Visualizing the Future: AR in Urban Planning with Dana Chermesh, Founder of inCitu

Announcer:

Today on building the Open Metaverse.

Dana Chermesh-Reshef:

We take open data from cities and generate augmented reality experiences for multiple projects and basically create a map, but also an experience on the ground that you can walk block by block and see projects one after the other.

Announcer:

Welcome to Building the Open Metaverse, where technology experts discuss how the community is building the open metaverse Together, hosted by Patrick Cozzi and Marc Petit.

Marc Petit:

Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Building the Open Metaverse season six, the podcast that showcases the community of artists, developers, researchers, executives, and entrepreneurs who are building the internet of tomorrow.

My name is Marc Petit, and my co-host is Patrick Cozzi. Hey, Patrick.

Patrick Cozzi:

Hey, Marc. I love graphics on the East Coast, and there's a lot going on, especially in the greater New York City area.

Today, we're diving into the inspiring journey of Dana Chermesh-Reshef, an architect, data scientist, and CEO of inCitu. We'll explore how she leverages augmented reality to revolutionize urban planning and empower communities. Welcome.

Dana Chermesh-Reshef:

Thank you so much, Patrick and Marc for having me here. It's really great to join your podcast. Thank you.

Marc Petit:

Fantastic. Thank you, Dana, for being here. As is tradition, could you start by telling us a little bit about your background and your journey to the metaverse?

Dana Chermesh-Reshef:

My background, I'm an architect and planner, born and raised in Tel Aviv, Israel. I studied architecture there, worked there, and practiced as an architect, mostly in the city center of Tel Aviv. A lot of infield development, small rezonings during the time of civil uprise with the Arab Spring in the Middle East, and affordable housing protests in Israel. I grew up professionally as an architect, really feeling on the ground how cities are the guards of democracy and really how urban design can shape society, and how involved and how democratic it is.

I came from a background in flight simulators, before architecture. In Israel, it's mandatory to serve in the army. I served for three years in the Israeli Air Force, and I had the privilege of being a flight simulator trainer of F-15 pilots. I spent three years basically in an F-15 cockpit, and I was very used to communicating information very tangibly through simulation.

When I became an architect, I was pretty frustrated by the tools that we architects and planners had to effectively communicate our products, which are plans and proposals that shape cities and communities.

I had very early in my career, this vision of everything that we do should be very easily accessible visually, and we should be able to superimpose our plants graphically on top of the built environment. Fast-forward, I really looked for more data-driven, tech-driven tools as a person who shapes cities, and I found CUSP, Center for Urban Science and Progress program, master's program here in New York at NYU.

I moved to New York in 2017 with my family and already had baby twins back then. Now, we've grown, and after a short internship in the Department of City Planning of New York, I finally brought all the ideas to life and founded inCitu in 2020.

Marc Petit:

Can you give us a quick reminder of urban planning, especially in a city like New York?

Dana Chermesh-Reshef:

Urban planning, city planning is basically the act of deciding what can be built where and what should be built where, basically putting the foundations that then put incentives and rules on what developers, architects, and communities can propose to their streets and cities.

When you see a construction site, that's the very end of the process of rules that have been put in place probably many years ago. On top of them, there is some site analysis of what's feasible. Finance not only rules, but those rules are also politics. What can be built where is a very political question. Then finance, what is feasible to build here, what would be manageable financially, and then design. Eventually, it becomes a place and the product in which people are living in. That's the act of urban planning.

Patrick Cozzi:

Dana, in 2020, you were selected as one of the six best social impact entrepreneurs to become an entrepreneur and resident at Schmidt Futures, which is the public benefit arm of Wendy and Eric Schmidt.

Could you tell us about this experience and what it means to you?

Dana Chermesh-Reshef:

In short, what it means to me is that it was the game changer of my career because I've been given this amazing opportunity to ideate my idea, to work on this idea for augmented reality, for city planning, and for cities, right?

As a mother of, back then, three small kids, a newborn, and two four-year-olds without any tech background, I was an architect before I came to this, but with a strong vision and strong industry understanding. This program, which is not incubators and accelerators, it was a two year residency. I had a salary as an entrepreneur resident. I was a founder with income for two years, which many people with amazing ideas and maybe amazing capabilities do not get this opportunity to already have the time to pilot, to try to basically bring an idea to life, which I was very, very fortunate to get. 

