighborhoods and the health of locals. The study consisted of an extensive analysis

of the land distribution in Spains five most populous cities: Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia,

Seville, and Bilbao. The study went through a series of processes in which they first divided the

urban area networks using Voronoi tessellations, then proceeded to analyze their mesoscopic

structure using clustering techniques (Lenormand). A Voronoi diagram helps show the

partitioning of a plane into regions based on its distance to points in a specific subset of the

plane, one in which each Voronoi cell has its own center of mass. The diagrams use in visual art

is just one example of how data visualization can be used to create immersive models and

representations. In this case, researchers discovered the emergence of four prominent regions

through the cities: residential, business, logistics/industry, and nightlife. It is interesting to find

that not only do these groups cover similar proportions of cells throughout the cities, but they

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also show similar scaling curves indicating comparable structures when it comes down to how

the four groups fuse at the urban level (Lenormand). This analysis is believed to have confirmed

the existence of certain properties which have been hypothesized to be common to all cities, and

also to laws which serve as a means to see how property scales with city size. These include, but

are not limited to, the number of patents filed, unemployment rates, gross domestic product per

capita, business diversity, consumption of resources, length of road networks or even crime

density. Lastly, it is important to note that the model is based on a Schelling-like segregation in

which the different land use types interact to generate a spatial distribution in the city. Cells in a

given land use type tend to maximize the number of neighbors undergoing equivalent uses. The

different land uses interact by attracting each other, such as services and residential areas, or by

repelling like industry and almost any other type (Lenormand). Basically, this model serves to

explain the simple interaction rules between different land uses (Lenormand). Because of this

benefit, researchers have glorified the emergence of new geolocated information and

communication technologies which can now directly measure the use that citizens make of each

urban space compared to old technologies which failed to satisfy this need.

Mankind has always aimed at the best use of land in hopes of making the most efficient

use of the environment possible. However, the nature of the city planning process had widely

changed overtime in that it now allows us to see what exactly leads to a flourishing, and

productive society. By creating a conceptual system independent of, but corresponding to, the

real-world system, we can seek to understand the phenomena of change, then anticipate them and

finally evaluate them to concern ourselves with the optimization of the real-world system by

seeking optimization of the conceptual system (Yaakup). The failure of previous city models

has prompted urban planners to develop newer strategies which can now be tested using

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advanced software. Additionally, the monitoring of land use change also forms an integral part

of the urban planning process whereby policies and strategic plans are reviewed and updated

(Yaakup). It is only through these immersive data visualization techniques can we detect poverty

and other hindrances to the sustainable growth of our society. Once detected, the solution is only

a matter of a couple of clicks away.

URBAN INTELLIGENCE IN SUSTAINABLE CITIES

If everyone in the world lived the way people in the United States do, it would take five

Earths to provide enough resources for everyone (Oenhuber). This startling statistic do not only

help us personify the severity of the changes our earth is bound to face, but helps promote a

sense of urgency in going about finding a solution. Through the use of urban intelligence and big

data, city planners can foster the growth of smarter and more self-sufficient cities as well as

promote a more sustainable future. Lastly, by devising policies which increase the efficiency of

energy usage, water consumption, and waste treatment, the government will be able to support

the growth of megacities.

New technologies in the field of artificial intelligence research have been highly

concerned with the development of the next generation of urban intelligence systems. The goal

of researchers has been to integrate several different techniques in order to develop a single,

hybrid intelligent system which has expanded capabilities for urban planning. Whereas

decision-making previously relied upon knowledge-based techniques, computer-based

automatic systems have now improved decision-making capability and labor efficiency (Feng).

Because knowledge-based systems (KBSs) and artificial neural networks (ANNs) already

complement each other, they have been integrated in order to develop a system far more

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intelligent when put together. One of the best benefits of an ANN approach is that knowledge

[can be] accumulated directly from case data by way of a learning algorithm that may be either

supervised or unsupervised (Feng). What this means is that they dont need any prior

representation scheme as a way of learning knowledge. Similarly, fuzzy systems provide a

means for representing uncertain knowledge. These remain significant in capturing the

impreciseness in human reason when it comes to urban planning by allowing uncertainties and

complexities in the knowledge to be incorporated (Feng). Hence, the ability to learn in unknown

environments is an essential component of any intelligent system and is particularly crucial to its

performance. By incorporating neural network learning mechanisms (ANNs) with KBSs, you

can actually enhance the KBSs by enabling the ANNs to modify their knowledge structures

autonomously (Feng). Logic, facts, and rules may be frequently modified in an evolutionary

fashion but will nevertheless remain dependent on human experience in the larger domain.

