Shrinking City

Article: New York Times by David Streitfeld

"a model for a different era". From expansion with development to developing with shrinkage. Flint, Michigan talk about using land banks to covert abandoned, foreclosed properties into natural landscape, saving money, condesing the town and ultimately rethinking the American city.

“If it’s going to look abandoned, let it be clean and green,” he said. “Create the new Flint forest — something people will choose to live near, rather than something that symbolizes failure.”

land banks: (taken from this U. of Michigan site by Jessica de Wit) A land bank is a public authority created to efficiently hold, manage and develop tax-foreclosed property.(1) Land banks act as a legal and financial mechanism to transform vacant, abandoned and tax-foreclosed property back to productive use. Generally, land banks are funded by local governments' budgets or the management and disposition of tax-foreclosed property.(2) In addition, a land bank is a powerful locational incentive, which encourages redevelopment in older communities that generally have little available land and neighborhoods that have been blighted by an out-migration of residents and businesses.(3) While a land bank provides short-term fiscal benefits, it can also act as a tool for planning long-term community development. Successful land bank programs revitalize blighted neighborhoods and direct reinvestment back into these neighborhoods to support their long-term community vision.

Related:
Shrinking Cities in a Global Perspective Program, University of California, Berkeley

USA Today Article

Privatizing Public Infrastructure

Leveraging public need with private financing...

KFC fills potholes
Neo Nazi's clean the highways
Strip club adopts highway

Egyptian Public Space

Penned-In Egyptians Find Peace in City's Din

"...Cairo is a city with a lot of people, a lot of tightly packed houses and buildings, a lot of traffic — and very little open space. There are some parks, but they tend to be fenced off and charge admission. So Egyptians grab what public space there is and make it their own. Bridges are a favorite, but nearly any open space will do. Even a patch of grass in the middle of a traffic circle..."

Building a Process

Related Article

Basically: Non-profit invests in foreclosed real estate, employs own clients to renovate and live, while profiting and empowering more clients in new process of housing those in need.

"Pikes Peak Behavioral Health ...

The nonprofit group, a mental health counseling center with a growing number of military veteran clients and patients, wants to buy a half-built foreclosed apartment project near the Fort Carson Army base. Using military veterans to complete the construction project, the group would sell the buildings and use the proceeds to buy another property, and repeat the process.

The group also wants to hire veterans as “peer navigators” in a buddy system to guide wounded and troubled veterans into civilian life, helping them with things like job applications and the fine print at the department of motor vehicles..."

Design Corps

Design Corps:

Design Corps' mission is to create positive change in communities by providing architecture and planning services. Our vision is realized when people are involved in the decisions that shape their lives, including the built environment.

Design Corps was founded in 1991 and became a 501-c-3 in1996.

Design Corps' community service program that is ten years old and has a proven record of success. It brings the skills of recent architecture and planning graduates who provide technical assistance to communities in need. We primarily serve small rural communities composed of low-income families who do not have access to the technical services needed to shape their physical needs. The design and planning expertise provided by these interns allows communities to shape their physical environment and create positive change. Design Corps' community service program offers technical assistance in planning, design, and grant writing. Known as Community Design Fellows, they bring their technical educations and experiences to bear at each local site where they are placed and are supported by trained professionals. Once at the site, Fellows work to identify challenges and pool needed resources through community involvement and participation to ensure that the community shares in identifying challenges, creating a vision, and implementing design responses.

Design Corps

Mapping the Buzz

Mapping the Cultural Buzz, by Melena Ryzik

"The research, presented in late March at the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers, locates hot spots based on the frequency and draw of cultural happenings: film and television screenings, concerts, fashion shows, gallery and theater openings. The buzziest areas in New York, it finds, are around Lincoln and Rockefeller Centers, and down Broadway from Times Square into SoHo. In Los Angeles the cool stuff happens in Beverly Hills and Hollywood, along the Sunset Strip, not in trendy Silver Lake or Echo Park.

The aim of the study, called “The Geography of Buzz,” said Elizabeth Currid, one of its authors, was “to be able to quantify and understand, visually and spatially, how this creative cultural scene really worked.”"

Mini-Gulf Courses for a City in Recession

Queens:

Miniaturized Entertainment? Whats going on with all the putt-putt courses?
Downsized Golf...manageable landscapes?
















