What We’re Doing

Mission

The Urban Tech Hub of the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech applies digital technology to improve people’s lives in cities. We identify challenges and opportunities, train the next generation of tech leaders, and advance research and urban tech engineering solutions in real-time. We work with a wide range of partners, from established industries and urban tech startups to communities and municipal governments. We bring together thought leaders and engage communities to further the positive impact of urban technologies.

Projects

How NYC Moves: Tech-Accelerated Data Solutions for Transportation and Development Approvals in NYC

Modern big data, technologies, and AI can speed up and unlock more projects and developments across New York City according to the new report How NYC Moves: Tech-Accelerated Data Solutions for Transportation and Development Approvals in NYC, coauthored by Cornell Tech’s Jacobs Urban Tech Hub and the Mayor’s Office of Policy and Planning. Inspired by a 2-day symposium of transportation technical experts organized in a collaboration by the coauthors as well as the NYC Department of Transportation, the report identifies 21 recommendations for streamlining the common transportation analysis, processing, and review required for proposed developments that can stretch on for up to 8 months, which can translate into an additional 6% higher project cost.

Advanced modeling capabilities, computer vision, and targeted automation of processes are some of the technologies and techniques highlighted across the report’s five sections, aimed to empower City officials to accelerate analyses, requirements and improve the accuracy and speed of their reviews. The report is a follow up to the Mayor’s “Get Stuff Built” initiative, which outlined 111 efficiency recommendations for City approvals, and flagged the transportation requirements now addressed in How NYC Moves as the primary impediments.

How Cities Make Software Together

As cities become more complex, municipal governments are increasingly relying on digital technology to measure, analyze, and optimize city systems. Even as cities rely more on software to function, they struggle to obtain and maintain software. Open Source Software (OSS) provides an alternative opportunity for cities to fulfill their software needs, while avoiding procuring costly and inflexible propriety software. However, OSS requires enormous effort to create, and even more to deploy and maintain.

What are more robust and resilient strategies for municipal governments to use when developing open source technology development? What are new tools, processes, and stakeholders needed to spark, scale, and sustain open source development for cities?

Tech and Innovation Center Series

Bloomberg Philanthropies Local Infrastructure Hub has launched a Tech and Innovation Center (T&IC) Series, a new initiative curated by the Jacobs Urban Tech Hub at Cornell Tech and U.S. Digital Response (USDR). This 18 month online webinar series will be dedicated to helping local leaders navigate and understand the large quantities of information from the federal government on the nearly 400 funding opportunities available through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

This series will improve how cities leverage technology to improve their federal infrastructure funding proposals over the next 18 months. Programs will focus on helping cities improve their proposals in response to Notices of Funding Opportunities (NOFO’s) by adopting state-of-art technologies, expanding their technology capacity, and integrating aspirational technology “moonshots” for their cities.

Bus Observatory API

The Bus Observatory is a public archive of real-time transit data. Intended for students, transit researchers, and advocates, this free service collects, archives, and distributes bulk bus position data from cities around the world, sampled at one-minute intervals.

Explore API

The Urban Tech Mosaic: The Systems Powering the Next New York

This interactive analysis of New York City’s new urban tech ecosystem identifies more than 500 enterprises engaged in urban tech, spanning ten categories of essential urban systems for buildings, food, energy, mobility and more. They range in size from big companies to small startups. University research centers and government innovation agencies play a part, too. Most tech stars focus on traditional industry sectors and policy areas. But some focus on the city itself—they create urban tech.

Explore Mosaic

Horizon Scan

The Future of Urban Tech is an ongoing effort initiated in 2020-1 by the Urban Tech Hub of the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech. The purpose of this project is to provide a curated body of knowledge on anticipated scientific discoveries and applied technology innovations of interest to urban engineers.

Horizon Scan Explorer

Rebooting NYC

In January 2022, the Jacobs Institute’s Urban Tech Hub at Cornell Tech released the final Rebooting NYC report, which proposes new and existing urban tech solutions to some of New York City’s biggest challenges.

After releasing a draft of the report in May of 2021, the Urban Tech Hub consulted with hundreds of tech, civic and community leaders, including current and former city council members and state senators, other elected officials, local business improvement districts and chambers of commerce. The team of 13 researchers, including several Cornell Tech students and alumni, was led by Rohit T. Aggarwala, a Senior Urban Tech Fellow at the Hub.

Tree Folio

Cornell AAP’s Design Across Scales lab has developed a Tree Folio for New York City. Tree Folio is the development of a high fidelity understanding and modeling of each individual street tree in New York City. This includes the trees physical dimensions, species information, and it’s interactions with surrounding environments and infrastructures.

Explore Tree Folio

NYC Recovery Challenge

The NYC Recovery Challenge began in spring 2021 when three leaders in New York City’s tech ecosystem, Cornell Tech, Tech:NYC and Google for Startups came together with the shared goal of helping New York City’s business recovery. The goal of the inaugural NYC Recovery Challenge is to support 10 local startups who can achieve measurable impact in helping NYC recover from the economic impacts of the pandemic, while addressing underlying ways to achieve equitable and sustainable job growth in the city.