Lastly, the combination of different intelligent systems, or an integrated system, can be capable

of analyzing even larger quantities of data and establishing patterns and identifying

characteristics which had previously been unknown. As this new, growing class of technology is

applied to a variety of city operations, cities will now have the potential to promote sustainable

growth.

Over the past century, Chinas complex city structure has been rapidly expanding due to

a rise in traffic, increase in population, and surge in manufacturing. Each of these factors have

had an incredible impact on the sustainable development of Chinas ecosystem. Because city

administrators are not fully aware of the complexity of this urban ecosystem, many of their

policies have failed to address these mounting issues. Over time, modern cities have slowly

grown from the dual spaces they once occupied to now occupying ternary spaces (Pan). This

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means that the highest dimensional space which once referred to human society space (cultures,

norms, interactions) now refers to the cyberspace (computers, internet access, data flow). This

new concept of approaching urban life calls for new philosophies, theories, and practices.

Scientists deem the cure for various urban diseases lie within the realms of big data and the

advent of the intelligent city (Pan). In technical terms, urban big data is a massive amount of

dynamic and static data generated from the subjects and objects including various urban

facilities, organizations, and individuals, which have been being collected by city governments,

public institutions, enterprises, and individuals using new intelligent city systems (Pan). The

surge in big data research is being led by companies such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter who

are using real-time data such as emails, tweets, and photos gathered from millions of users to

feed large-scale analytic engines to produce additional value services such as recommender

systems, customer analytics, social network analytics, and fraud detection (Ang). The reason

why big data is becoming so prevalent today is because of its potential to transform and enhance

the values of products and services in industry and business. The emergence of social media has

served as a new form of network where humans act as sensors and data generated in the form of

tweets, photos, and videos convey relevant information with spatial and temporal characteristics

reminiscent of physical wireless sensor networks (Ang). Essentially, they have discovered that

social media feeds often convey up-to-date geographic information due to people frequently

commenting on events in their area or even referring to locations that represent momentary social

hotspots. Urban developers have taken a similar approach and have begun to use this new

technology for studies of the urban environment, [ranging] from monitoring air pollution, to

disaster management systems, and even intelligent transportation (Ang). Because urban big data

can be converged, analyzed, and mined using the Internet, cloud computing, and artificial

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intelligence technology, researchers are hoping to assist the government with decision-making

and urban planning in order to achieve their goal of intelligent administration of the city.

As new technology is constantly being developed every year, much of it still remains in

its infancy stage and is not capable of being used to its full potential. Therefore, the intelligent

administration of cities is not always effective and requires an evaluation system in order to

detect any discrepancies in its system. However, finally after having determined a common base

with the 38 current intelligent city evaluation systems (ICESs) from around the world, scientists

have developed the City Intelligence Quotient (City IQ) Evaluation System. Additionally,

because of the highly diverse purposes these city evaluation systems serve, there have been no

set global standards. Out of the half of these systems which all consist of primary, secondary,

and tertiary indicator systems, only the China Wisdom Engineering Association System and

GONG Bingzheng System have secondary indicators that are actually quantifiable (Wu). The

results of a quantitative study of 20 indicators selected before 2013 found that the first three

most-indicated aspects in different evaluation dimensions are: intelligent infrastructure

construction, intelligent governments, and intelligent citizen. Often associated with iCity

practices, intelligent industries and intelligent environments are often considered as extra

dimensions of measure by many researchers. As mentioned earlier, not only are the worlds

existing ICESs unreliable due to their relative newness, but also due to their lack of global

comparability. However, because City IQ Evaluation System series are updated annually with

sustained improvements...they will still be able to provide more valuable and credible evaluation

results for advances in iCity construction, operation, and development (Wu). Essentially, what

distinguishes the City IQ Evaluation System from other ICESs is that the system avoids the

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existing problems in current ICESs such as indirect data access, poor reliability, and the missing

capability for dynamic adjustments.

The usage of intelligent systems is vastly increasing in cities throughout the world. The

advent of big data has innovated the way in which information is processed for enhanced insight

and decision making. By using analytical and statistical techniques like machine learning,

recommender systems, and network analysis, scientists have been able to accurately quantify

data previously unmeasurable in the urban landscape. These advancements have prompted

economists such as W.B. Arthur to declare the emergence of a second global economy, one

whose activities run on processors, connectors, sensors, and executors. Other than traditional

sensors to measure physical quantities, new devices like smartphones contain embedded sensors

such as microphones, cameras, accelerometers, gyroscopes, and GPS which can be used to sense

a variety of data from the environment (Pan). Due to the increasing number of devices available

for integration into networked systems, this second economy is expected to approach the size of

our traditional economy by the year 2030. Big data research essentially focuses on five factors:

intelligent technologies, intelligent industries, intelligent services, intelligent administration, and

intelligent life. By effectively coordinating activities between all five, city planners are

determined to build a new, integrated urban environment which is capable of self-correction and

solving critical social, economic, and ecological problems in a more automated and timely

fashion.

