My Wikinomics co-author Don Tapscott has an interesting post on Wiki cities over on wikinomics.com. He discusses the “Wiki City Rome” initiative, a project led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that uses data from cellphones and other wireless technology to illustrate the city’s pulse in real time. The project features a giant on-screen display in one of Rome’s main centers that will display a live map of the city. Don says “anyone with an Internet connect can also get access to this unique, up to the minute map of the Italian capital which includes the movement of the crowds, event locations, the real time positions of buses and trains, and even the where abouts (for now) of well known Roman personalities.”

Seems to me the project will become infinitely more powerful as they layer in other data sources from the urban environment — data that could transform the way people make decisions about day-to-day activities; the way citizens, organizations, and politicians analyze and solve problems; or where residents buy or rent property.

My colleague Dan Herman says a similar project is underway in Bangalore, where a couple of tech companies are tracking traffic patterns on the basis of SMS and cell usage, and then overlapping the call origins onto city maps to help commuters avoid congested areas.

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