GovTech Research @GovTechResearch

Achieving climate-resilient urban sanitation is essential for cities to thrive. By turning waste into circular economy solutions that create jobs, protect communities & safeguard the environment, we can strengthen urban resilience for all. wrld.bg/2lxB50Xlf7W

Management-oriented research covers topics from priority species & key fisheries to ecosystem monitoring & socioeconomic analyses. These initiatives produce data & scientific advice that directly inform #SustainableFisheries management. 📖#SOMFI2025: doi.org/10.4060/cd7701…

Govt's new cycling/walking strategy will be good news for our health & communities. We welcome the targets for more local & school-run journeys to be active. Govt should build on this and set a national mode shift target, including public transport too. gov.uk/government/pub…

8km of continuous cycle lanes to be built in Wexford town over the next six years independent.ie/county/wexford…

Tirana has emerged in recent years as the Balkans’ most ambitious cycling city. The introduction of bicycle infrastructure has grown into a broader vision of child-friendly urbanism—combining hardware, software, and orgware into a wholistic strategy for reclaiming public space.🧵

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'We can't change our city. We are not Amsterdam!!1!' #Vienna🇦🇹: 'Hold my Pretzel🥨 and 16er-Blech🥫' 📍 Königsegggasse

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SB 79 takes effect July 1, legalizing 6-9 story housing near transit statewide. A major CA developer: 'A lot of that is gonna unfortunately skip Los Angeles because of Measure ULA.' Cities like Glendale, Santa Monica, and Pasadena may see the first wave.

“Unless the Legislature and governor act soon, the confusing ballot measure could end up hamstringing the finances of every jurisdiction in the state,” writes @hanlonbt. We’re urging lawmakers to strike a deal to avert that outcome. calmatters.org/commentary/202…

In Bezannes, France, a construction firm managed to build the biggest 3D-printed house in Europe. Twelve social housing apartments were built in just 34 days instead of the planned 50. This is the first project in the history of France when all structural elements and walls were 3D-printed. A regular house next to this pioneer project took 3 months longer to complete.

NEW: Last night, my City of Langford BC clients received our SILVER AWARD from the Planning Institute of British Columbia @_PIBC for our “turning point” Langford City Plan! This is a very big deal for a city that’s been boldly creating a new culture of aligned PLANNING & ACTION.

Brent Toderian @BrentToderian

4 months ago

BIG NEWS! Our new city-wide Plan for Langford, BC is a FINALIST for the Canadian Institute of Planners AWARDS OF EXCELLENCE! I love the message this recognition sends— u don’t need a big city & a big budget to create cutting-edge planning for a better city. We used a better way.

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LA's rental market is so competitive that a cottage industry of TikTok apartment scouts has emerged: entrepreneurs charging fees to find homes in a city where average one-bedrooms run 33% above the national average. latimes.com/lifestyle/stor…

Plan the train correctly. Build the train and people will ride it. It’s that simple.

SEATTLESUBMISSIONS @SEATTLESUBMISS

7 days ago

Seattle Link Light Rail just hit an ALL-TIME RIDERSHIP RECORD. 4.7 million riders in May, up 49% from last year, and the World Cup hasn’t even started yet​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ 🚊

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Santa Cruz ranked 2nd in CA for yearly population loss in 2025. With rents over $3,000/month and 57% of jobs in the lowest wage tier, residents are leaving, and the city's own housing production hasn't kept pace with demand. lookout.co/santa-cruzs-po…

LA's wildfire rebuild lags badly—only 55 homes completed across Altadena and Palisades combined, vs. ~165 at the same point after Santa Rosa's 2017 fire. Survivors report a ~$600K average gap between insurance coverage and actual rebuild costs. politico.com/newsletters/ca…

Really good news. Over the last 15 years the world gained more mangroves than it has lost, thanks to stronger legal protections following the 2004 tsunami which proved their importance in protecting coasts. Also vital for fish and in absorbing carbon. bbc.co.uk/news/articles/…

