Ideas that work across an ocean could save American cities, yet even superheroes can't be everywhere at once. Unless, of course, they have this app from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the next logical iteration of its eponymous book series.

Think of the Ecological Urbanism app as an ebook on whole-grain, natural, organic steroids.

The app shows how dynamic areas of study can benefit greatly from equally dynamic texts. With the world moving so fast, books can’t keep up – thus technology allows books to remain updated and relevant to our lives.

As the interaction designers say in their video, it's easy to carry around—definitely much easier than the original paper version. That ease of use might mean more urban planners will use it as a reference, leading to better-informed, faster-evolving design.

Overall, the experience is one that brings the authority and curation of a book with the visual panache and intuitive navigation of a well-designed website--a sort of best-of-both-worlds proposition that’s always been the great promise of interactive books but remains elusive all the same.

A new app by Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, called Ecological Urbanism, is the start of a deep dive into innovation research, with real prospects for finding urban sustainability treasure.

The app, a collaboration between the school and Second Story Interactive Studios, stems from the GSD’s Ecological Urbanism conference and dovetails with the duo’s ongoing efforts to explore sustainability in our cities of the future...And the ever-evolving app allows designers and academics to add research and project updates as they happen. Pretty cool!