17905 Urban Analytics

Description

Urban planners and designers need a range of analytic skills to understand the nature of problems and opportunities, to forecast likely scenarios, and to evaluate the outcomes of specific strategies. Valuable data is obtained directly from people, through surveys, focus groups, or other methods. There are also well-developed analytic methods for forecasting the key sources of urban change – demographic, economic, and travel. There is also now a plethora of data available from non-traditional sources such as transit turnstiles, social media postings, and Smart City initiatives that supplement more traditional secondary data sources such as the Census. These offer new opportunities, but also challenges, given their complex implications for privacy and transparency. This subject develops a sound understanding of these several categories of urban data and the analytic uses to which it is put. Students also develop an informed critical perspective on the ethical issues raised by new sources and uses of information.