Governors Island:














Brooklyn:

Malls Evolve

related article and image

Changing Economy = Changing mall programming

- store closings
- discount stores move to more prominent places
- lower priced rents provide opportunities for the more resistant businesses
- community infrastructure enter malls
- schools, medical and youth activities
- new "lifestyle" attractions to lure customers (gimmicky attractions, grocery)

articles/sites:
Repurpose-Driven Life
Rethinking the Mall
Fall of the Mall
Malls Test Experimental Water to Fill Vacancies
Dead Malls

City of Information

The City of Information

"Wikipedia may be the closest thing to a metropolis yet seen online."

taken from: Wikipedia - Exploring Fact City, by Noam Cohen for the NYTimes

"...Like a city, Wikipedia is greater than the sum of its parts; for example, the random encounters there are often more compelling than the articles themselves. The search for information resembles a walk through an overbuilt quarter of an ancient capital. You circle around topics on a path that appears to be shifting. Ultimately the journey ends and you are not sure how you got there..."

Vendor Power!

Vendor Power!
Center for Urban Pedagogy
Urban Omnibus

Re-Visioning the City

image and related article

Not since the the middle of the 20th century have architects, planners and visionaries embarked into old territories of imagining new cities. The Post WW II effects along with the following Energy Crisis sparked a number of new templates for how we structure living... I think that time as returned, with the renewed understanding of the planets fragile state and the simple fact that more than half of us on the planet now live in cities.

What are those visions and why? Can one find themes from the array of plans, that might make aware emerging fields of urban theory? Its worth a try.

Paris, France:
urban regeneration
Remaking Paris

-in process of researching...

Food Traceability

Farm 776: Linking object with landscape...connecting food with its source.

Forging a Hot Link

"Beginning this month, customers who buy its all-purpose whole wheat flour ... can go to findthefarmer .com, enter the lot code printed on the side of the bag, and visit with the company’s farmers and even ask them questions."

other sources:
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/04/do_you_know_whe.php

Toy... - Land

http://www.toyotawhynot.com/#/home

(Built) Environment and Landscape used as representation of values, image and business strategy.

I love how they say it all begins with you.

wow, adjust, compromise

Battle Between Budget and Beauty, Which Budget Won

By Nicolai Ouroussoff

Published: June 8, 2009

"...Typically, a developer comes to the city with big plans. Promises are made. Serious architects are brought in. The needs of the community, like ample parkland and affordable housing, are taken into account. Editorial boards and critics, like me, praise the design for its ambition.

Eventually, the project takes on a momentum of its own. The city and state, afraid of an embarrassing public failure, feel pressured to get the project done at any cost, and begin to make concessions. Given the time such developments take to build, sometimes a decade or more, we then hit the inevitable economic downturn. The developer pleads poverty. Desperate to avoid more economic bad news, government officials cut a deal.

It’s a familiar ending, made more nauseating because we have seen it so many times before. And it can’t be solved by simply crunching numbers. It demands a profound shift in mentality. What we have now is a system in which decent architecture and the economic needs of developers are in fundamental opposition. Until that changes, there will be more Atlantic Yards in our future."

Shanty Towns

image: Jim Wilson and related article: Cities Deal With Surge in Shantytowns by Jesse McKinley

"Like a dozen or so other cities across the nation, Fresno is dealing with an unhappy déjà vu: the arrival of modern-day Hoovervilles, illegal encampments of homeless people that are reminiscent, on a far smaller scale, of Depression-era shantytowns."

"Dozens of homeless men and women here have found more organized shelter at the Village of Hope, a collection of 8-by-10-foot storage sheds built by the nonprofit group Poverello House and overseen by Mr. Stack. Planted in a former junkyard behind a chain-link fence, each unit contains two cots, sleeping bags and a solar-powered light."

NYTIMES: Designing Through a Depression, by Allison Arieff

"At its heart, design is about problem-solving, but it’s also about problem-identifying. Instead of creating a need for things, designers can now focus on responding to things we do need. We may have never been confronted with as many problems as we are today; the blame for them can’t be attributed to designers, but many future solutions can — and will be."

Eco-Countries

also see Eco-Cities

While new construction can fashion out new living opportunities that consume less energy...what is being done to create new green meccas in existing built environments?
















The Maldives
Investing just over a billion dollars, this island nation of less than a half a million is seeking to go zero in 10 years.

NY TIMES

Water Rights

In Chile, where water rights are private property and not a public resource, agricultural producers and mining companies siphon off rivers and tap scarce water supplies. Drinking water is trucked into Quillagua because the river that fed this oasis town is contaminated and all but dried up. Photo: Tomas Munita for The New York Times

Who owns the water? In chile it depends on who buys it...the rights that is. In several portions of the country one Spanish company, Endesa, owns 80% (NY Times: Chilean Town Withers in Free Market for Water).

