Lincoln Institute of Land Policy Releases New Book, City Tech

CAMBRIDGE, MA—The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy has released its newest book, City Tech: 20 Apps, Ideas, and Innovators Changing the Urban Landscape, by Rob Walker.

In this thoughtful, inquisitive volume, Walker investigates technologies that have emerged over the past few years and their implications for planners, policymakers, residents, and the virtual and literal landscapes of the cities we call home. Featuring a foreword by tech journalist Kara Swisher and an afterword by urbanist and futurist Greg Lindsay, the book explores the role of technology in our rapidly urbanizing world.
Experts predict that up to 80 percent of the population will live in cities by 2050. To accommodate that growth while ensuring quality of life for all residents, cities are increasingly turning to technology, from apps that make it easier for citizens to pitch in on civic improvement projects to designs for smarter streets and neighborhoods.

“We’re on a complicated journey; our decisions can set us off in surprising directions, and opinions may differ on how to navigate the challenges ahead,” writes Walker, a Fast Company columnist and New York Times contributor, in the book’s introduction. “But based on the examples in this collection, it seems clear that collaboration, creativity, and an openness to new ideas are the keys to getting where we need to go.”

City Tech is a chronicle of the recent rise of urban technologies, featuring firsthand reflections from the founders, innovators, and researchers closest to the work and from the planners and other officials who are putting these tools into practice on the ground. It’s also a source of essential questions: What are the ethical implications of smart cities? How can cities keep up with the rapid evolution of driverless vehicles? Is building skyscrapers out of wood a viable climate solution?

“If the last decade of urban tech has been a dress rehearsal, then the curtain is now rising on the most momentous decade of change most cities have ever had to face,” writes Lindsay in the book’s afterword. “It is our turn to formulate what we demand from our technologies, versus the other way around.”

City Tech, a curated collection of newly updated columns originally published in Land Lines, the magazine of the Lincoln Institute, follows last year’s release of Mayor’s Desk by Anthony Flint, a compilation of interviews with mayors from five continents who shared their strategies for tackling global challenges at a local level. Together, the books provide tangible examples of how cities across the world have mobilized to implement innovative land-based solutions for some of society’s most critical challenges.

City Tech is available for purchase on the Lincoln Institute website. For review copies, contact Kristina McGeehan at kmcgeehan@lincolninst.edu. City Tech is distributed by Columbia University Press.

About the Author

Rob Walker is a journalist and columnist covering technology, design, business, and other subjects. A longtime contributor to the New York Times, Walker writes a column on branding for Fast Company, and has contributed to Bloomberg Businessweek, The Atlantic, Fortune, Marketplace, and many other outlets. He writes the City Tech column for Land Lines, the magazine of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. He is the coeditor of Lost Objects: 50 Stories About the Things We Miss and Why They Matter and the author of The Art of Noticing. His Art of Noticing newsletter is at robwalker.substack.com. He also serves on the faculty of the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

About the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy

The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy seeks to improve quality of life through the effective use, taxation, and stewardship of land. A nonprofit private operating foundation whose origins date to 1946, the Lincoln Institute researches and recommends creative approaches to land as a solution to economic, social, and environmental challenges. Through education, training, publications, and events, we integrate theory and practice to inform public policy decisions worldwide. We organize our work around three impact areas: land and water, land and fiscal systems, and land and communities. We work globally, with locations in Cambridge, Massachusetts; Washington, DC; Phoenix, Arizona; and Beijing, China.

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