This edition of On Common Ground explores the collection and use of big data in many aspects of community planning and management and end-user experiences — from housing needs assessments to healthy communities, from transportation to the financial impacts of land-use laws, from parks to sustainability and resilience, and ensuring that all residents benefit equally. There is something for everyone in this edition and the reader can only be left thinking, “What will come next?”
Massive gains in computer power gains over the last decade have led to a revolution in community planning, benefiting residents in numerous ways.
Planners and developers frequently turn to big data and numbers crunching to gain a 10,000-foot perspective of an issue and a community.
You contribute to that big data whenever you opt to share your location to make use of, say, apps for weather, travel, or myriad other services.
“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul,” said John Muir.
One hundred years of microclimate data can be crunched to inform a variety of stakeholders about potential climate impacts on communities and properties.
Homeownership and healthy living gaps once identified by anecdotal evidence is now proven through fine-grain data.