Other countries, such as Australia and here in the Southwest US, water rights are said to be handled with more environmentally and conflict resolutions...

In my backyard, water is a commodity. My house has water rights...a value, that I could sell. And the lawsuits can be found.

"The historic water users and the large water interests of Taos Valley are now involved in what is known as the Abeyta Lawsuit. Included in this lawsuit are: Taos Pueblo, Taos Valley Acequia Association, the Town of Taos, and several mutual domestic water consumer districts. If our water existed in abundance, then the judge could have told everyone to drill deeper long ago. The long term implications for both surface and ground water use are so contentious that this lawsuit has been in court for more than 40 years.

Sources:
Taos Horse Fly: Taos County Water Supplies
Taos Pueblo

Reading:
Cadillac Desert by M. Reisner
Blue Covenant by M. Barlow
Rivers of Empire by D. Worster
Blue Gold by M. Barlow
Water Wars by D. Ward
Whoes Water Is It? by Douglas Jehl
Water Wars by Vandana Shiva
Every Drop for Sale by Jeffrey Rothfeder

Municipal Financing

image: Solar Panels 365

Affording solar panels for the typical American home can cost nearly 50,000$. The money to get those panels usually is covered by some home improvement loan...putting the home owner at risk if they decide to move...usually leaving the panels with the house, while hanging onto the loan.

Municipal Financing sees the implementation of solar panels in a community as a more infrastructural issue: ICC explains:

"Under municipal financing of solar power systems, initial solar power investments are covered by a loan from the city, which is secured by property taxes and paid back over time, generally with interest. The advantage of this system over private borrowing is two-fold. First, any homeowner is eligible (not just those with good credit), and second, the loan repayment obligation attaches to the house, not the individual. This means that if a homeowner invests in a solar power system and then moves, they are no longer covering the cost of the upgrade, but instead the loan repayment obligation passes to any future buyers."

Californians already have this option for increasing their local production of energy...with cities in states such as Texas, Colorado and Virginia tagging along.

Novel idea....treating energy production as real estate...and being financed by the city, it becomes a community investment...as energy that isn't consumed by the individual homes is fed back into the grid...

sources:
Institute for Southern Studies
NYTIMES: Harnessing the Sun, With Help From Cities

other energy sources:
wind: Staten Island Harnessing the Wind

American Foreclosures

Excerpts taken from article: All Boarded Up by ALEX KOTLOWITZ

"...And in December, just when local officials thought things couldn’t get worse, Cuyahoga County, which includes Cleveland, posted a record number of foreclosure filings. The number of empty houses is so staggeringly high that no one has an accurate count. The city estimates that 10,000 houses, or 1 in 13, are vacant. The county treasurer says it’s more likely 15,000..."

"...When Jimenez arrived in Cleveland, he learned that the house had been vacant for two years; scavengers had torn apart the walls to get the copper piping, ripped the sinks from the walls and removed the boiler from the basement..."

"...When they lost the house to foreclosure, they left nothing for the scavengers. They stripped their own dwelling, piling toilets, metal screen doors, kitchen cabinets, the furnace and copper pipes into a moving van. “They said, ‘Why should someone else get it?’ ” Gardner told me. “So they took it themselves.” In December, Gardner’s neighbor watched a man strain to push a cart filled with thin slabs of concrete down the street. It explained why so many of the abandoned homes in the city are without front steps, as if their legs had been knocked out from under them. Perhaps such pillage is part of the natural momentum of a city being torn apart. If you can’t hold onto something of real value, at least get your hands on something..."

"...Already places as diverse as Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Las Vegas and Minneapolis have neighborhoods where at least one of every five homes stands vacant..."

“Cleveland is a bellwether,” Immergluck says. “It’s where other cities are heading because of the economic downturn.”

"...The first question outsiders now ask is, Where has everyone gone? The homeless numbers have not increased much over the past couple of years, and it appears that most of the people who lost their homes have moved in with relatives, found a rental or moved out of the city altogether. The county has lost nearly 100,000 people over the past seven years, the largest exodus in recent memory outside of New Orleans..."

"...The legislation was labeled the Neighborhood Stabilization Program, but Cleveland and a handful of other cities had to lobby hard to convince Congress that “stabilization” in their cities meant tearing down houses — not renovating them. Last month, Cleveland said it planned to use more than half of its $25.5 million allotment to raze 1,700 houses. This presents an opportunity to reimagine the city, to erase the obsolete and provide a space for the new. (There’s little money now to build, so imagine is the operative word.) ..."

Organic New Urbanism

"...a utopian experiment in New Urbanism (is) being molded out..."


