PLANNING PRACTICE

Washington, D.C., provides another example. Today, we have opportunities to move beyond
In 2014 officials offered three proposals for new el- static engagementwhere we present the stake-
ementary school boundaries. The switch would ad- holder with finished drafts of plans, designs, models,
dress overcrowded and underused schools, as well or prototypesto more dynamic engagement where

Model Citizens
as travel and safety challenges, but the proposals
would also change the traditional school assignment
method. The Washington Post developed an inter-
active map (tinyurl.com/oddmdxs) with data from
the Office of the Deputy Mayor of Education to help
Visualization, modeling, and simulation technologies are immersing parents understand the proposed zone changes
stakeholders in the planning process. By KEVIN C. DESOUZA and KENDRA L. SMITH which would affect how students were assigned to
schoolsas well as the current middle and high
school feeder patterns, options for replacing feeder
AYBE THE TASK AHEAD OF YOU IS AS SIMPLE AS WORKING WITH COMMUNITY patterns with lottery admissions, and options for at-
members to place a new left turn in a residential area. (Okay, that should be simplein theory.) Or tending schools other than a familys neighborhood
maybe its as complex as siting a new factory, with all its attendant social and environmental implica- school. That data-driven approach provided early vi-
tions, in the middle of a large, densely populated city. You might even be on a team evaluating the sualizations of the how the proposed changes would
impacts of a national decision: opening oil and gas exploration in Mexico to foreign investors (more impact neighborhoods.
on that later). Regardless of the project scope, emerging information technologies in visualization, The technologies planners use today are sophis-
simulation, and modeling are opening up new avenues for greater collaboration and citizen engage- ticated, but the idea of using visual technologies to
ment in the planning process. These technologies allow users to conceptualize and weigh options solve challenging problems is not new. Back in 1854,
on urban issues in a data-driven wayaiding both accuracy and efficiency. The end result is more Dr. John Snow used a dot map of cholera incidences
informed decision making. The vast amounts of data collectedfrom sensors, cameras, satellite by location in London that helped him discover that
images, and morecreate opportunities for new modes of engagement. Take Chicagos Windygrid. the disease was waterborne (not caused by poor air
Its a real-time, geospatial data dashboard that hosts about 600 datasets from sources such as the 911 quality) but also that the outbreak could be traced
and 311 services, building information, transit, andimportantlypublic tweets, that gives access to a water supply contaminated with sewage. That
to real-time and historical data to help leaders gauge the overall health and function of the city. It can discovery not only provided solutions to the acute
show sanitation, maintenance, and weather incident (think: storm damage) information, as well as problem, it also established the basic principles of
highlight nonemergency events such as parades or sporting events. public health that are still present today and eventu-
ally led to a future focus on water sanitation.
the stakeholders interact directly with our underly-
ing data and models, allowing them to simulate for
themselves various alternatives so that they can un-
derstand the intended and unintended consequenc-
es of decisions. (For more on leveraging data for
planning, see Data-Driven, Planning, April 2015.)
Visualization
In the busy world of urban planning, important in-
formation and data can get buried in spreadsheets
and reports. When conveyed visually, data delivers
more powerful and meaningful messages.
In 2011, the Guardian newspapers interactive
team developed an interactive visualization (tinyurl
.com/olltpbf) of rumors that proliferated during the
UK riots that year. Unsubstantiated stories about
various occurrences abounded, and people took to
social media to show support, opposition, or skepti-
cism regarding a particular occurrence. The inter-
active team created rumor timelines that showed
key tweeters, information that was retweeted, and
the associated sentiments, all of which were color-
coded.
Each cluster of colorsgreen, red, or goldre-
flected a specific tweet that was significantly retweet-
ed. It allowed them to follow a rumor from its incep-

Yellow card #1:

Bruno Martins Indi
2014 FIFA WORLD CUP SEMIFINALS: NETHERLANDS VS. ARGENTINA at 1:45 PM
Researchers created a visualization of tweetsand tweeters sentimentsduring the event. Yellow card #2:
Martin Demichelis
SENTIMENT SCORE at 1:49 PM
NEGATIVE POSITIVE
Goal #1:
Klass-Jan Huntelaar
at 2:45 PM
Sentiment:
-100
11 PM
-3,588
Type
The
JULY 9, 2014
NEDvARG
trends of distinct count of F1 and sum of Mark (GoalsCards#csv (GoalsCards.csv)) for F2 Minute. For pane Distinct count of F1: Color shows sum of F3. For pane Sum of Mark (GoalsCards#csv (GoalsCards.csv)): Color shows details about Type (GoalsCards#csv (GoalsCards.csv)). The marks are labeled by Player Name (GoalsCards#csv (GoalsCards.csv)).

