This post is part of a partnership between ELGL and State of Place, who uses extensive knowledge of urban design and empirical analysis to quantify what people love about places and forecast why it makes sense to make them better. Check back weekly for a post from this partnership.
In case you don’t have time right this second (or in case you’re wondering whether you really should spend 20 minutes of your precious time with our CEO – trust us, you should!), here’s a sneak preview of what Mariela’s impassioned talk covers. First, Mariela transports us back to life as a carless teenager in the suburbs of Miami and explains how that inspired her to advocate for better places. Mariela then takes us along her very data-geeky journey toward the creation of State of Place and why now is the best – and critical time to adopt data-driven citymaking.
My top three takeaways from her talk (which anyone who wants to create walkable, livable, sustainable places needs to know) are:
- City-making is a matter of life and death!
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Making decisions based on data that shows you how to become the city you want to be is what being truly smart actually means!
- Data-driven city-making can get awesome places people love done!
Seriously, this is a don’t-miss (worthy of going viral, hint, hint – please do share! ;)) talk with so many more goodies and nuggets of knowledge that you have to know if you care about your neighborhoods, communities and cities! Now, without further ado, here’s Mariela!