Seems we are always in flux rethinking urbanism. An ever evolving state of inquiry. and rightly so. In this New York Times article the author refers to the Inn at Serenbe as an experiment in New Urbanism.

Why is a farmstead now novel as being a new way of living? What are the shifts in cultural values? what are the emerging lifestyles? What sort of impact could this really have on the economic development of not only housing stock but the agricultural lands needed to support it?

What are the "organic new urbanist" building codes? Can these tourist destinations...set an example for contempory american living or will they remain a "day trip" fantasy for the everyday american?

Narco-Tour Destination

For Some Taxi Drivers, a Different Kind of Traffic by Marc Lacey
Mazatlán Journal

Travel and tourism offers the rare opportunity to see a location for the first time, risking the attempt of creating your reality of the place through the first set of steps, movements and experiences.

Your perception is the place is framed by what you do, where you go...the honeymooner in Cancun's has an experience much different from the volunteer environmental activist, for example.

These experiences can literally map the identity of a place...
as these examples illustrate.

Reality Tours
$3.95 Star Map












related articles:
Gadling

Taming Times Square

Bloomberg announces plans to make portions of broadway at Times Square more pedestrian friendly by closing off the traffic and installing new public spaces.

related website

What is it that makes a public space "friendlier"? And what sort of models are out there comparable to the likes of Times Square? What is the experience of Times Square...what are the infrastructures, systems...schedules? And what is the user experience without the cars?

related articles.
Times

The life of clothing

Artist Zoe Leonard

Within the city a number of environmental, economical, cultural flows move in and out and around. From water to the water shed, to immigration and GDP. Artist/photographer Zoe Leonard documented the life chain of clothing. The simple item, created for the material culture of America...doesn't begin here or end here. Her work almost could act as a photographic mapping of clothing.

"The project then expanded in scope as Leonard concentrated on tracing the circulation of everyday commodities, particularly secondhand clothing, as they were sold and resold in far-flung destinations. The final compilation includes images captured in Mexico City, Mexico; Kampala, Uganda; and Warsaw, Poland."
Dia Art

"...While exploring the neighborhood, she became intrigued with clothing resellers who purchased garments from thrift stores, sorted them by type and quality, and then packed them in large bales for export to Asia and Africa. In 2004, she traveled to Uganda to see how these items were distributed to their end users. Leonard also visited markets in Poland and Cuba, constructing a meandering travelogue that links images of mom-and-pop shops in New York with shots of jackets, pants and Nike T-shirts in African market stalls. A visual diary illustrating the flows of international commerce, the images also explore how objects are reassessed and reused in different contexts, raising questions of relative worth and the affluence and poverty that influence it..."
Time Out New York

Anamorphosis Mapping: Maps in Time

Map of Europe based on rail travel distance in time.
Spiekermann, K. and M. Wegener. 1996.

















Tube Map based on time

other maps:
World Mapper

The HD Social Media Wedding

Nothing is better than hearing from an old friend getting married, than learning they plan on doing a Social Media Wedding. I wouldn't expect anything less for Hillary and Dan (the HD). Hillary is an incredible designer, mother of two, cancer survivor, and is rethinking "wedding" for the 21st century.

The Process:

"I posted a Craig's List Quandry asking people with apartments, condos, or business buildings downtown if we could rent their rooftop for a wedding. I emailed friends and family. I IMed my friends. I posted the link on Facebook. I started getting responses! After a few leads that didn’t pan out, I got a link to an article in the Kansas City Star from a friend on Twitter about a community park being built on the roof of the parking garage next to the new Cosentino’s Market downtown."

"I called the journalist who wrote the article and the Marketing Director for Cordish who manages the park. And then I realized what I was doing. I was using my mad social networking skills to plan my wedding my way with help from some very nice people on the Interwebs. So this blog is all about how Dan and I are bucking the system to make this occasion our very own, using help from our friends, family, and online community...."

Communication plays a much bigger role. The process becomes transparent with participants (wedding guests) supporting the newly weds with more than new blenders and coffee pots. The process is open, allowing for evolution, flexibility and great ideas.

The site:

No better place for a Social Media Wedding than on a rooftop in downtown Kansas City. A newly developed city park is about to be completed on top of a downtown parking garage.

“...We could have had parking on the roof,” Stephens said. “We saw this not just as a public area but an environmental piece to the development. When you have all this dense development that draws millions of people, you need some private, quiet space, too...”

"...The park features a half-acre of turf. Another half-acre is made up of environmentally friendly sedum plants. There are benches and trees along two sides, and additional landscaping is in the works..."

The event:

Hillary explains in the blog: "I want to have an upload station for people to upload their pics/video on the spot..." and asks her social network on ways to make it all happen.