2,600
100
0
2600
2500
2400
2300
2200
2100
2000
1900
1800
1700
1600
1500
1400
1300
1200
1100
1000
900
800
700
600
500
400
300
200
Number of Tweets Tweets
Yellow Card

Overall
7,358 Sentiment

Bruno Martins Indi Klaas Jan Huntelaar

2,400
2,200
2,000
1,800
TWEET COUNT

1,600
1,400
1,200
1,000
800
600
400
200
0
11 PM PST 1 AM 3 AM 5 AM 7 AM 9 AM 11 AM 1 PM 3 PM 5 PM 7 PM 9 PM 11 PM 1 AM
2 AM
4
7
11
12
1
9
3
5
6
8
10 PM
AM
PM
Time [July 9, 2014]

SOURCE: ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY DECISION THEATER NETWORK

26 Planning October 2015 American Planning Association 27


tion, including who started it and when, how it proliferated, and
how others reacted to it over time.
One rumor they followed was that police beat a 16-year-old
girl. The visual timeline clearly shows when the rumor started, and
that a few hours later questions about its accuracy arose. That was
followed by more people retweeting the rumor. When someone
posted a possible video of the situation, tweeters began to ques-
tion its validity again, since the video showed a disturbance but
no beating. Still, without evidence of a beating, the video seemed
to breathe new life into the rumor, questioning stopped, and the
video was widely disseminated over social media.
The team captured important patterns that revealed how pow-
erful informationespecially visual informationcan be. It also
shows a potential way that planners can visually grasp citizen
sentiment, how quickly issues can take off, and how quickly senti-
ments change.
At the Columbia University Spatial Information Design Lab,
researchers in 2006 created Million Dollar Blocks, a visualization
tool that uses data from the criminal justice system to demon-
strate how incarceration displaces people and affects neighbor-
hoods. In New York City, decades of gentrification, wars on
crime, and various policy interventions have had harsher effects
on poor, minority communities. Further, the researchers showed
in their visualizations that in many large U.S. cities, more than $1
million can be spent to incarcerate individuals who hail from the
same single city blockso-called Million Dollar Blocks (tinyurl.
com/o5dffyh).
Researchers infer from the visualizations that the incarceration
of these community members has significant impacts on educa-
tion, housing, health, and familiesimpacts that will, in turn, re-
quire urban planning and public policy attention.
Just last year, the Arizona State University Decision Theater
Network (of which coauthor Kevin Desouza was interim director)
analyzed more than 124 million tweets related to the FIFA World
Cup, which took place in Brazil from June 12 through July 13. By
using social media, geotagging, and visualization technologies,
DTN gained richer insights about the event and the physical space.
Using sentiment-analysis tools, tweets were analyzed and translat-
ed into high-definition visualizations that reflected tweet volume
and user sentiment, as well as where and when it occurred.
Two analyses illustrate this. The Twittersphere reacted strongly
to an incident in which Uruguays Luis Suarez bit Italian defender
Giorgio Chiellini on June 25. The next day, he was suspended. Neg-
ative sentiment continued for days after.
The team also looked at Twitter volume and sentiment dur-
ing a 24-hour period surrounding the semifinal match between
Netherlands and Argentina on July 9. Pregame sentiment is a bit
difficult to explain without some context (which we wont go into
here), but during the game, shifts in the Twitter data are clearly un-
derstood. Tweet volume spiked in response to consecutive yellow
cards, generating negative sentiment scores (represented in red),
while Klaas-Jan Huntelaars goal about an hour later generated an
outpouring of positive sentiment (green).
For planners, exercises such as these, which extract and analyze
sentiments, can be valuable for understanding residents overall
perception of projects as well as their attitudes toward various re-
lated interventions.
28 Planning October 2015
Data analysis and engagement
Planners commonly use surveys to collect information. Tradition-
ally, a group will collect survey data, analyze it, and present the in-
formation verbally and in report format. Other stakeholders have
little input. This creates space for limited engagement, incomplete
analysis, and poor actionable information.
Visualization offers an opportunity to engage more with data.
The Arizona State University Decision Theater worked with the
Raza Development Fund, an organization that serves the Latino
community and low-income families in Phoenix through the in-
vestment of capital and financing solutions. To find ways to im-
prove services, Raza used two door-to-door surveys for two South
