Car-sharing program in Paris. Autolib’ is a project spearheaded by Paris’ mayor, Betrand Delanoë, and is part of a larger initiative to reduce air pollution in Paris by 32% before 2012.

Real-time virtual collaborations in city planning using a central open-source online model in Los Angeles

Retrofitting of on-campus dormitories with a monitoring system that tracks energy and water use and gives residents real-time data on their resource consumption habits via the Internet.

Flexible bus service that connects the hilly, low-density areas of Genoa through GPS-GIS integrated bus-monitoring software allows a central call center to manage the bus fleet dynamically according to demand.

A service to make drivers more knowledgeable about their environmental performance while they are on the road.

European partnership of companies and government organizations from eleven countries committed to improving the efficiency of street lighting to decrease energy consumption and improve local environmental quality. Oslo is currently in the process of retrofitting over 50,000 city streetlights with communications and remote control technologies.

The Google shuttle system is managed adaptively to allow revisions to bus routes based on regional traffic data and changing employee demographics. Because Google tracks and records real-time information about its bus fleet, employees can get updates on bus delays and schedules via their computers or cell-phones.

The Intermittent Bus Lane System is a traffic management system that improves the efficiency of public transportation without significantly curtailing available road space for other vehicles.

In Abu Dhabi, construction is currently underway on a six square kilometer zero-waste, zero-emissions, and zero-car concept city called Masdar. The Masdar Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) system will consist of a fleet of small, solar-powered electric vehicles capable of carrying up to six passengers directly between any of the city’s approximately 1500 planned transit stops on a flexible, ad-hoc basis.

The Mobile Century project uses cellular technology to capture real-time traffic data on major roads. Using common personal mobile technology rather than dedicated devices to measure traffic reduces public costs and increases the accuracy and coverage of traffic monitoring.

Technology that encourages people to get out of their cars and navigate cities on foot and via public transportation can contribute to a city’s overall social and environmental sustainability. A handheld navigation guide for urban pedestrians can also plan trips around public transportation availability, which will build confidence in the ability of public transportation to get pedestrians to where they are going as easily as a personal car.

Wireless sensor networks connect hundreds of wireless nodes, which send data collected from moisture, temperature and evaporation sensors on plants to a central server via WiFi or radio transmitters. The central server can then analyze the data, send alerts to farmers or park managers via cell-phone or the Internet, and communicate commands to irrigation pumps when the plants require watering.

Minneapolis-St. Paul in the US is working with local large employers to encourage adoption of ROWE, which stands for “Results Only Work Environment.” The aim is to encourage telecommuting and flexible work schedules, both of which have the potential to significantly decrease rush-hour traffic congestion and have positive effects on employee health. ROWE’s major innovation is that its business model defines a flexible, multimedia work-“place” as the norm rather than the exception.

San Francisco will be rolling out a pilot program in 2008 to price public parking spaces at market rates. The new program, SFpark, will update parking in San Francisco with a number of new technology-enabled features to facilitate “demand responsive” pricing

Real-time CO2 mapping at the city level can help policy-makers understand regional contributions to global warming and evaluate the impact of local sustainability programs. The Vulcan Project is working on a virtual carbon footprint map of the United States that will be able to identify sites of significant emissions “at the scale of individual factories, powerplants, roadways and neighborhoods.”

The Yellow Arrow project is a “massively authored artistic publication” that allows anyone who wants to do so tell mini-stories about different locations around the world. The system of creating accessible links to virtual information in physical space is a tool cities could use for supplying information about a variety of issues related to sustainability.