Yearly Archives: 2016

#DOTSmartCity Update for April 20

Ce-oRgkUMAAS4I-Here’s the latest rundown of coverage on Austin’s bid for the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Smart City Challenge!

“Where Innovation Leadership and Urbanization Collide”
By Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx
http://www.transportation.gov/fastlane/where-innovation-leadership-and-urbanization-collide

Beginning today, I will be participating in roundtables, presentations and panels that highlight transportation’s role in improving quality of life, economic development, and the environment. Continue reading →

Racing to the finish line in the Smart City Challenge

congress-blog
April 18, 2016
By Mayor Steve Adler

At first glance, a federal grant about technological innovations for mobility might not have much to do with racial equality in Austin, Texas. After all, Austin is one of seven finalists for the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Smart City Challenge, a $50-million competition to use technology to make mobility safer, cheaper, cleaner, and more effective for everyone – not just some. But as much as winning the Smart City Challenge would help Austin with mobility, it would also have a transformative impact on entire communities in my city that have never equally shared in our prosperity. Continue reading →

What I learned in Copenhagen

snow jobBy Steve Adler

We just left Copehagen, Denmark, on our innovation exchange trip for the Smart City Challenge, and the deep immersion in all things mobility prompted me to share some thoughts with you.  Clearly, increased mobility is a tool to help improve quality of life – directly in terms of minimizing congestion and indirectly to help mitigate runaway housing costs, gentrification, economic segregation, and even things like disparate health outcomes by zip codes.

I also want to explain this picture that’s posted above, but I’ll get to that below. Continue reading →