LimeWire's Mark Gorton Brings Open-Source To Urban Planning

mytrip writes to tell us that Mark Gorton of LimeWire fame is translating his knowledge from moving bits to moving people. Taking profits earned from his software business, Gorton is applying them to projects aimed at making urban transportation safer, faster, and more sustainable. "That's not the only connection between open-source software and Gorton's vision for livable cities. The top-down culture of public planning stands to benefit by employing methods he's lifting from the world of open-source software: crowdsourced development, freely-accessible data libraries, and web forums, as well as actual open-source software with which city planners can map transportation designs to people's needs. Such modeling software and data existed in the past, but it was closed to citizens. Gorton's open-source model would have a positive impact on urban planning by opening up the process to a wider audience, says Thomas K. Wright, executive director of the Regional Plan Association, an organization that deals with urban planning issues in the New York metropolitan area."

Comments

Re:Sounds like...

[Ironica]

Urban planning can be good and bad. Certainly Central Park is a win, but highways largely suck when they are run through existing cities. New York's mass transit is a combination of free market and planned routes...

The reason why highways and cities seem to clash so violently has to do with how the routes were "planned," or actually, that they were not really planned at all.

The US Highway Plan went through three phases. The first time, it was going to be a smaller network of mostly toll roads. With each phase, the number of miles grew, and the tolls lowered, until the 1956 plan had a large network of free roads. Each iteration was an attempt to address objections of Congresscritters.

But the last plan, when it was first introduced, left the major urban areas blank on the proposed map. The Federal highway planners thought, strangely enough, that the urban routes should be planned at the local level, based on local knowledge and needs.

What Congressional representatives saw, though, was a bunch of rural roads and "nothing" for their cities. They didn't want to vote for a plan that left them off the map.

So... the Feds drew in lines in the cities, and the routes were now a matter of Federal law, whether they "worked" or not. :-/

Personally, one of my favorite little projects that demonstrates how a lack of planning is sometimes best is at University of Maryland. They have this center mall. Basically, the kept having to re-sod it because no one would stay on the paths. During a renovation it occurred to them to just pave the deer-paths... it looks crazy but now they don't have the same sod problems.

This illustrates a really general principle of usability, though. Any system or resource has to account for how it will be used. If it doesn't, then it will be misused. This is not just a feature of urban planning, but of computer software, library books, school desks... anything you can name. If you supply a classroom with only right-handed half-desks, and the chairs are movable, then left-handed students will probably pick up their desks and turn them sideways. If you make it require five clicks to log your input correctly, but you can do it "wrong" in only three, it's going to be done wrong over and over again. And so on.

Re:Sometimes, sometimes not...

[Ironica]

While it sounds all nice and open-source-cozy-and-warm, too many chefs spoil the soup. In the input end, more opinions, points of view, and unique ideas could yield some interesting options and maybe a new and better way. But as the planning process goes on, sooner or later decisions have to be made. The crowd is not necessarily better at making these decisions, nor does it make better decisions. Even the smaller group doesn't necessarily make better decisions when you increase the size of the group.

And opening up the planning process to all comers doesn't even guarantee you get good and talented people involved. You just get more. More is not always better. Knowing when it is and is not is key.

But the fact is, by *law*, we already do have the planning process open to all comers. The issue is not whether there is an opening for public participation, but for how effective that mechanism can be to engender *true* public participation in the process.

Right now, those with the most resources can use those resources to tie up projects they don't personally like, while those without resources who might benefit from the same project are largely silent. If this software effort can level the playing field so that "all comers" can participate more equitably in the environmental clearance process (where "environmental" includes a variety of socio-demographic factors too, such as historical preservation and quality of life), it would be a great benefit (and maybe, just maybe, the 710 freeway would finally get finished).