On top of it, I got amazing mentorship from the best in the industry on how to become the CEO that this company or this idea deserves to have. And I believe I did. I really took this opportunity in two hands alongside five other amazing entrepreneurs, and I think the six of us are still running our businesses. It's quite amazing, and all of us are non-traditional entrepreneurs, so women, or other minorities, or people with disabilities, and I think that made me, really shaped my view about the tech world, which again, I wasn't too familiar with before, and about how in the classic path of it, it is very home organic, and very inaccessible to most people, to people that don't have two years to live without a salary, and just like, let's try, right?

Since then, alongside whatever I do with inCitu, and my company, I've been trying to push for more diverse vehicles of entrepreneurship, and funding opportunities, and ideation, incubation, residency opportunities for many diverse entrepreneurs, specifically women, and mothers, which I think it's a subset of women founders that you almost never see.

I could have a full podcast episode just on being a mom and entrepreneur and what I think it gives to both yourself, your family, and your business. Yeah, I can not be more grateful for that point in time and that opportunity that I've been given.

Marc Petit:

We'll come back on the topic of motherhood and entrepreneurship, tell us about inCitu. What motivated you to found the company, and what was the initial vision for it?

Dana Chermesh-Reshef:

InCitu, first the name, there is a Latin phrase “in situ.” It means in its natural place, and this is truly how we believe people should be able and will be able to experience the future of their communities.

To me, again, as a professional in this field, I feel, or I quickly felt when I became an architect and worked in the field, that I have a sixth sense, or that I can see the future. I walk down the street, and just because I know about certain projects or I understand zoning and what development rights mean, maybe my eyes see a building that is three stories, but I know that there is also a plan in place zoned for seven stories.

I know that it is seven stories, although my eyes tell me another thing. Also, as an architect and planner, time after time, I felt that when I came with projects, amazing projects, beautiful, innovative in their finance, whatever, to planning hearings or community meetings people come there angry. At the end of the day, it's the same 10 people that come and don't really come to say, oh, how nice of you to build here, or how nice this project is, right? They come to oppose mostly. 

I felt that we didn't have the right tools to communicate our plan. inCitu is really on the mission to make this whole conversation, to foster better conversations and better collaboration about urban change visually and really empower city builders, whether those are architects, designers, community advocates, or policymakers, to effectively communicate and effectively gather feedback from the public and for the public to have a truly transparent and inclusive planning and development process.

Patrick Cozzi:

It's a great mission, and it's awesome to bring all those stakeholders together.

Could you talk a little bit more about how it brings the residents and communities into the process?

Dana Chermesh-Reshef:

We're here talking about the AR/VR, right, metaverse? I think a lot of this industry is based on devices. People hear metaverse, they think about headsets, they think about this virtual experience that it's fully immersive, and it's an external world. Here, with inCitu, it's exactly the opposite. To me, the mission is to make AR as seamless and non-questionable as maps today, right? You don't think about how amazing the technology of maps is. It is amazing, but you use it without giving too much thought to it.

To me, since day one, we have known that we are going to go mobile until everyone has something on their heads. We have no reason to use headsets or fancy devices because we are on a mission to democratize this information, to put it in the hands of as many people and as diverse people as possible.

We designed a tool to be mobile and frictionless, so you don't even need to download an app. We use app clips and instant apps to experience. Really, we coined the term QR to AR. Everything we do, every experience that you will, every touchpoint that you will find our content, you are one click away or one QR away from seeing the future.

On top of that, each one of the channels, whether it's the onsite view or the remote view, I can discuss a little bit more. Each project has the same QR that leads you to a geo-referenced real-scale AR when you are on-site, and your eyes can see it; if you're not on-site, you see it at home. Anywhere else, you can still play with it with tabletop AR. Each of those has a place to give feedback. We are not only democratizing the information but informing residents on what's going on. We also democratize the participation.

You don't have to be available at 7:00 PM to go to that gym and listen for four hours to a presentation about a project. You can simply walk down the street, scan a QRC, explore it, give your feedback, go home. You raised your voice. This is how we designed it, and we really make sure we track these engagement metrics, and we see time after time that when we place a QR code, in weeks, we get hundreds of individual views on the AR, which is dramatically more than the number of people you get to those community meetings or planning hearings. When you go to investigate, you find that those people are much younger, more diverse, economically diverse, et cetera.

Marc Petit:

In your experience, does this visualization, which allows one to visualize the future in AR, help with resolving community issues and opposition to projects?