Phoenix groups1,000 families and 80 business ownersand fed
the data into a variety of commercial and in-house software pro-
grams to generate a visual representation of responses.
From there, high-definition visualization dashboards both of-
fered insights into respondents answers and sparked more ques-
tions. Another important outcome: Community leaders walked
away with more than a summary report. They now had a tool for
inspecting the data themselves, drilling down on key elements of
the survey, and even doing on-the-fly analyses.
Collaboration throughoutinvolving representatives from
Raza, the DTN team, and South Phoenix communitieshelped
the partners to define the project and scope, as well as make deci-
sions based on the results shown on the dashboard.
Several interesting correlations between the data and individu-
als familiar with the South Phoenix neighborhoods were revealed.
The question, What is missing in your community that can im-
prove quality of life? yielded various responses, but most people
called for more streetlights. That came as a surprise to community
leaders, who expected people would say more police because of
the high crime in the area. Discussions with residents revealed that
streetlights were a bigger need, in part because their absence made
cab drivers feel unsafe, causing them to avoid the neighborhoods.
Drilling down, they found correlations between the amount of
time someone has lived in the areaand their specific location
to their response. Largely, residents of 20-plus years were likely to
call for more streetlights. Among the people expressing a need for
more police, many lived near intersections where crime tradition-
ally happens.
Further, the business assessments revealed the impact of a ma-
jor state law: 2010s controversial anti-immigration law known as
SB 1070, which requires police to determine the immigration sta-
tus of someone if there is a reasonable suspicion they are in the
U.S. illegally. Overwhelmingly, business owners said that SB 1070
had negative impacts on their business. Interestingly, those that
claimed no impact had fewer employees than business owners who
noted a negative impact.
The visualization of urban datasets also proved very helpful
in terms of citizen engagement and transparency in New York. In
2013, the New York City Department of City Planning released
MapPLUTO (Property Land Use Tax Lot Output), a massive
detailed spreadsheet of every piece of property in the city. This
dataincluding the unique tax lots, number of buildings on the
lot, square footage, and other tax informationfrom the countrys
largest city offered several opportunities for research and investiga-
tion into practices and policies.
The chief science officer of the cloud-based mapping platform
CartoDB, Andrew Hill, created several visualizations, such as the
number of residential units per tax lot, the age of buildings by loca-
tion, the largest private landowner in Manhattan (groups related to
Columbia University), and other useful and interesting data visu-
alizations that clue citizens into the citys policies and land owner-
ship (tinyurl.com/ndabgdr).
Modeling and simulation
Beyond visualization, modeling and simulation provide ways to
test how a variable will behave alongside other variables, without
having to test it in real life. When complex data and information
are hard to process, users may find it difficult to gauge subtle com- about the potential impacts from their design changes. Through
binations of decisions. This is particularly troublesome when deal-
ing with large-scale, complex problems that affect individuals, in-
stitutions, and systems, and it can often have significant short- and
long-term consequences.
A tool planners and others know well illustrates this completely.
The game SimCity lets players build a city by simulating the actions
of an urban planner and developing residential, commercial, and
industrial zones. The player (who serves as the mayor) starts with
a blank map and must expand the city within the budget provided,
as well as install a government, implement services for citizens
(schools, police, fire departments, parks, and health), and make
tough decisions on financial trade-offs. Planners and their local
government colleagues must constantly sift through these complex
issues, but few are armed with such a robust way to simulate the
impacts of their decision making.
In What SimCity Teaches Us About Real Cities of the
Future(tinyurl.com/b9rl8fc), Adam Sneed recalls important deci-
sions he made when playing the game. To build revenue he could
dedicate himself to industry, which he knew would bring in money
but would do environmental damage. Or he could diversify by in-
vesting in commerce, education, and tourism, an approach that
