smart cities

This European startup is installing 50 traffic-counting sensors across San Francisco

Belgian startup Telraam designed a device that lets anyone point out of a window a camera-like device that uses on-board tech to count the number of road users. It is currently installing a network of

All the tech that went into turning Columbus, Ohio, into a ‘Smart City’

The U.S. Department of Transportation launched a Smart City Challenge in 2015, which asked mid-sized cities across the country to come up with ideas for novel smart transportation systems that would u

Extra Crunch roundup: Clubhouse UX teardown, YC Demo Day favorites, proptech VC survey, more

Our reporting team watched more than 300 pitches over 8 hours at YC Demo Day and made a list of their favorite startups.

Woven Capital kicks off portfolio with investment in autonomous delivery company Nuro

Woven Capital, the investment arm of Toyota’s innovation-focused subsidiary Woven Planet, has announced an investment into Silicon Valley-based autonomous delivery vehicle company Nuro. This kic

The return of neighborhood retail and other surprising real estate trends

As shocking as it sounds, we could be entering a much better era for small, local businesses.

The built environment will be one of tech’s next big platforms

From the beginning, the plan for Sidewalk Labs (a subsidiary of Alphabet and — by extension — a relative of Google) to develop a $1.3 billion tech-enabled real estate project on the Toront

The road to smart city infrastructure starts with research

Distributed ledger technology (DLT), when applied correctly, can do for a city's infrastructure what existing technologies cannot.

SparkLabs Group launches Connex, an accelerator program for smart city technology

SparkLabs Group announced today that it has launched SparkLabs Connex, the latest program in its network of startup accelerators and venture funds. Focused on real estate technology (proptech) and the

NYC launches partnership network, ‘The Grid,’ to help grow urban tech ecosystem

The New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) and CIV:LAB — a nonprofit dedicated to connecting urban tech leaders — have announced the launch of The Grid, a member-based pa

The economics and trade-offs of ad-funded smart city tech

In order to have innovative smart city applications, cities first need to build out the connected infrastructure, which can be a costly, lengthy and politicized process. Third-parties are helping buil

How cities can fix tourism hell

A steep and rapid rise in tourism has left behind a wake of economic and environmental damage in cities around the globe. In response, governments have been responding with policies that attempt to li

How issues of microtransit, congestion and parking are closing in on cities

Earlier this week in a new experimental newsletter I’ve been helping Danny Crichton on, we briefly discussed transit pundit Jarrett Walker’s article in The Atlantic arguing against the view that r

Our 3 favorite startups from Urban-X’s 4th demo day

Urban-X, the urban-tech startup accelerator backed by MINI and early-stage urban-tech fund Urban.Us, hosted at its Brooklyn HQ a demo day today for its fourth cohort of companies. The seven presenti

Austin is piloting blockchain to improve homeless services

While the vagaries of the cryptocurrency markets are keeping crypto traders glued to their CoinDesk graphs, the real potential of blockchain is its capability to solve real human challenges in a decen

Do cities still want a sharing economy?

Cities make the sharing economy work, and the urban environment is the critical differentiator for experimentation, change and scale. In just a few years, the sharing economy has grown from a niche se

Teralytics wants to tap telcos’ big data to help cities get smarter about Uber and Lyft

Teralytics's big data analytics platform is targeting government agencies and transport companies wanting to understand complex problems relating to human mobility -- from how to relieve transport pre

In the smart city race, we’re betting on transit

After years of talk about smart cities, people are wondering when will we see them really begin to take shape. What will they look like? How will we interact with them? With a lightpost here, a sensor

Santa Fe enlists Rubicon Global to curb waste and ramp up recycling

Santa Fe has enlisted tech startup Rubicon Global to figure out what its residents toss in the trash, recycle or send to compost. Using data gathered by garbage collectors and trucks on their normal r

If Trump wants an easy policy win, he should focus on funding smart cities

As America’s cities continue to grow, they face mind-boggling challenges: worsening traffic, increasing pollution, expensive housing, aging infrastructure and strained services. These challenges can

Smart cities must be people-centered, equitable cities

Technology has always been a critical force deeply intertwined with the evolution of cities. The development of smart cities builds upon this strong historical foundation with a digital foundation tha
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