Improving Beijing’s Urban Transportation with Crowdsourced Mapping

[Guest blog post written by Anahi Ayala Iacucci, Innovation and New Technologies advisor. Anahi was the Ushahidi strategy consultant for the Beijing project in 2011. She blogs at Diary of a Crisis Mapper]

In February 2011, Ushahidi’s Patrick Meier launched a novel project with the World Bank in Beijing. The aim of the project was to see how the Ushahidi platform could be used by the municipal authorities in the city to address traffic and urban transport problems in the city.  Beijing and other Chinese cities have transformed dramatically over the last two decades. Where Chinese cities used to be dominated by walkable neighborhoods and inhabited by swarms of bike riders, recent development has focused almost exclusively on the needs of the automobile, leaving many bike riders and pedestrians marginalized.