Readings | Research Seminar on Urban Information Systems | Urban Studies and Planning

Student presentations will be during the Tuesday seminar time. Students are encouraged to also attend occasional UIS guest lectures.

Course readings.
SES #	TOPICS	READINGS
1	Introduction and Organizing Class Presentations
2	City Knowledge: An Emergent Information Infrastructure for Sustainable Urban Maintenance, Management and Planning - Joe Ferreira and Fabio Carrera	In preparation for this discussion, we suggest that you read or skim the following: For a full explanation of the concept of City Knowledge, you should skim Fabio Carrera's PhD Dissertation especially Part I and Part V and you should ready more carefully Part IV. Part I (PDF) Part V (PDF) Part IV (PDF) When it comes to implementing government policies, a school of thought that has been put forward by DUSP faculty, suggests that we focus on the so-called "Five tools of Government Action." A full description of these tools can be found in the book Preserving the Built Heritage edited by our own Mark Schuster and John DeMonchaux. There is a summary of the concepts in the introduction chapter. A shorter version is contained in Policy and Planning with Purpose. (PDF) The concept of "Emergence" features prominently in the City Knowledge approach. If you are interested, we suggest that you read the popular book Emergence by Steven Johnson. You may find the book very stimulating. At the very least should familiarize yourself with the concept by googling "emergence" so you can look at shorter explanations such as the Wikipedia entry for the term. Prof. Ferreira describes middleware applications in his article entitled "Information Technologies that Change Relationships between Low-Income Communities and the Public and Non-profit Agencies that Serve Them" as well as in the MIT/MAPC proposal "Intelligent Middleware for Understanding Neighborhood Markets" a pilot project of the Brookings Institution Urban Markets Initiative. For recent accounts of the Planning Support Systems that are already in use around the world, you can take a look at Klosterman's recent (2005) guest editorial in Environment and Planning B, as well as to Maguire and Longley's paper on "The emergence of geoportals and their role in spatial data infrastructures." An older, but interesting paper predating City Knowledge is Rubenstein-Montano's Survey of knowledge-based information systems for urban planning. Klosterman's Editorial (PDF) Maguire and Longley's Paper Rubenstein-Montano, B. "A survey of knowledge-based information systems for urban planning: moving towards knowledge management." Computers, Environment and Urban Systems 24 (2000): 155-172.
3	Sharing Data and Empowering Communities - Fabio Carrera and Joe Ferreira	Community of Practice 'Wiki' for the "National Infrastructure for Community Statistics." (NICS) An overview of the Urban Markets Initiative (UMI) as discussed in the full-paper version of "Using Information to Drive Change: New Ways of Moving Markets." The MIT/MAPC proposal that has been funded by the UMI program: "Intelligent Middleware for Understanding Neighborhood Markets." The Urban Institute proposal that has also been funded by the UMI program: "Decision Support Tools To Guide Urban Land Markets." Singh, Raj. "Collaborative Urban Information Systems: A Web Services Approach." Chapter 1 of Dissertation. MIT, 2004. Google™ Earth and Phil Bradley's Web site discussing the user-publishing features of Google^TM Earth.
4	Information Infrastructure and the Redevelopment of Inner Cities - Mi Diao	Literature on the Strategies to Redevelop Inner Cities. Just Skim them to get a Basic Idea about the Research and Models in this Field Porter, Michael E. "New Strategies for Inner-City Economic Development." Economic Development Quarterly 11, no. 1 (February 1997). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Periodicals Press. Seidman, Karl F. "Revitalizing Commerce for American Cities: A Practitioner's Guide to Urban Main Street Programs." Chapters 1 and 2 in Fannie Mae Foundation, September 2004, pp. 3-6. Business Improvement Districts (BID) are another revitalization model, which is quite similar to the Main Street model. If you are interested, please read the following article: Hoyt, Lorleen. "Planning through Compulsory Commercial Clubs: Business Improvement Districts." Economic Affairs 25, no. 4 (2005). The Web site of MacArthur Foundation, which provide some information about the New Communities Program and the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC). An article from "U.S.A. Today" about the successful stories of exploratory retailers in inner cities. Literature on the Information Infrastructure that may Help in the Redevelopment of Inner Cities A good summary of neighborhood indicator systems by G. Thomas Kingsley from "NNIP: Neighborhood Indicators: Take Advantage of the New Potential." Please skim the Boston indicators report 2004 by TBF (the Boston Foundation), which documents its biennial effort in Boston Indicators Project.
