The Urbanism Next Framework

One focus of the work of Urbanism Next has been to try to understand and organize the various impacts of emerging technology on cities. We have done this through conducting and gathering specific research, developing and disseminating reports, through our conference and through the building of a national network of partners in the public, private and academic sectors.

Through this work, we have developed a long list of impacts we should all be considering when looking at the effects of new mobility, e-commerce and the sharing economy will have on cities. While this was a helpful first step, we saw a strong need to organize these impacts in a way that makes them easy for us to understand and relate to each other.

What we are presenting here today is a draft of what we are calling the Urbanism Next Framework. This framework organizes impacts based on four key areas – land use, urban design, transportation, and real estate – and relates those to the implications they will have on equity, health, the environment, the economy, and governance.

This framework is helping guide our research efforts, helping us understand gaps in knowledge, and helping us make links between the various areas impacted by emerging technology. We are currently engaged in various projects, including work with NSF and the Bullitt Foundation, that is based on this framework and we will be sharing the outcomes of this work – that deepens the information in the framework further – shortly.

As mentioned, this is a draft document, so we look forward to hearing your comments and thoughts about how this resonates with you and about how it might be modified and improved. We hope this framework can help organize both city responses and research about emerging technology impacts and can help all of us push ahead in these important tasks.