Smart Cities

Pinole, Calif., in the Bay Area, is using digital technology from eTRAKiT and Symbium to make permitting and approval faster and easier on home improvement jobs and rooftop solar installations.

Clean energy and transportation goals could get a boost from the charged atmosphere around preparation for the next Olympics, in Los Angeles. Advocates say much remains to be done to electrify vehicles and infrastructure.

The Connective, a regional smart city consortium in the Phoenix, Ariz., metropolitan area, is working to help local governments deploy scalable technology solutions. Its events bring together private- and public-sector leaders.

The Beta District’s new executive director lays out the nascent Central Ohio ecosystem’s vision for growth in areas like mobility and agriculture. The sectors, he said, “are definitely tied together.”

The new 2023 Shared Micromobility State of the Industry Report finds slightly more people made use of it in the U.S. last year — even as the number of devices in service fell by more than 3.5 percent.

The city’s CIO has said he would like to have a policy on artificial intelligence in place by year’s end. As officials work to make that happen, they’re looking at similar policies from Seattle and Boston, and in private industry.

Recent data walks, and the city’s newly launched digital rights platform, inform residents on how city technologies collect their personally identifiable information, and how it is stored.

A new report on micromobility ridership in 2023 from the National Association of City Transportation Officials examines trends in the use of shared bikes and scooters, in the U.S. and Canada.

The new program, which the public can access online, maps crimes in the city using 15 icons to show arson, assault, burglary, vandalism and vehicle burglaries. It retains data for up to 180 days, though precise locations are not shown.

GreenWealth Energy and Voltpost will expand low-speed, dwell charging at multifamily housing locations and curbside, to make electric vehicles a more workable solution for renters and people with lower incomes.

SouthWest Transit, which serves three of the city’s suburbs, will debut the area’s first autonomous vehicles this fall in Eden Prairie. For now, the service will operate with human drivers on board.

In a forecast, the Northwest Power and Conservation Council warns data centers could use up to 4,000 megawatts on average of electricity by 2029 — enough to power the entire city of Seattle five times over — setting up potential shortfalls.

The cities of Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse collectively received funding via a “tech hub” competition run by the U.S. Economic Development Administration. They’ll use it to develop an area semiconductor industry.

Cities are no longer seeing their miles of streetscape as cheap parking spaces. Curbs are now considered some of the most in-demand pieces of urban real estate, and technology is stepping up to help manage them.

Some 75 percent of low-income residents in Philadelphia, for example, say that they cannot afford to pay more than $21 a month for a broadband subscription.

City officials said Tuesday they had deployed the first 100 cameras; the other 300 are expected to be on the street by July. The devices, paid for by a $17 million state grant, are intended to take on organized retail theft.

Ruling that the Fourth Amendment protects a person’s right to privacy, a Norfolk Circuit Court has granted a defendant’s motion to suppress evidence obtained by city-owned license plate reader cameras, but without a search warrant.

The Autonomous Robotic Pickup Platform, a project launching next week in Detroit’s Transportation Innovation Zone, will start by testing small sidewalk delivery bots to collect food waste for compost.