Dana Chermesh-Reshef:

Absolutely, yes. But, I will say that the goal is not to just say yes to every proposal, right? There are proposals that are worth modification or even to be rejected, right? What we do see is that, yes, the visualization helps you cut through the noise of the conversation and get to the point of the conversation that you want to discuss, whether it's density, whether it's land use, whether it's where the transportation will come from, what's the impact of it, people get it. It's really like this, because we are all visual learners. We all have our cognitive bodies and minds.

None of us need to be professionals to feel the difference between different urban fabrics. You don't need to be an architect or a planner to feel the difference between Philadelphia or midtown Manhattan or a suburb, right? And to me, the goal is to be able to experience the future of our cities in the same naturality.

Another thing that we see, and that's an anecdote that I love to mention, is that people are smiling. The AR is still pretty magical. People are like, they're raising their phone, and something that is not there is suddenly there. It's anchored. They can walk around it, explore it, zoom in, take a look, understand more. It is magic, and you never see smiling faces in planning hearings, or community meetings, and suddenly people are smiling. It doesn't mean that they will applaud, right, and will love everything you propose. But it does mean that the conversation is dramatically less aggressive, more to the point, more positive, and much, much more efficient.

Patrick Cozzi:

Yeah, I could see that, no pun intended, having a level of novelty and engagement, but also really good usefulness. I believe there are 4,000 projects in New York they're using inCitu right now. Could you tell us about the deployments?

Dana Chermesh-Reshef:

At some point around the end of 2022, two years into inCitu, and after a few projects, several projects with clients across the country, inside of it, we had two partnerships with Snapchat and Esri, which improved the experience, we felt that the user experience was really good.

Again, we were started from there and pretty obsessed about building a really good user experience. At that point, I wanted to come back to what I was mostly frustrated about, which was all this information out there in open data about permits, land use applications, and the changing real estate around us, and I needed to chase project by project, right? What do we do with all this open data, and how can we automatically visualize a citywide AR layer, right, of upcoming developments? We are here in New York, and I used to work in city planning, so we knew the data pretty well.

We decided to do a proof of concept by taking open data of new construction permits and trying to standardize the information. Spoiler: it is not standardized for some reason, which is ridiculous because it's all footprints, heights, and land use. You could make standardization, and we're working on pushing for that. But, for the first time, we took this information, which doesn't have 3D. It's only tabular records, but these tabular records do have some spatial attributes again like those footprints, heights, number of floors, number of units, and what land use, and we developed these very basic design rules of if it's an office, it will get glass. If it's retail, you'll see that on the ground floor. If it's housing, you'll get this window in that place, right?

We just generated 4,000 projects that are real permits that are either in process or approved in New York and automatically generated an augmented reality experience for each one of them, which is accessible onsite and remotely.

Because we're a small team, we couldn't actually place a QR code in each of the 4,000. To prove or test how organic engagement would look like back then, it was January 2023; we chose 25 projects across the city, placed floor decals, and planning notices with QR codes that basically said changes are coming, a development is proposed, scan to see. And in four weeks, we had more than 500 individual scans and views of those 25 projects. It was the first time that we weren't there.

We didn't do a demo. We didn't do an event, right? We just placed stickers on the ground, which was really, to me, the biggest thing to prove before I try to build a business out of it. We built technology, and we built a product. The biggest threat to me to inCitu was, what if people don't care? What if it's not the failure of communication, but no matter how you communicate, no one will engage?

I think we overcame this hurdle, this question with a really successful organic engagement from the ground. Moving forward, what we did is we took this pipeline of open data to citywide AR and built a city offering that we're now working with different cities to say, "Okay, we'll come, we'll audit your data, we'll standardize it, and we'll build in place the infrastructure to basically transform, translate each record to AR." We've worked last fall with Washington D.C. with the Department of Buildings, and with Charleston, South Carolina on two amazing city pilots, and a lot is happening on that front.

Marc Petit:

Patrick, maybe there is another opportunity for standardization right there.

Patrick Cozzi:

That's what I'm thinking.

Marc Petit:

Help visualize what will exist instead of just what's existing.

Dana Chermesh-Reshef:

We're the only company that builds the digital twin of the unbuilt of the future because there are many digital twin platforms out there. By nature, they're a digital twin of what's built. It doesn't usually include the layer of the future.

Marc Petit:

I read a fascinating story, and I want to talk about it. You usually emphasize the urgency around addressing climate change and affordability issues in cities. I know they are topics of importance for you.

Can you tell us how you are being active in that space, particularly about the seawall project in Charleston?

