This week’s best city stories think about Twitter as a tool for urban planners and local governments, take a look at New Mexico’s behaviour-changing musical road and find out the six safest junction designs for walkable cities.

We’d love to hear your responses to these stories and any others you’ve read recently, both at Guardian Cities and elsewhere: share your thoughts in the comments below.

Planning cities – one tweet at a time

Last year, the Urban Attitudes Lab was founded, dedicated to studying how “big data” can inform city planning and policy. Its director, Justin Hollander, and his team have been analysing Twitter for key words and sentiments about civic issues, in order to learn more about what people think about their cities, and how policy can respond.

“A lot of what I’m trying to uncover is, where are people happy? What makes them happy? This has the potential to revolutionise how local governments in particular plan for the future,” Hollander says in Next City. Whereas census data is produced every 10 years, tweets are produced every second – meaning they are a vital way of gathering up-to-date information on our cities.

Bikes to the rescue

San Francisco’s first Disaster Relief Trials this month involved a race across the city, aiming to demonstrate how bicycles can cater to critical needs after an urban catastrophe. San Francisco, of course, is a city familiar with the threat of natural disasters and has worked hard to build resilience to the impacts of earthquakes.

But in these situations, as CityLab explains, delivering vital supplies to those in need can be a real problem if access to vehicles is blocked by debris. Cargo bikes, on the other hand – designed to carry heavy loads – can reach places which trucks cannot, improving disaster response for all citizens.

Musical roads

Earlier this month, New Mexico got its own “singing road”, a creative initiative to encourage motorists to slow down. When drivers move over the special rumble strips at a slow enough speed (45mph), metal plates under the tarmac vibrate producing music. “The result is something that sounds like a trombone slowly puffing out out America the Beautiful”: watch the video on City Metric here and find out about the other singing roads in the world, from Denmark and California to South Korea and Japan.

Crossing safely

We are used to cars being prioritised at road junctions, leading to frustrating and sometimes dangerous situations. But what does a truly pedestrian-friendly junction look like? Next City takes us through six of the best intersection designs for those who choose to walk in cities, from protected left turns and raised crossings to “neckdowns” and the “pedestrian scramble”, where the whole intersection is turned into a walkers-only zone for the length of a long signal.

Cycling up that hill

The Norweigan city of Trondheim has boasted a bike escalator – the Trampe CycloCable – since 1993, in order to make uphill cycling easier for citizens. The 130-meter bike lift pushes cyclists using a foot pedal attached to an underground motorised cable. Now, having charged users for 20 years, it has become free to use.

Embarq Network describe how the cable technology is currently being commercialised for implementation in other hilly cities around the world. Could we start seeing a lot more bike escalators?

Should we rely on tweets to understand what urban dwellers think? Do cities benefit from bike escalators and musical roads? Share your thoughts in the comments below