We want to ask how cities in the 21st century can be smarter, cleaner, and happier. This is no easy feat, as this challenge blends urban planning, architecture, technology, policy, data science, engineering, and design. This challenge is focused on research studying new cities and how we move through them. 

Cities are petri dishes for testing and observing human behavior. Culture, diversity, energy, and business are all impacted by the history of a city. It's also the setting for future policies and trends - art, music, and education but also income inequality, and corruption. We'd like to look into the nooks and crannies of cities to find what goes on inside them.

Regarding transportation, we're excited by recent efforts in autonomous vehicles, using computer vision and machine learning. High-speed rail projects and other public transit lines are engineering marvels. There's also a lot of potential in studying senior-mobility, car and bike sharing economies, and cartographic methods.

Some questions we're particularly interested in:

• What does the model city look and feel like?
• Could you design a car-less city? Bike-sharing everywhere!
• How do you encourage diversity and culture in a modern city?
• Why does a slice of NYC pizza match the price of a subway ticket?
• How do you make San Francisco more affordable, and why is it so especially bad at this?
• How does a city respond to hosting public events like Olympics or the World Cup?
• How do we make cities more accessible for people with disabilities, senior citizens, children?
• What is the impact of refugees on city infrastructure and communities? How can cities appropriately be built to respond?
• How are buildings and living environments adapting to modern cities and citizens?
• Mathematical modeling of traffic and movement
• How is census data being used in urban planning?

Examples of past cities and transportation projects that have been successfully funded:

How do parks cool Baltimore?

Measurement of Atmospheric Pollution Profiles using Drones

Urban Pollination: sustain native bees & urban crops

Do coal and diesel trains make for unhealthy air?