"...Also, I want a photobooth-type situation, with a really cool vintage couch and props for people to experiment with in taking their pictures..." ask and you shall receive - create your own reality (thru virtual interface) ?

I will be shadowing and helping in anyway I can in this event and post updates on the process here.

1. What is the greater impact of utilizing social media in the creation of an event? The extent of information is more vast and more accessible. The network of people, ideas and resources is also greatly expanded offering a greater adapability to success.

2. Multi-programmatic actions can become less bounded. Site offers new opportunities: guest view and entertainment is provided by Kansas City and the annual fireworks display scheduled for that night. Parking is a no brainer, and ADA accessibilty via elevator and ramps is in place.

3. How can the event itself take on the elements of the site? Food: what opportunities are within reach? community gardens, local produce/chefs? What other opportunites can the site lend? access to live music? bands...music.

4. Decorations: can the wedding party bring and plant flowers for the occasion...at once adding value to the event, while investing in the space when they are gone the next day?

Twittering Celebrities Take Fans Backstage in Their Lives

EXYZT Presents Situation Room

Storefront for Art and Architecture
EXYZT presents Situation Room
Feb 20 2009 - Mar 31 2009

" The architecture .../... will be a means of modifying present conceptions of time and space... It will be a means of knowledge and a means of actions."
Gilles Ivain alias Ivan Chtcheglov, 1958

We will act to defend architecture that is plural, used, complex, diverse, real and alive; architecture that is about action and interaction, formation and deformation, transormation and appropriation.

Situation Room as playground for [re] creation, collective action, active occupation, open demonstration, and social games will be intuitive, interactive and collective performance, showing an everyday life tools and knowledge Directory. For architecture of process, of fabrication, reaction and interaction, members of Exyzt will inhabit the gallery space, making use of the furnishings as though it were a domestic space.

More than showing past projects, we choose to set up a platform for creation and solidarity inviting people to transform the classic use of the gallery, to experiment diversity of programs and activities with basic cheap materials as moving boxes activated with the Storefront staff.

We propose a platform for action, defending an architecture that is alive. EXYZT shakes up the idea of architecture as an independent field. Working on experimental projects, EXYZT invites architecture, video, graphic-design, botany and any other concept to become devices of expression and creation.

Like a series of disparate notes, ready-to-assemble elements will be put together in situ to create this modular, domestic place, rapidly assembled viral constructions that can be implemented to create and augment a social space. Little by little, each limb of this strange apartment will grow new functions, allowing its users to do more and more things, to occupy and work in its ever-changing space. After the basic living space has been assembled an essential urban infrastructure will be added: water, electricity, radio, TV, Internet, etc... Once complete, a vast variety of individual modules will occupy the gallery space to be used for a moment, a day, or a whole night. Lightness, speed and flexibility will be essential ingredients of the Set-up.

The collective carries out temporary setups. Each project is in line with precise and determined time and special frame. The units can be shaped and rearranged to become a living and sitting space, a workspace equipped with a desk, computers and tools, or a dining room, among other forms. From week to week the space will evolve, taking on different ephemeral forms and functions with the public. The situation becomes the physical medium through which a creative and collective game is expressed. The series of projects questions the relationship between public and private and encourages the audience to move from being a spectator to be an actor too.

Exyzt invites the audience to reconsider occupied areas in a well-defined time-frame. The collective conceive and organize each project as a ludic playground where cultural behaviours and shared stories relate, mix and mingle.

Created in 2003 on the initiative of five architects, they produced and organized a first self-construction and self-documented project on a abandoned plot of land in Parc de la Villette, in Paris. By opening up to various fields, the collective group attempts to render architecture into a different perspective.

Our team is now a community of people who have chosen to act under the same principle of sharing knowledge and abilities, imagining the environment as the terrain of a participatory game, a site for play and appropriation, creating 'transient micro ambiances' as Guy Debord described the constucted situation.

Construction will constitute the first movement. Act!

Text by Philippe Rizzotti & Dimitri Messu

Chicago's New Loops of Security

Chicago Links Street Cameras to Its 911 Network
By Karen Ann Cullotta

“We can now immediately take a look at the crime scene if the 911 caller is in a location within 150 feet of one of our surveillance cameras, even before the first responders arrive,” Mr. Orozco said...

“...In America, we protest the use of cameras for things like enforcing laws that reduce crime or traffic accidents, but we probably ought to do more,” Mr. Alschuler said.

He added: “My more serious concern would be if they start using new audio technologies, which can be calibrated to alert police to loud noises, like a scream or a car crash. What worries me is if police can use technology to listen to anyone who happens to be talking in a public location, which would raise serious privacy concerns...”

