Open Data for Smart Cities

Om Malik’s post on the Big Apple opening up its data is an important indication of how cities can be smart.

Do cities figure out how to manage everything optimally with a sweeping master plan, or do they let others do that where the use cases rise to meet the problems in Darwinian fashion? I believe the latter is key … new use cases grow new behaviour, a city can help promote and orchestrate the best services further down the road, but open ecosystems will prove to be valuable in getting there.

Roadify seems to be doing a great job of helping people share parking spaces, and thanks to open data they can bundle that with timely public transport info. A lot more wholistic than if Roadify was just a very good parking app.