Dana Chermesh-Reshef:

All those issues, those urban challenges that cities are really at the forefront of being hit from, whether it's pandemic, affordability, or climate change issues, cities are the ones that are being hurt the most, but they will probably solve them first. But again, communicating those issues with the general public is not easy. And I think, again, visualization is a great tool to effectively make people understand.

For example, what we did with the inCitu first in Charleston is part of the city pilot. In each pilot that we do with cities, we usually choose one or two high-profile projects to double down on, not just place a QR, but yes, come educate the public with AR and do more hands-on engagement. We chose in Charleston the seawall, which has its official name: a perimeter protector barrier or something like that.

That's Charleston, a historic city. The south part of it is prone to flooding. There is this promenade, and there's a seawall, a protection barrier that is being suggested, and eight miles of infrastructure, and people are opposing it.

Now you would say, why would they oppose, right? It's supposed to protect their city. But, they are because they hear seawall, and it sounds like this wall or something scary that they don't understand. We were able to collaborate, of course, with the city, but also with the local rendering company to build a section of the seawall, place the QR codes, and be there, and interview people and see how they react to visually experience it.

They figured out that all it means is elevating the promenade a little bit, building this rail there, and removing one car lane to allow for this gradual structure towards the ground.

People were much more in favor of this plan after walking in it, and just seeing it as they walked. This is one. I haven't talked about it, but most recently, what we did with our product is we launched inCitu Pro, which is basically the Software as a Service product of inCitu. Everything that we have done so far now it's just out there for anyone with 3D to upload a 3D model, geo reference it, give it an address, and get a QR code they can share with anyone. Again, no friction. It's a web-based platform. You don't need to download anything. You don't need anything. We launched it less than two months ago, but we've been working with the Beta Group since the beginning of this year. In this Beta Group are two planners from Tampa Bay.

And, of course, Tampa Bay has lots of flooding and a lot of climate adaptation recovery already. Now, both of these regional planners are under our inCitu Pro clients, and they communicated with the public over a public event, different building typologies, and sea level rise, and how the sea level rise will impact each building typology. That was to communicate with communities why they're changing building codes, why they're requiring the elevation of buildings, or why they're putting higher insurance on buildings of certain types or in certain flood zones. I think again, the ability to create this communication, which is continuous and very tangible, is really important for those issues that eventually save lives.

Patrick Cozzi:

This is more the spirit part of the podcast, the geek part. If you want to tell us a bit about the tech that you're building on. You already mentioned the QR to AR and having both mobile and remote use cases.

Dana Chermesh-Reshef:

We've built this really interesting pipeline of generating AR in minutes, 3D to AR in minutes, and we're relying on both native capabilities and web capabilities. You guys are from the AR/XR world, so you will understand today that location-based AR is still much better in native. But web, of course, it's just more accessible. Luckily, both Apple and Android came up with these instant apps or app clips, so we could move from having only an app to let's experience this native-based experience of AR outside of an app. 

When app clips were first available, we were the first to use them and embed them in the pipeline. But again, with the goal of building a highly accessible experience in mind, we're using physical and digital assets. In our pipeline, we generate QR codes, and the same QR code automatically populates this floor decal and different planning signage.

The same QR leads you to either, as I said before, the onsite geo-referenced experience or the interactive tabletop view. But it also generates a map, a web map that can be embedded then if you're a developer, a city, or a specific project in your website. This map can be printed on brochures. For example, we've been working in the past few months on an amazing project with the Central Ohio Transit Authority, the LinkUS project. LinkUS is basically a big plan to redo West Broad Street. That's a huge road from downtown Columbus to the West, and today, it's just a highway, nothing. They want to improve, of course, reduce fatalities, move towards Vision Zero, improve affordability, and increase density. There is a full plan there of bringing rapid transit, micro-mobility apps, et cetera. They will need to raise taxes in order to build that and to fund this plan.

Therefore, they built this full engagement strategy, and they're doing bus tours along this route from April to November for the public to join the ride and learn more about the project. They collaborated with us. They hired us to take three stops along this bus tour and build an AR experience for them. People get off the bus, scan a QR, and see the project as if it's built.

Now, what I love the most about this project is how non-important, and I do this as if it's not important, the AR is. No one there is talking about the technology. It's not about augmented reality. Again, they use it as naturally as they use their brochures, their maps, or their website. That's what makes it so successful. People are just very naturally scanning, seeing, et cetera. The map really makes this whole offering, the product output, something that is really geared for engagement. As far as I know, that's the only AR tool that is geared for non-professionals or for non-gaming. It's not for training professionals. It's for the democratization of information to really make the process more inclusive and more transparent.

