What does Foursquare have to do with urban planning?
At the Cannes Lions Festival the agency KBS+P brought Foursquare co-founder and CEO Dennis Crowley to talk about their campaign with BMW on the future of mobility, which makes sense since Foursquare is a mobile app.
However, the BMW work while cool didn’t seem to involve Foursquare at all. The light bulb moment came to me when Crowley, who also seemed to wonder why he was there, mentioned the data that Foursquare has accumulated.
Crowley admitted that data was an afterthought for him and for Foursquare. They know how people move through their environment and they want to use that data for the collective good. Imagine designing cities in a smarter and more efficient way, understanding the cause and effect of how traffic flow is affected by the weather, politics, events, commerce, the variables are limitless.
I don’t know how Foursquare plans on improving the way people interact but I’m looking forward to seeing what they come up with.