would take considerably more time.
As in real life, when his imaginary city hit hard times, it was
hard to change course because earlier decisions were entrenched.
Likewise, he got a lesson in resiliency. When the citys key indus-
try nosedived, it plunged the whole place into turmoil. (For a real-
life example, we need only to turn to single-industry towns like
Detroit.)
For planners, achieving a goal while satisfying multiple wants,
needs, and desiresas well as competing objectivesfrom mul-
tiple stakeholders is a challenge. Simulating multiple scenarios and
analyzing the various trade-offs can help, but too often, these exer-
cises are done by experts behind closed doors. Today, we have tools
and environments that let us bring stakeholders into this process,
allowing for increased engagement and transparency.
A great example of this is the Arizona Budget Analysis Tool,
an interactive model that demonstrated how different decisions
would affect the overall budget and the budgets of various state
agencies. AzBAT (www.dtn.asu.edu) allowed decision makers to
engage multiple stakeholders with competing needs. Planners fre-
quently find themselves in similar situations, particularly where
financing is concerned, and modeling and simulation can provide
the context and visible evidence necessary to see the workability
and consequencesof a particular approach.
PLANNING PRACTICE
Researchers at the Digital Arts, Leadership & Innovation Lab in
Computer Science at Dartmouth College are developing the Col-
laborative Urban Planning Sandbox (tinyurl.com/qzgfydo) to pro-
vide intuitive modeling for both technical and nontechnical users
to publicly collaborate and deliberate.
CUPS is a traveling interactive planning system that provides
users with physical blocks on a special table that represents dif-
ferent structures such as schools, residential buildings, and agri-
cultural buildings. Usersincluding policy makers, professionals,
and community membersplace and move blocks at will and a
3-D visualization reflects the changes, and offers design tips and
guidance as needed. The moves generate immediate feedback
CUPS, groups who previously couldnt or wouldnt engage together
in the design process have greater opportunities to collaborate on
issues that can be trying and contentious.
Similarly, a collaboration was undertaken to conduct a multi-
stakeholder modeling of energy reform in Mexico. Mexico has de-
cided to open up and auction off its oil and natural gas reserves
to foreign investors and competitors for the first time in 77 years.
To optimize investments, DTN developed a holistic model that
helps visualize various investment scenarios. Using DTNs Com-
plex Systems Frameworka proprietary software that enables sta-
tistical models to be visualized in single or multiscreen environ-
mentsan interactive seven-screen model was created. The model
allows simulation of various energy investment options (deep-
water drilling, for example) and displays their impact on socio-
economic variables such as GDP, job creation, and tax revenue.
Representatives of the federal Secretara de Energa de Mxico
used the tool in early 2015 to explore different scenarioswhat
happens if they modify the investment amounts for exploration
and production, for instance? Energy planners quickly grasped
which options would be best for fostering job creation, lowering
carbon emissions, or achieving some other result, and Mexican of-
ficials are now empowered to make data-driven decisions.
Technologies are opening up new avenues for us to engage with
stakeholders and immerse them in all aspects of the planning pro-
cess. By allowing diverse stakeholders to come together to resolve
differences, analyze trade-offs, and simulate both the intended and
the unintended consequences of decisions, emerging modeling, vi-
sualization, and simulation tools make decision making stronger,
more transparent, and timely.  n
Kevin C. Desouza is an ASU Foundation professor of Public Affairs, the associate
dean of research at ASUs College of Public Service and Community Solutions,
and a senior research fellow of the Decision Theater Network. Kendra L. Smith is a
postdoctoral fellow at the College of Public Service & Community Solutions and a
research fellow at the Center for Urban Innovation at ASU.
RESOURCES
OTHER TOOLS FOR DATA ANALYSIS
Tableau (visual analytics): tableau.com.
Complex Systems Framework (open-source decision technology):
complexsystemsframework.com.
Gephi (interactive visualization): gephi.github.io.
NetLogo (programmable modeling environment):
ccl./northwestern.edu/netlogo.
Repast (open-source modeling and simulation platforms):
repast.sourceforge.net.
Vensim (simulation software): vensim.com.
American Planning Association 29