Author Archives: Jason Lally

Jason Lally

Jason Lally joined PlaceMatters in January of 2008. As a city and regional planner with a background in the information sciences, Jason believes that unexplored synergies exist between the real and virtual environments. His interest is to build and implement tools that inform and expand the processes of planning and decision making.

Jason has a Master’s in City Planning from the University of Pennsylvania. While at Penn, Jason explored the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) as a dynamic planning tool. In the spring of 2007, he helped model future land use in the state of Florida through 2060. The results of the modeling were used to illustrate a potential planning process for the state entitled “An Alternative Future.” In the fall of 2007, he explored the use of agent based modeling in a GIS to model pedestrian behavior in a crowded environment. He continues this work as an independent project to be applied eventually in a real planning process. Jason also has a BS in Information Sciences and Technology from the Pennsylvania State University. He currently lives in Denver, Colorado and serves as the Regional Co-Director for the PennDesign Alumni Association in Colorado and Wyoming.

Welcome Brad Barnett to the Team!

We are very excited to have someone new join our team here in Denver as our new Planning Analyst! We were immensely pleased with the caliber of the applicants to our GIS and Scenario Planning Analyst last fall, but Brad Barnett stood out even in such a strong field … he really impressed us and we [...]

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Most Exciting Trends in 2012: Better Data and Apps for Planners

This past year, we’ve seen the growth of community decision making tools around planning.  In my estimation, 2012 will continue this trend and bring more usable, integrated apps to the world of community decision making, giving planners and community leaders a broader and more efficient toolkit for engaging stakeholders in a decision-making process. In the [...]

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Scenario planning advocates and practitioners gather to discuss open source and collaboration

I recently returned from a gathering in Salt Lake convened by the Lincoln Institute for Land Policy and Sonoran Institute in concert with partners including us (PlaceMatters), OpenPlans, Fregonese Associates, the University of Utah College of Architecture and Planning (our gracious host), and Decision Commons. The agenda was ambitious but the conversations were deep and [...]

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PlaceMatters gets some great press!

This fall, PlaceMatters is in three publications!  We were part of the Metropolis Technology Issue on page 71 (online link to the article will be available next month).  You can read a brief on community outreach technologies including our own Brainstorm Anywhere.  A more in-depth article on High-Touch/High-Tech Charrettes is in this month’s Planning magazine [...]

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A National Housing and Transportation Affordability Index

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced yesterday that they’ve awarded a 2 year contract to Manhattan Strategy Group (MSG) and our friends over at the Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT) to develop a national Housing and Transportation  (H+T) Affordability Index.  CNT developed an H+T Affordability Index for 337 Metro regions; this contract [...]

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Esri calls for GeoDesign case studies

I recently received a request to post a call for case studies from a colleague at Esri, Shannon McElvaney.  The announcement is quoted below.  You can see some an example of our work in Cape Cod written up by Ken here, or watch an interview with Matt Baker on GeoDesign, or take a look at [...]

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A Pattern Language for the Public: Esri Acquires Procedural

In 1977, Christopher Alexander co-authored the book A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings and Construction.  Alexander and his co-authors lay out a series of generative patterns that form a language of solutions and problems in the built environment.  While one can argue about the patterns themselves, the thinking behind this book is what interests me the [...]

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New Spatial Decision Support Portal Available

The folks at the University of Redlands have announced the latest version of the Spatial Decision Support (SDS) Knowledge Portal.  Working with the SDS Consortiumof which PlaceMatters is a member, they have polished the interface to make the SDS ontology more accessible to users.  The SDS ontology is an expert-driven approach to provide semantic consistency [...]

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