Envisioning New Cities

In his social mapping talk, serial entrepreneur Dave Troy suggests another way that we can "map" our cities -- one that has nothing to do with roads or infrastructure.

Troy believes that a city is the "sum of the relationships of the people who live there." We are now able to quantify these relationships by visualizing data tracking people's online behavior. This is a new type of data, and one we have in abundance. Troy suggests we can go as far as to use it as a way of rethinking the cities we live in.

One thing this data reveals is that "race is a poor proxy for diversity," and if we want to diversify our cities, we need to reassess the way we think about the concept as a whole. Segregation is a choice, Troy tells us, and one that we can opt out of making with some meaningful intervention.