Cellphones...Navigating Our Lives

Article and Image

“The map underlies man’s ability to perceive,” said Richard Saul Wurman, a graphic designer who was a pioneer in the use of maps as a generalized way to search for information of all kinds before the emergence of the online world.

As this metaphor takes over, it will change the way we behave, the way we think and the way we find our way around new neighborhoods. As researchers and businesses learn how to use all the information about a user’s location that phones can provide, new privacy issues will emerge. You may use your phone to find friends and restaurants, but somebody else may be using your phone to find you and find out about you..."

"...Indeed, a new generation of smartphones like the G1, with Android software developed by Google, and a range of Japanese phones now “augment” reality by painting a map over a phone-screen image of the user’s surroundings produced by the phone’s camera.

With this sort of map it is possible to see a three-dimensional view of one’s surroundings, including the annotated distance to objects that may be obscured by buildings in the foreground. For starters, map-based cellphones simply translate paper maps into a digital medium, but future systems will probably begin to blur the boundaries between the display and the real world..."

Electric Cars = Electric Resiliency

Seeking greater electric and transportation resiliency.

"And in a true smart grid, electric cars will not only be able to draw on electricity to run their motors, they will also be able to do the reverse: send electricity stored in their batteries back into the grid when it is needed. In effect, cars would be acting like tiny power stations.

“Most days, most cars are going to have lots of extra battery capacity,” said Mr. Kempton, noting that on average, American automobiles get driven for just one hour each day. Electrifying the entire vehicle fleet would provide more than three times the U.S.’s power generation, he said."

NYTimes Article
Electric Cars and a Smarter Grid

Gated Internet Communities?

photo and related NYTimes article

“If you’re looking for a digital Pearl Harbor, we now have the Japanese ships streaming toward us on the horizon,” Rick Wesson, the chief executive of Support Intelligence, a computer consulting firm, said recently."

The internet is under attack. The existing structure of the internet has security gaps, allowing hackers to infiltrate corporate and military data...causing much fear. So the debate ranges now in creating a new internet, one with stricter identification measures and security blocks.

"What a new Internet might look like is still widely debated, but one alternative would, in effect, create a “gated community” where users would give up their anonymity and certain freedoms in return for safety. Today that is already the case for many corporate and government Internet users. As a new and more secure network becomes widely adopted, the current Internet might end up as the bad neighborhood of cyberspace. You would enter at your own risk and keep an eye over your shoulder while you were there."

"The idea is to build a new Internet with improved security and the capabilities to support a new generation of not-yet-invented Internet applications, as well as to do some things the current Internet does poorly — such as supporting mobile users."

Or does the strategy look not at recreating the web, but instead rethinking the structure and gradually creating new interventions...

"That has not discouraged the Stanford engineers who say they are on a mission to “reinvent the Internet.” They argue that their new strategy is intended to allow new ideas to emerge in an evolutionary fashion, making it possible to move data traffic seamlessly to a new networking world. Like the existing Internet, the new network will almost certainly have no one central point of control and no one organization will run it. It is most likely to emerge as new hardware and software are built in to the router computers that run today’s network and are adopted as Internet standards."

How does the structure of our information relate to the physical built environments. Are the gated communities of suburbia, the super surveillant cities of post 9/11 the future of our communication networks?

"A more secure network is one that would almost certainly offer less anonymity and privacy. That is likely to be the great tradeoff for the designers of the next Internet. One idea, for example, would be to require the equivalent of drivers’ licenses to permit someone to connect to a public computer network. But that runs against the deeply held libertarian ethos of the Internet."

“As soon as you start dealing with the public Internet, the whole notion of trust becomes a quagmire,” said Stefan Savage, an expert on computer security at the University of California, San Diego."

Dubai Slow Down

With the global economy slowing things down, what will come of Dubai? Will it be merely a 21st century urban glitch? Will it evolve to accept the slower economy? What sort of resiliency does a place like Dubai have?

"With Dubai’s economy in free fall, newspapers have reported that more than 3,000 cars sit abandoned in the parking lot at the Dubai Airport, left by fleeing, debt-ridden foreigners (who could in fact be imprisoned if they failed to pay their bills). Some are said to have maxed-out credit cards inside and notes of apology taped to the windshield."

