Spherical Harmonics

A redesigned city street with a protected green bike lane, wide planted sidewalk, and outdoor seating beside a wide arterial road
Live demo City Edit — draw the street you want to see
Mission

Streets, redesigned by the people who use them

Communities know their streets need change but have no way to independently create the technical maps that city planners need to move projects forward.

We're developing a free and open-source platform where community members can propose and vote on bike lane, sidewalk, roadway, parking, and greenway improvements following NYC Street Design Manual guidelines.

Each proposal generates downloadable design drawings and maps from community-driven input that anyone can submit to DOT, share with community boards, or use for local organizing.

Demo

City Edit: local knowledge, drawn to scale

City Edit is our interactive demo for community-driven street redesign. It lets users draw proposed infrastructure changes directly onto a map, placing bike lanes, sidewalks, greenways, and other streetscape elements on real city streets. Community members can sketch out the changes they want to see in their neighborhoods, vote on proposals from others, and generate shareable design maps that follow established urban planning guidelines. The tool turns local knowledge about where people actually walk, bike, and need safer infrastructure into the kind of technical visual proposals that city agencies can act on.

Open the demo →
People

Who we are

Eric Bolton

Software Engineering

Software engineer specializing in data visualization, collaborative platforms, and community consensus tools.

Brook Constantz

Urban Ecology

Urban ecologist with a background in forest restoration, geographic information systems, and green infrastructure.

Contact us: brook@sphericalharmonics.org · eric@sphericalharmonics.org

This project is funded by a Magic Grant from the Brown Institute for Media Innovation, a joint initiative of Stanford Engineering and Columbia Journalism School.