In a city where every improvement is met with bureaucracy and exorbitant price tags, it's refreshing to see @NYC_DOT do easy things to make life in New York a little better... Like turning an extra lane of parking in Greenwich Village into a new seating area 🌊

The French hate air conditioning. So Paris built a 120-kilometre machine under its streets for producing cold. It’s called Fraîcheur de Paris, and it does for summer heat what district heating did for winter: centralise the problem. Instead of every museum, office, hotel, hospital and shop bolting its own cooling plant onto the building, Paris moves cold through pipes. The network sends water chilled to 2 to 4°C through buried supply lines. The water enters a connected building, absorbs heat through an exchange station, then returns at 12 to 14°C to be cooled again. It essentially functions with two pipes. One carries the cold out, the other carries heat back. The production plants cool the circuit from 12°C to 4°C. Some sites use the Seine as a heat sink. In colder periods, the system can use the river’s own temperature for free cooling, which means the machines work less and the electricity demand drops. The Seine water doesn’t become the building water. It stays separate, passing temperature across heat exchangers. The scale is pretty strange when you see it written down though. It's got 15 production sites, 4 storage sites, 120 km of underground network with 924 subscribers. This has resulted in 7 million square metres cooled, and 493 GWh of cooling sold. A cold utility running beneath one of the densest cities in Europe. The Forum des Halles has been cooled this way since 1979. The Louvre since 1986. Galeries Lafayette, Opéra Garnier, Hôtel de Ville, Station F, La Samaritaine and the National Assembly all sit on the same idea. Tourists stand in the Louvre looking at paintings while a municipal cold loop does part of the dull work below ground. The boring part is the breakthrough. Cold can be stored at night in chilled water or ice, then used during daytime peaks. The network is monitored from a control room with more than 125,000 control points. A delivery station inside a building takes 5 to 7 times less space than a standalone cooling installation and avoids the roof and façade clutter that turns cities into compressor farms. That matters because conventional air conditioning solves heat by moving it somewhere nearby. In a dense city, thousands of private machines mean thousands of outdoor units rejecting heat into streets, courtyards and roofs, plus refrigerants, noise, vibration and maintenance spread across every building. Paris’s public cooling network has a stated coefficient of performance of 4, against 3 for a wet standalone system and 2 for a dry standalone system. Against an equivalent set of autonomous installations, Fraîcheur de Paris says the network gives 100% higher energy efficiency, 35% less electricity use, 90% fewer refrigerant-fluid emissions and 50% lower CO2 emissions. The climate backdrop is the real reason this exists. Paris ran a full crisis exercise called “Paris at 50°C” in 2023. Météo-France’s 2050 reference trajectory for France points to heatwave days becoming five times more frequent, hot nights rising sharply in urban centres, and some local extremes around 48°C becoming possible. The city signed a 20-year concession in 2022 with Fraîcheur de Paris, owned 85% by ENGIE and 15% by RATP. The contract is worth a projected €2.4 billion. The plan is to extend the network by 158 km by 2042, add 20 production plants and 10 storage sites, and reach more than 3,000 subscribers, including hospitals, nurseries, schools and care homes. This is basically the infrastructure version of admitting that summer is becoming a public systems problem...

“The most effective approach is to build a network and built it as quickly as possible. But bike lanes alone do not make a network. In Dutch cities up to two thirds of the network is in mixed, low-traffic conditions, where the bike is the dominant mode.” wiseair.vision/en/blog/pensar…

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Interoperable Europe @InteroperableEU

a week ago

Have you submitted your case to the Public Sector Tech Watch Best Cases Award 2026 yet?🏆 #PublicAdministrations across 🇪🇺 can showcase their innovative uses of #AI, #Blockchain, Digital Twins, Quantum Computing and more! 📅 Deadline: 30 June 👉 link.europa.eu/4DNMYW

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Huntington Beach lost its years-long fight against CA's housing rules and now faces fines up to $50,000/month for failing to plan for more homes.