Americans are increasingly forgoing the white picket fences of yesterday’s suburban dream and embracing the bustling sidewalks of today’s urban neighborhoods. Today, many Americans are searching for more than just a comfortable house in which to reside. They are seeking a great neighborhood they can wholeheartedly call home. They are craving the dynamic experience of “place.” According to a 2015 National Association of Realtors survey, 79% of Americans want walkable neighborhoods that offer access to goods, services, and experiences within a safe, convenient, comfortable, and interesting walk, up from 51% in 2004.  

But most cities have not heeded this resounding call for “place.” Only 30% of cities with populations over 200,000 are classified as walkable – a fundamental feature of great places. Most cities know they must deliver walkable, dynamic places that offer a high quality of life to attract talent and recruit top firms and tenants. However, cities face resistance from existing residents who do not want change or internal public sector stakeholders that have competing or outdated visions. Smaller cities lack the internal resources and expertise to properly address the demand for place. The inability to quantify and communicate the how building better places is economically profitable makes it challenging to address the corresponding supply-demand mismatch.

We created State of Place to help cities more easily deliver the kinds of places people love – walkable, livable and high quality - by quantifying their economic value. State of Place is a rich and objective measure of place quality that quantifies what people love about - and want from – places based on a proprietary algorithm. Additionally, our forecasing model shows how increasing the State of Place Index impacts pedestrian volumes and economic value. While we previously offered State of Place as a consulting product, our National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I grant enabled us to integrate our innovative technology into a user-facing software. We used design thinking and Lean Startup methods to produce a minimum viable product (MVP) version of the State of Place Software as a Service (SaaS) predictive urban data analytics platform and test its commercial viability and users’ willingness to pay. State of Place can be accessed at www.stateofplace.co.

State of Place now empowers cities to tell their own data-driven stories about the power of place and convey the fiscal “why” behind their mission to enhance quality of life. Cities can use State of Place to show why walkability and livability – place – is more than just a social good, that it is key to maintaining a city's economic competitiveness. NSF’s SBIR grant enabled us to scale our offering and unlock our expertise, democratizing an evidence-based approach to place-making.

We worked closely with potential customers – cities, developers, and investors – to understand the challenges they faced in creating better places. We conducted over 70 interviews to help us narrow down who our customer was, what specific problems they faced, which problem was most pressing, and what kind of solution – that they would be willing to pay for - would address that problem. We developed the software simultaneously, in iterations, to ensure that we built something that was not only needed by customers, but also addressed a real societal need.

The State of Place software calculates an area’s State of Place Index (ranging from 0-100) based on a combination of 290 built environment characteristics, like street trees, sidewalks, benches, etc., collected for every block. Users can break down their Index into their State of Place Profile – composed of ten key features like Pedestrian Amenities or Traffic Safety – to understand why they got their score and how to improve it. The State of Place software helps users prioritize which changes to focus on based on their quality of place goals, economic development aims, and the feasibility of making certain improvements. For example, it might be more realistic in the short term to plant some trees, and then develop a park or new stores or apartments. Next, the software allows cities to test how different scenarios, like putting in new sidewalks versus adding some restaurants with outdoor seating, would impact the State of Place Index. Finally, cities can then forecast the economic impact of those scenarios, like how a new park might increase residential property values.

More than just addressing the demand for better places, State of Place helps unleash other multiple benefits of great, walkable places, including better mental health, lowered obesity and diabetes rates, reduced risk of chronic diseases, lessened healthcare costs, lowered vehicle miles traveled and greenhouse gas emissions, and climate-change mitigation. For more information about State of Place visit www.stateofplace.co or email mariela@stateofplace.co.

Last Modified: 07/28/2016
Modified by: Mariela A Alfonzo