Jason Lally

I am an urban planner with a background in the information sciences.  I received my Bachelor’s Degree in Information Sciences and Technology from Penn State University and Master’s in City Planning from the University of Pennsylvania.  I currently work for PlaceMatters, a non-profit devoted to improving the decision making process around land use planning through the use of novel and emerging techniques and technologies.

I am basically a generalist with interests in technology, planning, sociology, history, politics and so forth.  Many of these general areas of interest are bound together by my personal belief that we live in a world of connections, not silos.  This suits me for the task of trying to tie together technologies and techniques into a platform for civic engagement around planning issues.

I believe that context shapes every experience we have and that awareness of context is important to making informed decisions.  In my blog, synchronousCity, I try to probe emerging trends in technology that are changing the context of cities and planning.  The Internet and digital technologies are not supplanting real experiences but augmenting them.  I hope to explore the range of impacts this is having on the places we live and how we experience them.

SynchronousCity

Syncronicity: \ˌsiŋ-krə-ˈni-sə-tē, ˌsin-\ noun
Inflected Form(s):
plural syn·chro·nic·i·ties

1: the quality or fact of being synchronous
2: the coincidental occurrence of events and especially psychic events (as similar thoughts in widely separated persons or a mental image of an unexpected event before it happens) that seem related but are not explained by conventional mechanisms of causality —used especially in the psychology of C. G. Jung

-Merriam Webster Dictionary

My blog is about the exploration of technology’s impact on place and place’s impact on technology.  This is broad enough that I can cover a range of topics, but most of my posts will be about the evolving relationship between the built environment and the virtual environment.  My work in sustainability and civic engagement through PlaceMatters influences my musings.

PlaceMatters

PlaceMatters is the non-profit I work for, as mentioned above.  Here is a little information from the website:

PlaceMatters believes in informed, equitable, and effective citizen engagement in increasingly complex land use planning situations. We work to ensure that communities and organizations design and implement processes that garner broad public involvement and support and lead to sustainable, livable communities.

Through the use of novel public engagement processes and emerging technical tools, we work to enable effective land use decision-making.  Technical tools that help stakeholders understand land use tradeoffs and analyze impacts, known as “decision support tools”, when coupled with strong civic leadership and good public processes, can radically democratize what are often dysfunctional and/or expert-only-driven decisions at the community level.