TRAFFIC DYNAMICS IN INTELLIGENT CITIES

Traffic during inter-city commute can be agreed upon as being one of the most dreaded

things people have complained about ever since the suburban revolution. Despite commute via

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personal cars being one of the most important innovations leading to suburbanization, it has also

been one of the most detrimental. From burning less fossil fuels to reducing stress, city dwellers

have constantly been asking for more efficient methods of travel for the purpose of limiting the

release of environmental pollutants as well as improving overall quality of life. In order to

properly evaluate traffic dynamics, city planners need to analyze data collected from traffic

stops, police monitors, and other systems strategically placed throughout cities. Through the use

of intelligence city data and the evaluation of traffic dynamics in urban neighborhoods, city

planners can work towards improving health, reducing carbon emissions, and creating a better

tomorrow.

Over the past century, governments all over the world have been trying to innovate the

traffic dynamics of cities in order develop a safer highway transportation system as well as

promote a more sustainable urban environment. Many have used Intelligent Transportation

Systems (ITS), which rely on Inter-Vehicle Communication (IVC), to manage vehicle traffic,

assist drivers with safety and sharing information, and provide appropriate services for

passengers (Meneguette). The reason traffic congestions are considered such a huge urban

mobility problem is because they often stress drivers and result in economic losses. This study,

conducted by Rodolfo Meneguette of the University of Ottawa, proposes a new method called

INCIDEnT which can actually detect and control congested roads based on inter-vehicle

communication. The main goal of researchers in this study has been to reduce the average trip

time, CO emissions and fuel consumption by allowing motorists to avoid congested roads

(Meneguette). To their joy, the simulation of this method actually showed that their proposed

solution leads to shorter delays and a low overhead. Moreover, it is efficient with regard to the

coverage of the event and the distance to which the information can be propagated. Their model

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also uses control messages (i.e. beacons) to make the information about the state of the roads

available to all the vehicles (Meneguette). Each message consists of the location, speed, and

direction, as well as the status of the particular road segment in which the vehicle is currently

located. Through the use of the INCIDEnT, researchers eventually achieved a high success rate

in the classification of the level of congestion, reduced average trip time, and managed to

decrease fuel consumption and CO emissions (Meneguette). Essentially, by borrowing data

from the OpenStreetMap, researchers were able to create a realistic scenario which can be used

to accurately test these simulations as well as propagate emergency information so that drivers

can react to these situations in a timely manner.

In the recent discourse on urban sustainability, many have believed that megacities

received a disproportionate amount of attention over other sizes of cities. This puts forth that a

focus on smaller and medium-sized cities is crucial to achieving progress towards more

sustainable urban development because they also offer great potential for sustainable

transformations (Pojani & Stead). Additionally, a focus on smaller developing cities (i.e., with

fewer than one million inhabitants) is important in current urban sustainability discourses since

nearly half of the worlds 3.9 billion urban dwellers reside in relatively urban settlements with

fewer than 500,000 inhabitants, while only around one in eight live in the 28 megacities of 10

million inhabitants or more (Pojani & Stead). Smaller developing cities are extensively

underserved with respect to basic services and lack the necessary institutional capacity to be able

to manage their rapidly growing populations. In a study conducted by Dorina Pojani and

Dominic Stead of The University of Queensland, they argue that medium-sized cities in the

developing world can actually offer greater potential for more sustainable transformations than

megacities. Their smaller size allows for greater flexibility when it comes to urban expansion,

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adoption of green travel modes, and environmental protection (Pojani & Stead). Researchers in

this study also critically reviewed the potential role and impact of other options for sustainable

urban transport in cities in developing countries including road infrastructure, rail-based public

transport, and support for non-motorized travel modes. In the years after World War II, a

commonly-used approach for addressing congestion and other urban travel issues was increasing

the size and number of roads. In more recent years an understanding has emerged that

increasing capacity can lead to greater demand as a result of induced travel (Pojani & Stead).

This is similar to the concept of induced demand in economics which states that after supply is

increased, more of a good is consumed. In this case, expanding the highway transportation

systems calls for more cars to travel on the road. Ultimately, this paradox has proven that post-

expansion congestion levels will soon be restored to pre-expansion congestion levels in which

little travel time savings are actually realized.