5	Application of Cartograms in Measuring Sprawl - Xiongjiu Liao	Grodon, Peter, and Harry Richardson. "Are compact cities a desirable planning goal?" Journal of the American Planning Association 63, no. 1 (Winter 1997): 95, 12. Galster, G., R. Hanson, M. Ratcliffe, H. Wolman, S. Coleman, and J. Freihage. "Wrestling Sprawl to the ground: Defining and measuring an elusive concept." Housing Policy Debate 12 (2001): 681-718. Tobler, Waldo. "Thirty Five Years of Computer Cartograms." Annals of the Association of American Geographers 94, no. 1 (2004): 58-73. Du, Changming, and Lin Liu. "Constructing contiguous area cartogram using arcview avenue (PDF)." Gastner, M. T., and M. E. J. Newman. "Diffusion-based Method for Producing Density-equalizing Maps." 2004.
6	Land Market Monitoring for Growth Management - Weifeng Li	General Ideas of the Growth Management Options and their Impacts (Just Skim them to get a Basic Idea) Landis, J., L. Deng, and M. Reilly. "Growth Management Revisited: A Reassessment of its Efficacy, Price Effects and Impacts on Metropolitan Growth Patterns." Working Paper 2002-02. Berkeley, CA: University of California Institute of Urban and Regional Development, 2002. Growth Management Tools: A Summary for Planning Boards in Massachusetts. (PDF) Difference Approaches of Land Market Monitoring Practice Inventory Approach: Knaap, Gerrit J. "Monitoring Land and Housing Markets: An Essential Tool for Smart Growth." Washington, DC: National Center for Housing and the Environment, 2004. (PDF) Modeling Approach: Waddell, Paul. "Monitoring and Simulating Land Capacity at the Parcel Level." In Monitoring Land Supply with Geographic Information Systems: Theory, Practice and Parcel-Based Approaches. Edited by A. Vernez-Moudon and M. Hubner. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2000. ISBN: 0471371637. Land Use Planning Purpose: Landis, John. "Characterizing Urban Land Capacity: Alternative Approaches and Methodologies." In Land Market Monitoring for Smart Urban Growth. Edited by Gerrit Knaap. Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2002. ISBN: 155844145X. Review of Raj Singh's PhD Dissertation: "Collaborative Urban Information Systems: A Web Services Approach." Chapter 1 of Dissertation. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2004. (PDF)
7	The Role of GIS in Delivering Municipal Public Services - Fazilet Tanrikulu	Harvey, F. "Developing Geographic Information Infrastructures for Local Government: The Role of Trust." The Canadian Geographer 47, no. 1 (2003): 28-36. Jacoby, S., J. Smith, L. Ting, and I. Williamson. "Developing a common spatial data infrastructure between state and local government - An Australian case study." International Journal of Geographic Information Science 16, no. 4 (2002): 305-322. Longley, P. "Geographic information systems: A renaissance of geodemographics for public service delivery." Progress in Human Geography 29, no. 1 (2005): 57-63. Maguire, D. J., and P. A. Longley. "The emergence of geoportals and their role in spatial data infrastructures." Computers Environment and Urban Systems 29 (2005): 3-14. Nevodic-Budic, Z. "Evaluating the Effects of GIS Technology: Review of Methods." Journal of Planning Literature 13, no. 3 (February 1999): 284-295. Smith, L. D., J. F. Campbell, A. Subramanian, D. A. Bird, and A. C. Nelson. "Strategic Planning for Municipal Information Systems: Some Lessons From a Large U.S. City." American Review of Public Administration 31, no. 2 (June 2001): 139-157.
8	Danxia Xie
9-11	Project Work
12	Final Project Presentations (Part I)
13	Final Project Presentations (Part II)