Planning Pool

To start off Tech Week, we’re going to talk about something that is near and dear to the hearts of many urban planners – Google Maps! Here’s a Top 10 list of great features in Google Maps:

1. Directions – You already know that you can get directions from A to B on Google Maps, but did you know that you can get those directions for transit or for bikes? Just click on “directions” on the top left hand corner – the train looking thing represents transit directions and the bike icon represents cycling directions. They aren’t perfect, but they are pretty good!
2. Street View – Street view is a great way to nab some precedent images or other images that show what the street looks like today. You can capture a screen shot of the street view and then import … Continue Reading
   

EveryBlock is “a news feed for your block,” a mashup of municipal public information and maps. It keeps track of what’s happening on your block, in your neighborhood and all over your city. At the moment, EveryBlock is covering 11 American cities: Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami-Dade, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle and Washington, DC.

So why is this useful? Every day, loads of new information is created about the place where you live: people inspect restaurants, newspapers cover accidents, and people post photographs. Not only is this information spread out on many sites, but no one would have enough time to sort through it themselves.

EveryBlock has three main types of news:

1. Civic information — building permits, crimes, restaurant inspections and more. In many cases, this information is already on the Web but is buried in hard-to-find government … Continue Reading