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In the last century, we’ve learned a lot about the death and life of great cities. We have a language and a movement around building these great cities. But none of this knowledge is reflected in the tools urban planners use to create them. Instead, our master plans are built in excel.

Why is there this gap? And where do we go from here?

We’re a small team working inside Code for America to completely rethink urban planning tools. Our first effort is a modern transit planning tool: Transitmix. It’s already been used by professionals to redesign multiple major transit networks. And surprisingly, it’s made transit planning accessible enough that over 80,000 new bus routes have been proposed by regular people.

We think this is just the start. In this panel, we’ll talk about why and how modern tools and technology have such a big impact in transit planning, and how future tools could transform the field of urban planning as a whole.