Marc Petit:

I also read about citywide 3D AR layers. Can you tell us what these are and what their purpose is?

Dana Chermesh-Reshef:

We take open data from cities and generate augmented reality experiences for multiple projects, and basically create a map, but also an experience on the ground where you can walk block by block and see projects one after the other.

Today, we increased that and put more even focus on this side with building integrations to other digital twins platforms, and other planning permitting systems, and planning systems to really just be a plugin to whatever your process is. Whatever you do, whatever data you collect, it should be visualized. It should be easily visualized and communicated in AR.

Marc Petit:

Ultimately, we could see that in Google Maps?

Dana Chermesh-Reshef:

Yes. Google just announced its Maps API, and now you can embed QRs in maps. I think we're getting there, but yes, absolutely.

Marc Petit:

Are there any emerging trends in AR and XR that you're looking for? Well, does the Apple Vision Pro move the needle for a company like inCitu?

Dana Chermesh-Reshef:

Apple Vision Pro, I think, solved many technical issues. Of course, it's Apple. They did it so amazingly. I can't even start to say how impressed I was. I did not think I would be so impressed because all of us from the industry tested headsets and stuff. They did amazing things. But, I think it's still a headset, and it's still not designed, not for being with it for hours, or walking with it, or being outdoors, I don't know. I think for us, for inCitu, it is the first headset that we considered building for, and I think we will because it's a pretty low-hanging fruit. Our app is there; we can just do it. There are clients who also want that. But until it's not something that replaces what everybody has, it's not really changing our direction.

Generally, in the industry, I think spatial computing, the fact that it's not anymore this futuristic thing or out-of-context thing, makes me very optimistic and very happy.

When I started to pitch inCitu back in 2018, '19, I was literally the alien in the room whether I spoke with city planning or built environment, people who were like, "What? Augmented reality, that's unrelated." Or when I spoke with the XR industry, which was city planning, and went to sleep. Today, when I talk about this vision, it seems obvious to people that we'll get there. With or without me, that's how I think about it as well. It's not just inCitu. I think we'll get to a point where we can interact with our physical built environment with more information visually and graphically, and I think AR is bringing us there.

Patrick Cozzi:

Let's talk about the future. Are there any projects or features that you're most looking forward to for inCitu?

Dana Chermesh-Reshef:

We just launched the inCitu Pro, and we're learning these days exactly who are the users, what are the most popular use cases, and how to support our growing user community. That's for the first time B2C, unlike the B2B or B2G that we had before. It all works together, but that's definitely a new and really exciting phase, and we're looking to grow this community and see what our users are doing without us, which is, to me, again, the most exciting, the fact that we empowered others to do what we had envisioned, and they do it very easily.

This is one specific project. So we are part of different RFPs for big infrastructure projects, regional and local. We're looking forward to being able to say more about those. The LinkUS project is incredible and keeps hitting the news with great engagement.

We have several opportunities to integrate full cities’ data into AR, and not just do this citywide AR but also embed our technology in their permitting system. Every new project will automatically be accessible visually. When you walk near a construction site and see this tiny planning notice, maybe now you'll have a QR code that you will just be able to scan and see.

Marc Petit:

More generally, what's your vision for the future of cities and how we address the problems that we discussed previously?

Dana Chermesh-Reshef:

I have to be optimistic about cities because I think they are the only hope for humanity in general. And there is a lot to solve for humanity, yes. But, I think cities, with our inability to sprawl anymore, and with our inability to stay homogenized, and racism, and more, we must strive for cities, and we must strengthen our cities, and I think we can.

I think cities are much more interesting post-COVID. More people are committing to the city at different times because others are staying home. Transportation feels different. The education system looks different. Our kids interact differently with the world. Thanks to cities, I'm optimistic.

Marc Petit:

I'm seeing it in Montreal. The city does not have the same dynamics when not everybody rushes downtown at the same time. I think you're right, it's a consequence of COVID, and more flexibility, and more technology, and more immersive technology, so that we can do more things remotely. I do share your enthusiasm.

I think it's one of the big questions where we don't have the answer to whether the metaverse contributes positively to the sustainability problem. I strongly believe so. We haven't proven it, but I think inCitu and all those technologies are a good indication that it's going to be a force for good.

Back to entrepreneurship, what advice would you give to young entrepreneurs, and particularly, how do you see the balance between being a mom and entrepreneur at the same time, and incite other moms to do it?

