About the Center for Smart Streetscapes

The Center for Smart Streetscapes (CS3) is a Gen-4 NSF Engineering Research Center based at Columbia University taking a new approach to smart cities.

Researchers are working closely with a diverse cohort of more than 80 non-academic community stakeholders – industry partners, community organizations, municipalities, and K-12 schools – both as collaborative co-producers of knowledge and as auditors of technology research and development.

Meet Our Team

Our Mission

The mission of the Center for Smart Streetscapes (CS3), a Gen-4 NSF Engineering Research Center founded in 2022, is to forge livable, safe, and inclusive communities through real-time, hyper-local streetscape applications built on advancements in edge-cloud technology, wireless-optical engineering, visual analytics, computer security, and social science.

We strive to co-develop, with the involvement from the stakeholders at all levels of the design process, a platform of technological solutions that can address current and future community-driven problems, such as vulnerable users' safety, traffic efficiency, public safety, and hyper-local environment sensing.

Our Values

CS3 convenes researchers, educators, entrepreneurs, and community leaders from different institutions, disciplines, economic sectors, geographies, and experiences and adheres to three guiding principles in its work:

Technology must serve the public good;
Community engagement will serve as a mechanism for direct use-inspiration. All communities must be treated as stakeholders and be empowered to shape technology deployment; and
The “digital divide'' exacerbates inequality and must be addressed by researchers making their work publicly legible and designing curricula and workforce training that responds to current and future talent needs.

Foundational Components

Workforce Development

Broadening participation in the next generation of smart city researchers and innovators

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Diversity and Culture of Inclusion

Promoting an inclusive organizational culture to achieve the full potential of CS3's mission, vision, and values

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Innovation Ecosystem

Smart development by diverse stakeholders accelerating innovation that positively impacts communities

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Research

Integrating wireless/optical communications, edge/cloud computing, situational awareness, and privacy and security

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