I'm Dagin. [DA-jin]

Guided by my research expertise in digital infrastructure governance, I'm looking to work with tech companies and local governments to close the gap between what technology promises and what cities can manage.

Closing that gap involves taking a comprehensive account of the resources and relations required for:

  • Maintaining the status quo
  • Implementing new systems
  • Sustaining the changes

That account should guide planning, deployment, integration, and maintenance. Without it, intended solutions quickly become expensive problems.

My published research produced
  • A methodology that local DOTs can use to integrate advanced simulators into their traffic management workflows to address safety and emissions concerns
  • An analysis of the procedural costs of municipal cyber risk management that maps the resource and relational demands they place on local governments
See the work →

I apply my experience with tracking those requirements to plan and deliver purposeful tech solutions that actually work for cities.

Consult Me

Rowland Herbert-Faulkner
Publications

Applying research to practice

My work addresses specific gaps in how decision-makers understand the challenges cities face as they confront the digital transformation.

Traffic network analysis

Matching Technique with Authority: How Local DOTs Can Narrow the Gap Between Network Management Authority and Analytical Capacity

UC Berkeley Institute of Transportation Studies · Policy Brief & Research Report · 2025

This research investigates the institutional gap between what the technology can do and what local departments of transportation are actually equipped to do with it. Advanced traffic simulation tools can dramatically improve how cities manage mobility equitably, but only if the agencies responsible for traffic management have the capacity to use them. The practical implication: technology adoption in the public sector is as much a governance and capacity problem as it is a technical one.

Read the research →
Municipal cybersecurity

The Transaction Costs of Municipal Cyber Risk Management

UC Berkeley Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity · 2024

This white paper exposes the hidden costs that derail municipal cyber risk management — procurement, contracting, coordination, insurance negotiation, and compliance — that rarely appear in budget projections but consistently produce cost overruns and administrative strain. When cities invest in cybersecurity, the sticker price is rarely the real price. For technology companies selling into the public sector, this research is a map of where deals go sideways and why cities often can't absorb what vendors are offering, even when the product is sound.

Read the white paper →
Smart city development

Smart City Governance and the Limits of Private Authority

Dissertation Research · UC Berkeley · 2025

When Alphabet's Sidewalk Labs attempted to develop a smart city testbed in Toronto, the project became a flashpoint for concerns about data governance and private sector overreach. Conventional analysis focused on public resistance. This research took a deeper look at why the project was structurally unable to succeed regardless of public sentiment. The finding: the Sidewalk Toronto partnership lacked genuine political authority from the outset, produced in part by private sector attempts to accelerate business development by bypassing direct engagement with public agencies.

Request the chapter →
Smart city cybersecurity

As Smart Cities Expand, So Do the Threats

Dark Reading · February 2024

Featured in one of cybersecurity's leading trade publications, this piece draws on original research into how the convergence of physical and digital systems in cities expands the attack surface that local governments must defend — often without the resources, frameworks, or institutional capacity to do so.

Read the article →
Invitation to Collaborate Urban light

Work with me

If you're building products for the public sector, navigating a partnership with a city or regional agency, trying to understand why a technically sound initiative keeps hitting institutional walls, or looking for someone who can help translate between domains that speak different languages, let's talk.

I look forward to hearing from you.

About

Dagin Faulkner, Ph.D.

I completed a doctorate in City and Regional Planning at UC Berkeley, with concentrations in transportation infrastructure, urban governance, and cybersecurity. My academic foundation began at MIT, where I studied Civil Engineering with a concentration in Urban Studies and Planning.

Ultimately, I've always been curious about sociotechnical systems and the institutions that manage them.

Download CV →

Technology often promises novelty. But it's deployed in a deeply storied landscape of relationships and past ambitions that surface each time a new initiative gains traction. Photography taught me to see that landscape before I had the language to describe it.

Taking pictures is an important practice for me — not just as a creative outlet, but as a discipline of visual documentation. Creating a reference archive through the act of recording constantly evolving urban landscapes has trained me to explore the layered context in which past and present visions are developed and realized.

I am based in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Education Ph.D., City & Regional Planning — UC Berkeley
Master of City Planning — UC Berkeley
M.S., Transportation Engineering — UC Berkeley
B.S., Civil Engineering — MIT
Fellowships & Recognition Eno Center for Transportation Leadership Fellow · RSA Conference Scholar · FHWA Eisenhower Fellow (×2)
Affiliations UC Berkeley CLTC · UC Berkeley ITS