"Last month, local newspapers reported that Dubai was canceling 1,500 work visas every day, citing unnamed government officials. Asked about the number, Humaid bin Dimas, a spokesman for Dubai’s Labor Ministry, said he would not confirm or deny it and refused to comment further. Some say the true figure is much higher."

full article

United Arab Emirates Aid Debt-Ridden Member, Dubai

The Green Zone

The New Green Zone, Baghdad, Iraq.

from The Guardian:

"The US military released the first tentative artists' impression yesterday. An army source said the barbed wire, concrete blast barriers and checkpoints that currently disfigure the 5 sq mile area would be replaced by shopping malls, hotels, elegant apartment blocks and leisure parks."

"American officials stress that final decisions about reconstruction and development rest with the Iraqi government. Karnowski added that as well as the benefits of renovating and demilitarising an important area of Baghdad, the blueprint would help to create a "zone of influence" around the massive new US Embassy compound being built on the eastern tip of the Green Zone. The $1bn project to move the embassy from Saddam's old presidential palace is planned for completion later this year."

Sandbag housing

MMA Architects and new housing strategies using sand filled bags, stacked...
related articles:
Treehugger
Dezeen

bigger citys, bigger forests

New Jungles Prompt a Debate on Rain Forests
New York Times Article by Elisabeth Rosenthal

With over half of the world's population now living in cities, will the jungles be saved?
This interesting article discusses the issue of how farmers are leaving their deforested agricultural plots and heading to the cities, allowing the jungles to return.

Rosenthal states: "By one estimate, for every acre of rain forest cut down each year, more than 50 acres of new forest are growing in the tropics on land that was once farmed, logged or ravaged by natural disaster."

Google's Power Meter

Kicking the smart grid into motion perhaps is the doing of Google, which introduced new software service online that helps homeowners track their energy use. This requires additional hardware that would plug into your main circuit breaker and would "talk" with your computer, downloading your energy patterns. The Google platform would then map it, graphically showing your energy use...thus prompting many to limit and adjust their use...saving money and surges on our energy grid. Google foresees implementing this into a social network interface...your daily energy use on facebook anyone?


related articles:
New York Times
Bits

McDonalds CycleCenter

Privately owned public resource: McDonalds Cycle Center located in Chicago's Millennium Park. its a heated and air conditioned indoor bicycle parking facility built by the city of Chicago and now sponsored by McDonalds. In addition, the station provides space for a Chicago Police Department Bike Patrol Group.

McDonald's Cycle Center offers the following services:

• Secure Bicycle Parking: The Cycle Center offers 300 secure bicycle parking spaces.
• Lockers, Showers and Towel Service: To make your bicycle commute comfortable we provide lockers and showers (for Members only) so you may refresh before you go to work.
• Bicycle Rental: Bikes are available for rent by the hour, day, or week.
• Bicycle Repair Shop: Professional bicycle mechanics are available full time at the bicycle station during the summer from 10am to 6pm and part time during the winter.
• Guided Bicycle Tours: Memorial Day to Labor Day, guided bicycle tours are offered daily at 10am and 1pm.
• IGO Car Sharing : IGO cars are available for rent from Millennium Park. IGO is a not-for-profit car sharing program developed by the Center.
  

from website

from a treehugger blog post:

"I have a membership at the bike station and find it very convenient - it's clean and only 4 blocks from my office, which is closer than any gym. It's not fancy, but it doesn't need to be - and it's used almost exclusively by commuters, not tourists. I don't mind the McDonald's name if it saves taxpayer money - besides, anyone who's traveled much knows that the bathrooms at McDonald's are always the cleanest."

Also see:
Millennium Park
Wikipedia

Mapping Prop 8

Through the internet our actions are becoming increasingly exposed and now our attitudes toward social issues can be to. This new Prop 8 Map takes publicly available data of people who financially supported California's Prop 8 measure and maps them into a google map mesh up.

Donor information is accessible by clicking on the red markers. Results have included hate mail, calls and boycotting.













related article: New York Times

Virtual Deputies

Virtual Deputies is a new private/public program through the The Texas Border Sheriff's Coalition and BlueServo. In the past several months a network of surveillance cameras have been set up along the Texas/Mexico border. Now in the comfort of your own home, people can log in to the site and partake in the act of spotting illegal aliens with real surveillance video. Operating 24/7, the greater public can now survey and report directly to the Coalition any suspecious activies.

Groups can also form to turn the cameras on their own communities with the local Virtual Neighborhood Watches...

