Exploring the social life of urban spaces through AI
We analyze changes in pedestrian behavior over a 30-y period in four urban public spaces located in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. Building on William Whyte’s observational work, which involved manual video analysis of pedestrian behaviors, we employ computer vision and deep learning techniques to examine video footage from 1979–80 and 2008–10. Our analysis measures changes in walking speed, lingering behavior, group sizes, and group formation. We find that the average walking speed has increased by 15%, while the time spent lingering in these spaces has halved across all locations. Although the percentage of pedestrians walking alone remained relatively stable (from 67% to 68%), the frequency of group encounters declined, indicating fewer interactions in public spaces. This shift suggests that urban residents are using streets as thoroughfares rather than as social spaces, which has important implications for the role of public spaces in fostering social engagement.
Taking imagery of bike lanes in Toronto: 60,000 photos later…
Imagery Update After a summer and fall of taking 360 imagery of bike lanes, I finished capturing street-level imagery of all the protected bike lanes in the City’s dataset. The last segment on November 8 was the final part of the new Harbord St bike lanes E of Grace St. So far, I’ve captured over…
Far Right Groups Targeting Pride Month - Google My Maps
Tracking the far right anti-LGBTIQ activists, Christian Nationalists, White Supremacists, and violent extremist groups targeting LGBTIQ events during Pride Month. Incident Report: https://tinyurl.com/PrideIncident Map Information: https://tinyurl.com/MappingPride #DefendPride Resources: https://itsgoingdown.org/defendpride/ Project of Radical Reports: https://www.radicalreports.org Contact: radicalreportsnewsletter@gmail.com
Experienced Segregation
We estimate a measure of segregation, experienced isolation, that captures individuals’ exposure to diverse others in the places they visit over the course of their days. Using Global Positioning System (GPS) data collected from smartphones, we measure experienced isolation by race. We find that the isolation individuals experience is substantially lower than standard residential isolation measures would suggest, but that experienced and residential isolation are highly correlated across cities. Experienced isolation is lower relative to residential isolation in denser, wealthier, more educated cities with high levels of public transit use, and is also negatively correlated with income mobility.
thundersnap 0.01: an undo button for everything
Happy July 4th! For those of us around the world contemplating independence, it's a good day to think about how we came to rely on expensiv...
TransformTO Tracking — Travel Modes by Ward
Track Toronto transportation mode share by ward, trip distance and year from the Transportation Tomorrow Survey, and progress toward the TransformTO 2030 goal of 75% of work and school trips by walking, cycling or transit.
Things You Might've Missed: March 2026 - Valerie Rayne Writes
You've seen the image, now get the details!
Marking One Year Since Cycle Toronto’s Court Victory
A blog about cycling and political advocacy based in Toronto, Canada. (#BikeTO)
IMO with Michelle Obama & Craig Robinson on Instagram: "We could all use a reminder to live our lives with just a little more courage. Thank you to @progressive for bringing us this moment."
25K likes, 229 comments - imopodcasts on July 24, 2026: "We could all use a reminder to live our lives with just a little more courage. Thank you to @progressive for bringing us this moment.".
Downtown is for people | Fortune
If the downtown of tomorrow looks like most of the redevelopment projects being planned for it today, it will end up a monumental bore. But downtown could be made lively and exciting—and it's not hard to find out how.
Ode to the Shanghai Metro - Phoebe Lemon
Wayfinding has many applications, and arguably the most important one is public transportation systems. Granted, there are many different ways to design such a system, and the politics and culture of the environment in which it will be integrated certainly plays a large role. Interestingly, often when we discuss transportation systems on the global scale, individuals are so quick to praise New York or London’s metro systems, Europe’s “high speed” rail system, or how “Uber is the most original new technology cities have seen”. All of these statements are subjective, but somehow they’ve become accepted fact, especially in the West, and I argue that anyone who gives European/American public transport that much praise is blissfully living in a bubble. As an international student who grew up in America and has visited most of its major cities, lived in China for two years, and is now studying in the Middle East, I’ve had the opportunity to use almost every public transportation system to exist. Old fashion taxis, the Maglev, high speed trains, shared bikes, shared mopeds, carpools, the bus, the metro, I have used them all, but nothing quite compares to the way China does public transport.
Fort Bliss Declarations - December 2025 | American Civil Liberties Union
Tri-Cities Dispatch (@tcitiesdispatch.bsky.social)
Daily news for Tri-Cities, BC residents. Delivered every weekday. Proudly covering local issues. 💬📸 Send us your comments and photos of the Tri-Cities: use the tag #TriCitiesDispatch tricitiesdispatch.com
About Grin - About Us
Based in Vancouver BC, Canada, we are a team of electric bike enthusiasts eager to change the face of modern transportation...
