Considering the digital revolution, Latin American and Caribbean cities should be poised to generate, analyze, and disseminate urban data. Yet, all too often, our partners do not have the tools necessary for delivering urban services to informal areas, identifying and allocating lands best suited for development while protecting at-risk areas, and working with individual … [Read more...] about OpenStreetMap Extraction tool: generating neighborhood-level maps
About Patricio Zambrano Barragán
OpenMapKit: create and systematize surveys in the field
Paper records are still quite common for field data collection in many housing agencies, where the infrastructure required to create, implement, manage and maintain survey data often includes paywalls or high levels of technical expertise. OpenMapKit solves one of the most immediate needs for government agencies to collect and manage data from the field, incorporating automatic … [Read more...] about OpenMapKit: create and systematize surveys in the field
DATUM: facilitating community collection and public use of urban mobility data in the Americas
In cities throughout Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), public transport serves an essential role, connecting people with employment, commerce, leisure, and each other. However, public transport networks in LAC cities, both formal and informal, can lack detailed information about routes and schedules, leaving users to rely on word of mouth to know what routes can take them … [Read more...] about DATUM: facilitating community collection and public use of urban mobility data in the Americas
Getting Rural Electrification Right: Lessons from Northern Haiti
Español | English A couple of years ago, during one of my first trips to Trou-du-Nord, a bustling town of about 45,000 people in Northern Haiti, I met Emmanuel, a mason who spends much of his team in the Dominican Republic working construction. The day I met Emmanuel, he was busy at work finishing up a new home for his mother. What struck me most was that he was using … [Read more...] about Getting Rural Electrification Right: Lessons from Northern Haiti
Recycling: The Price is Right - part 2
Español | English In a previous post, I gave an overview of one of Ecuador’s new “green” taxes: a USD$ 0.02 charge on non-returnable plastic bottles (made of PET, a material that can take up to 700 years to decompose). What impact do these tax instruments have on informal recyclers? Meant not only to stimulate the local recycling market and to address the negative … [Read more...] about Recycling: The Price is Right – part 2