Sustainable Cities

also see eco-countries

Perhaps during a recession, as things slow down a bit, is the best time to reflect on the Eco-Cities and Resorts (whats the difference these days?). Below are the latest ones I have found:
















Monterrey Bay Shores, California
from Inhabitat: (http://www.inhabitat.com/2009/02/04/monterey-bay-shores-eco-resort/)

The site for the Monterey Bay Shores eco-resort is situated on a defunct sand mine, which had been operating for over 60 years. The sand mine considerably damaged the natural ecosystem, stripping away important topsoil layers and allowing invasive species to infiltrate the area. As part of the resort development, MBS will also restore 85% of the 29 acre site to native flora and fauna. Over 6.7 acres will be dedicated as an endangered species habitat and restored coastline. Additionally, 5 acres will be built as a living roof, leaving only 4% of the site as impervious surface, which is great. All parking is below ground, and even the fire lanes will be constructed from a grass paver, rather than asphalt.















Masdar: Abu Dhabi
from website:
"Welcome to Masdar City - the world's first carbon-neutral, zero-waste city. Currently under construction in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Masdar City will feature all of the modern conveniences, services and benefits of living in one of the great cities of the world, but in a carbon-neutral environment.

Masdar City, soon to become home to 40,000 residents and 50,000 daily commuters, is being built around pedestrians, where open public squares intersect with narrow shaded walkways and connect to homes, schools, restaurants, theatres and shops. The architecture of the city is inspired by the traditional medinas, souks and wind towers of the Arab world

The City is a free zone clean-tech cluster. Academics, researchers, students, entrepreneurs and financers and more than 1,500 visionary companies will have offices, research centers and operations within city walls, benefiting from 100% foreign ownership, zero taxes, zero import tariffs, zero restrictions on capital movement and among the strongest intellectual property protection in the region.

Masdar City is more than a concept - it is happening. Phase One of Masdar City has now begun - The Masdar Institute of Science and Technology is underway and Masdar City will be home to 100 students and faculty by fall 2009.

Dongtan, China
from website: Dongtan will produce its own energy from wind, solar, bio-fuel and recycled city waste. Clean technologies such as hydrogen fuel cells will power public transport. A network of cycle and footpaths will help the city achieve close to zero vehicle emissions. Farmland within the Dongtan site will use organic farming methods to grow food.

Dongtan will be a vibrant city with green ‘corridors’ of public space ensuring a high quality of life for residents. The city is designed to attract employment across all social and economic demographics in the hope that people will choose to live and work there.

Dongtan demonstrates to the world China’s ability to work closely with the environment and has provided a methodology for sustainable communities across China and beyond.

Logrono Montecorvo Eco City, Rioja, Spain
from website: The long, snaking line of interconnected buildings will feature volumes of different heights, skins and window arrangements. But each unit will have an identical or virtually identical layout.

To take housing blocks as an example, a ten-storey northern unit will include three storeys of underground parking, a ground floor for the public and six storeys of apartments. To the south of that, another building will provide one storey of underground parking and three storeys of housing. Bridges will connect the northern and southern buildings. The same layout applies when the buildings serve other functions.

Each unit will have a view to the south, enabling residents to see Logroño and other parts of La Rioja. Given the steepness of the hill, the southern buildings will not block views from the northern buildings.

At its highest point, a funicular will terminate at a museum and viewing point hidden in a research and promotion centre for renewable and energy-efficient technology. This centre will be hidden in the top of one hill. It is unclear how far down the hill the funicular will go, or how many funiculars will serve the city.

Carbon Neutral Zira Island, Azerbaijan
from website: "Zira Island is a 1,000,000 sq meter island In the Caspian Sea that will soon be developed into an incredible eco-community and sustainably built resort. Master-planned by Denmark-based Big Architects, the carbon-neutral eco-island is based on the seven peaks of Azerbaijan and its mountainous ecosystems. Located in the bay of the capital city Baku, Zira Island is a ferry ride away from a growing metropolis and will stand as an example to a region so dependent on oil, that it is possible to live off the wind and sun."
















Green City/Green Mountain, Libya
from article:

The declaration basically says everything the world would want to hear: sustainable development; archaeological conservation; eco-tourism; renewable energy; environmentally responsible town planning; micro-banking; education; biofuels; even production of "the finest quality organic food and drink". In essence, it was a declaration that Libya are now more interested in saving the planet than bankrolling terrorists, and that one day soon the Green Mountain region would be a very nice place to come on holiday - a sort of cross between St Tropez, the garden of Eden, and Waitrose.

To achieve these daunting ambitions, Saif al-Islam has created the Green Mountain Conservation and Development Authority, a curious coalition of international experts in green technology, conservation, agriculture, architecture and whatever else, with responsibility for a 5,500 sq km area littered with Greek, Roman and Byzantine ruins and with 220km of largely unspoilt coast. And leading the whole plan is Britain's ubiquitous architectural troubleshooter, Norman Foster.