Think back to February 2005

On Tim's point about new chances and new tools after the gaping hole of the last eight years -

I'm a kneejerk skeptical/pessemist when someone says that Web 2.0 or similar is going to transform how we all interact with cities, because the person saying it is probably citing Urban Spoon and the location-aware eight ball iPhone app. But consider this: Google Maps has only been around since February 2005, and Google Earth is a few months younger still. While it might have been possible to get aerial photos over the web covering a limited area before then*, the ease with which aerials and now a ton of additional data can be gathered is pretty amazing. Less than four years ago, only people with a big and expensive GIS could bring aerial photos to their community board meeting.

And today's improvements to Streetview are taking these online offerings to places that seemed beyond even the reach of mighty Google - this sad building in Delavan, Kansas, for example. What can planners do with Streetview (apart from explore the world from our couches)? Tons and tons. It's extremely exciting.

Putting aside the delights of iPhones and the gleaming diversions of whatever the location-based Facebook killer will be, the advent of freely available data creates a lot of new opportunites to work on climate change and beyond. For sharing data, understanding places, engaging with cities, and doing all that for free, we've come far in the last few years. Which has to be good for fixing the problem at hand, because we've a long long way still to go.


* does first place go to the DUSP/MassGIS collaboration, MIT Digital Orthophoto Browser, serving orthophotos of the Boston region from 1997 onwards?