Today, urban areas are plagued with congestion. Widening streets and making cars move faster does not work. Cities are grappling with how to move people today and how to move people in the future when new technologies become available. In this lesson, participants learned about technologies available today that are being tested for future use. They worked in teams to design a transportation system of the future.

Across the United States, governments are working to improve infrastructure. Some cities are using technology to leverage the internet of things and become “smart cities”. Projects, like Chicago’s Array of Things utilize sensors to collect real time, location based data that can be used to evaluate the condition of infrastructure as well as the effect that it has on people’s lives. Other cities still struggle to use data to make informed decisions about infrastructure investments. In this session, participants learned about different ways to collect, analyze, and utilize data to improve infrastructure systems.