The renovated Place de la République shows the power of the public square.

Can we have the benefits of Big Data without the drawbacks? Is there a way to harness the democratic power of information while also promoting democratic open-mindedness and popular empowerment?

The Greeks believed humans could only achieve their full potential in the context of a city and perhaps no city built by Greeks aspired to this goal more enthusiastically than Constantinople. As a truly natural city, could this former Byzantine capital serve as a paradigm for sustainable urbanization and green growth in cities today?

A more clever use of technology in cities would bring retired people together, for example, or allow municipalities to know exactly where their aging solo residents live, so that if there’s an environmental disaster such as a heat wave or a flood, teams can reach out to the isolated. The data-crunching can be done digitally, while the reaching-out can be done in person.

Tracing the development of urban policy in the United States is an often-vexing affair in historical wayfinding. Urban policy in the United States has been, like our metropolitan areas themselves, something of a sprawling mess.