Dana Chermesh-Reshef:

To me, it's a huge blessing, really. I can be a workaholic, and to me, being a mother and entrepreneur means I have the best reason not to be on my computer all the time because kids do not let you not be present when you're with them. I have my few hours in the day when I have to step away from whatever I'm doing, and I get, of course, the people that I love the most in the most beautiful times of the day. And then, I can come back to whatever I'm doing afterward.

Being able to first fulfill myself as a professional, as a woman, and also, it's not just professionally, right? I couldn't be as happy as I am only doing inCitu, or giving up on that, and only being a mother. To me, the minute I came back to work after my first maternity leave was an a-ha moment of, oh my God, that's the win-win situation of the world.

How come people don't know that, and why do they postpone it? I love being a mother. I think my kids are the most awesome people on earth. What I would say to young entrepreneurs, especially women and mothers entrepreneurs, is don't listen too much to those who tell you that you will not succeed because many will and that there is no secret way to do it, right? I think each one of us has what we're more comfortable with and less comfortable with in terms of hours and work-life balance. Really, there is no do or not do. I think the only do is understand what's right for you, and really try to stick to it.

Marc Petit:

Traditionally, measure the entrepreneur, the successful. What a VC wants to see is somebody who has a 120% commitment to the success of the organization. Do you revindicate? You advocated the need to balance, to balance the force? Is it something that you can openly revindicate as an entrepreneur?

Dana Chermesh-Reshef:

Yeah, so first, I wish I could tell you that I'm balanced. I'm working too hard. It's not as balanced as I wished. But, absolutely, and another, maybe that's another tip. Choose the right investors as well, and shareholders. Those who will not respect the fact that I have a life are not worth being part of my journey. That's true, not just for women, because people have different needs and different phases in life, and something you need to take care of an ill family member or you're going through something yourself, mental or physical; we're all human beings.

If we don't have the compassion to accept these complexities in life, I don't want you to be part of what I'm building. And I think eventually, everybody will respect that. When you come very clear about what's right for you and what your boundaries are, no one will question them.

Patrick Cozzi:

I liked your advice when you said that being a founder with a salary gave you the runway to experiment. And I think that might be somewhat contrarian compared to what some folks want to see today with that 120% commitment and huge sacrifice. But I get the sense that you believe that actually, that could be a better model for everyone.

Do you feel that way?

Dana Chermesh-Reshef:

Yeah, and look, I don't know of a CEO who becomes rich from their salary, right? That's not how it goes. You take, I think, the standard, which is right, is you take the minimum you need to live well, and not more than that, and that's okay.

Now, all of my investors know that I live in Brooklyn with three kids. Of course I can not, not have a salary. I will not be able to have afterschool for my kids, so I will need to go and pick them up at 2:00 P.M., so I will not be able to do my work, right? I think when you start, yes, there is this notion of, of course, until you don't raise something, you don't raise money; where will you get a salary from? I think there should be more opportunities out there for early-stage companies and early-stage founders to test it out.

Sometimes it will not work; sometimes, it will. And the world will get a very unique, maybe founder, or product, or story, at least.

Patrick Cozzi:

The last question of the podcast is: Is there a person, organization, or multiple that you'd like to give a shout-out to?

Dana Chermesh-Reshef:

Many, of course. But I think I'll give this shout-out to my partner and my kids. He at least chose it with me, but they did not choose to have a mother entrepreneur, and they are the most resilient people on earth. I'll give a shout-out to them and then to my team, who none of this could happen without them. 

All of us are really going lean, and really working hard, and they're amazing, and they're sharing the vision, so yeah. In the spirit of the end of the school year, I'll give a shout-out to all teachers out there who are really doing amazing work, and yeah, most usually don't get enough appreciation.

Marc Petit:

Dana, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your innovative approach to urban planning and this very intelligent use of AR technology. Your vision and the work of inCitu are really, really inspiring.

We've done a lot today about how AR can help communities and change our cities. Thank you so much for being with us today.

Dana Chermesh-Reshef:

Thank you both. It's a pleasure speaking with you, and thank you for the opportunity to be here.

Marc Petit:

Of course, as usual, thank you to our listeners.

You can reach us on all the podcast platforms on YouTube, and you can contact us through our website, buildingtheopenmetaverse.org, or our LinkedIn pages.

Thank you very much. Thank you again, Dana. Thank you, Patrick. We'll be back for another episode.

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