Philadelphia & State of Place - Ensuring Spatial Justice and Restoring Health Equity!

We’re SO excited about our project with the City of Philadelphia, in which we’ve used our AI-driven data capture technology to automatically extract data on 150+ micro-scale urban design features from digital street-level images across 17 zip-codes, as part of a pilot effort aimed at harnessing the power of data-driven approaches to usher in spatial justice and restore health equity. But don’t take our word for how awesome this project is - StateTech recently covered it as part of its showcase of the top Eight Smart Cities to watch, in which it interviewed Emily Yates, the Smart City Director within the City of Philadelphia’s Office of Innovation and Technology. Check out the article and find out more about what we’re up to below!

Vulnerable communities face myriad structural inequities in access to livable, sustainable places that promote quality of life. At the core of these spatial injustices are poor quality, community-level, micro-scale built environments and mobility infrastructure (e.g., street trees, parks, crosswalks, bike lanes, sidewalks, etc.). For example, disproportionately higher morbidity and mortality from COVID-19 among Black, LatinX, and Indigenous communities stem from disproportionately higher rates of chronic disease in these vulnerable populations, which in turn are tied to exposure to unsafe, unhealthy built environments created by community-level disinvestment. The lack of access to quality urban design results in multiple disparities across myriad facets of quality of life, including health, economic, social, and environmental outcomes.

The City of Philadelphia, ranked among the poorest of the nation’s most populous cities, is testament to the deleterious effects of the exponentially negative impacts of inequitable built environment and mobility infrastructure investments that lead to multiple disparities, including higher rates of environmental hazards, Covid19, Covid19 comorbidities, crime and violence, unemployment, and others. While the City is aware of the scale and significance of this problem, it lacks data around the micro-scale built environment and mobility features contributing to these spatial injustices evidenced by quality of life disparities, which in part prevents the identification, prioritization, and implementation of effective urban design and mobility improvements needed to create more equitable, resilient places.

Accordingly, the City of Philadelphia approached State of Place to conduct a pilot project to use its AI-powered urban design data and predictive analytics software to: (1) collect data on micro-scale urban design features, especially in vulnerable communities; (2) analyze spatial relationships between the quality of the public realm and disadvantaged communities, focusing on Covid19, Covid19 comorbidities, urban floods, and heat waves; (3) identify needed urban design changes; and (4) engage stakeholders to understand how project data could best be utilized to inform practice and policies that would facilitate the creation of more livable, equitable, sustainable places.

Based on initial responses from the City, we believe the City can extract significant value by expanding the geographical, substantive, and applied scope of the pilot. Specifically, the City has expressed interest in conducting a city-wide built environment assessment, expanding quality of life indicators examined to include crime and violence rates, and developing robust forecasting and predictive analytics models to help the City prioritize specific areas and projects and generate a data-driven rationale for implementing needed changes.