Research over the past century has shown city planners that traffic infrastructure can have

drastic effects on the quality of a life of a city dweller. These findings have created a need among

engineers to further evaluate and explore this traffic data for the purpose of finding ways to

optimize this infrastructure (Oenhuber). However, the two biggest problems which emerge

when going about doing this lie in the fact that the sparseness of speed sensors can only cover a

limited number of road segments and that traffic patterns are eventually become too complex to

analyze (Poco et al.). In a study conducted by Jorge Poco of New York University, him and his

colleagues take a look at the use of NYC taxi trips as sensors to capture traffic information.

Researchers in this study proposed an efficient traffic model capable of deriving speed and

direction information from the data collected, as well as providing reliable estimates. Another

form of data they have analyzed includes traffic patterns from historic data over different periods

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of time and in different parts of the city. Regardless of what type of data is analyzed, questions

pertaining to traffic patterns in a city can be broadly categorized as either scalar-based or

mobility-based tasks (Poco et al.). Scalar-based questions involve a fixed property of the traffic

such as speed and density of traffic. In this category, a task of interest which some like to explore

is how traffic speeds vary throughout a city during different times over different days. On the

other hand, mobility-based tasks involve studying the flow of traffic along various streets of the

city. These include exploring the flow of slow moving traffic, free-flowing traffic, and direction

of traffic (Poco et al.). These simulations are really useful when trying to essentially determine

whether or not a proposed change to traffic infrastructure has any adverse effects. Though the

data that is captured can be very complex, a proper analysis through the use of vector field

visualizations should also be able to simulate traffic dynamics under a variety of stipulations.

The expansion of urban technology over the past century has truly changed the pace at

which our society has developed. Along with the proper evaluation of city traffic dynamics, the

advent of big data has allowed city planners to work towards creating a city which is safer,

healthier, and cleaner for its dwellers to commute in. Additionally, focusing on the the

development of smaller cities has also been crucial to achieving progress towards a more

sustainable urban environment. By capitalizing on this great opportunity for sustainable

transformation, urban planners can lead the way in creating a better tomorrow.

GLOBAL IMPACT
The subject of urban sustainability and its uses applies to a variety of fields ranging from

mapping poverty to reducing traffic. The United Nations has pledged for the successful

completion of its 17 Sustainable Development Goals by the year 2030, the first of which being

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the eradication of poverty. Urban developers around the world have implemented various

techniques for the purpose of mapping and detecting poverty in remote areas. In addition, new

artificial intelligence technology developed by scientists has served to satisfy Goals #6 and #7,

which are Clean Water & Sanitation and Affordable & Clean Energy, respectively. Ultimately,

their focus in these sectors has been to promote the more sustainable usage of natural resources

as well reduce pollution which may be caused by the excess burning of fossil fuels. Lastly, the

analysis of traffic dynamics has economic and environmental benefits as well in that it can

reduce unnecessary consumer spending on unused fuel and reduce the emission of greenhouse

gases into our atmosphere.

CONCLUSION
Although the nature of the city planning process had widely changed over the course of

human history, mankind has still not deterred from its goal of aiming to make the best use of

land possible. It is still our focus to make the most efficient use of the environment possible in

that we hope to create a flourishing and productive society. The monitoring of land use change

also forms an integral part of the urban planning process whereby policies and strategic plans are

reviewed and updated (Yaakup). Essentially, it is only through these immersive data

visualization techniques can we detect poverty and other hindrances to the sustainable growth of

our society. Once detected, the solution is only a matter of a couple of clicks away at the hands

of intelligent city infrastructure.

The advent of big data has innovated the way in which information is processed for

enhanced insight and decision making. Through the use of analytical and statistical techniques

like machine learning and network analysis, scientists have been able to accurately quantify data

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previously unmeasurable in the urban landscape. Lastly, by effectively coordinating activities

between all sectors of the city, city planners will be able to build a new, integrated urban

environment capable of self-correction and solving critical social, economic, and ecological

problems in a more automated and timely fashion.

The expansion of urban technology over the past century has truly changed the pace at

which our society has developed. The proper evaluation of city traffic dynamics and the advent

of big data has allowed city planners to work towards creating a city which is safer, healthier,

and cleaner for its dwellers to commute in. The increased focus on the development of smaller

cities has also been crucial to achieving progress towards a more sustainable urban environment.

Essentially, by capitalizing upon these opportunities for sustainable transformation, urban

planners can lead the path to creating a more sustainable future.

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Oenhuber, Dietmar. Decoding the City Urbanism in the Age of Big Data. Edited by Carlo Ratti,

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