Taxi Mapping

Another great New York Times info-mapping of Taxi's in the city

The Foodprint Project

Foodprint NYC is the first in a series of international conversations about food and the city.

The free afternoon program will include designers, policy-makers, flavor scientists, culinary historians, food retailers, and others, for a wide-ranging discussion of New York’s food systems, past and present, as well as opportunities to transform our edible landscape through technology, architecture, legislation, and education.


related link at Urban Omnibus

Cars, Culture and the City

“Cars, Culture and the City,” an exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York. The show opens on Thursday at the museum, 1220 Fifth Avenue at East 103rd Street, and runs through Aug. 1.

Slumburbia

Opinion Piece by Timothy Egan

"...a few lessons about urban planning can be picked from the stucco pile.

One is that, at least here in California, the outlying cities themselves encouraged the boom, spurred by the state’s broken tax system. Hemmed in by property tax limitations, cities were compelled to increase revenue by the easiest route: expanding urban boundaries. They let developers plow up walnut groves and vineyards and places that were supposed to be strawberry fields forever to pay for services demanded by new school parents and park users.

Second, look at the cities with stable and recovering home markets. On this coast, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle and San Diego come to mind. All of these cities have fairly strict development codes, trying to hem in their excess sprawl. Developers, many of them, hate these restrictions. They said the coastal cities would eventually price the middle class out, and start to empty.

It hasn’t happened. Just the opposite. The developers’ favorite role models, the laissez faire free-for-alls — Las Vegas, the Phoenix metro area, South Florida, this valley — are the most troubled, the suburban slums.

Come see: this is what happens when money and market, alone, guide the way we live"

photo and article credit

the story of NORCS

Great research on elderly communities of New York City by Interboro.

Landscape of Energy

Landscapes of Energy 

Edited by Rania Ghosn.

Energy infrastructures deploy space at a large scale, yet they remain invisible because the creation of value in the oil regime has long externalized spatial costs, sliding them out of sight and away from design's agency. Contemporary environmental, political, and financial crises have brought energy once again to the forefront of design concerns. Rarely, however, do practices of sustainable design-efficient building skins, islands of self-sufficiency, positive-energy machines-address the spatiality of energy systems. Instead, they tend to emphasize a renewable/nonrenewable binary that associates environmental costs exclusively with the infrastructure of oil and overlooks the geographic imperative of all forms of energy.

Volume 2 of New Geographies proposes to historicize and materialize the relations of energy and space, and map some of the physical, social, and representational geographies of oil, in particular. By making visible this infrastructure, Landscapes of Energy is an invitation to articulate design's environmental agency and its appropriate scales of intervention.

City of Apps

This is a repost from the New York Times Bits Blog
"New York City Names Winners of Apps Contest" by Jenna Wortham

So interesting to see cities taking on the private sector to create transparency, efficiency and localized, dispersed networks. The future of city building...

Emergency Aid

photo by Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

And so come the reports of the aftermath of the Earthquake that hit the capital city of Haiti. It was of no surprise that much aid was needed, that money was being asked for and that organization was to say the least, unorganized. Its the nature of events such as these, that we can imagine, yet still feel unprepared in its real aftermath. From the Tsunami to Katrina, we just never have enough in preparation for such events.

And why does it come to this? It could be easy to say that these communities are already under pressure and the slightest imbalance can cause deeper unrest. But if we get to the heart of the issue, are the cities, the built environment, the dwellings and infrastructure ill prepared for resiliency in such events? Can we plan for unplanned events?

Our cities are not built sustainably. Density, materials and technologies are not capable to respond to big events that mother nature can unleash. But what has been reported are the numbers of "unorganized" decisions coming out of the events that are worth noting. I will also list other organizations and types of thinking that help to plan the un-planable.

Housing:
Transitional Structures
architecture for humanity

Organizational:
Wise Earth Network

additional links:
A Plan to Spur Growth Away From Haiti’s Capital

Get a Degree in Ruralism

photo credit

In reading AKASH KAPUR's "letter from India", Agriculture Left to Die at India's Peril, one begs the question of whether urbanists, designers, planners and architects aren't missing the issue by not focusing on RURAL development and only on urban. While the drive is for greater urbanization, and yes, the needs for water, housing and waste management will be of major necessity, but shouldn't we be addressing this in the most "sustainable" of manners, and thus nipping this at the bud? And instead asking, Why are people moving into the cities, and how can we improve the RURAL experience? Thus addressing and supporting issues such as agriculture and food supplies, safe water and sanitation. Does waiting till the critical mass appear in the city makes sense? Or should we not be addressing these issues on a more dispersed scale - that of the rural?

rural desigers...ruralist!

see my earlier related blogposts

Cyber Nations

"Cyber Nations is the most popular free persistent browser-based nation simulation game on the Internet. Create a nation and decide how you will rule your people by choosing a government type, a national religion, tax rate and more. Build your nation by purchasing infrastructure to support your citizens, land to expand your borders, technology to increase your effectiveness, military to defend your interests, and develop national improvements and wonders to build your nation according to your choosing.."

an essay for the economic deceleration

I like to tune into Core77 for some refreshing takes on the design field. This essay by Tad Toulis gives a nice overview of some emerging trends in the industry: Copy/Paste Creativity, Ubiquitous High-Fidelity and Links and Linkatures

The Cab Ride

There is something so simple and effective about this study that I just keep coming back to. Rachel Abrams gives us a play by play of how she "see's" the taxi ride and gives us a great tool for exploring the world of transportation. Here at Urban Omnibus

MADE IN ____ & ____ & ____ ...

Ever wonder what "Made in China" really means? This well researched site, Source Map, documents the constuction and movement of all the materials used to make some of the common products you probably are using right now. Great supply chain mappings adds to the visual research.

Land of Ghosn - The Beirut Blog

You can also see me blogging on my Beirut Blog while based here in Lebanon

The Counterfeit Triangle

New York's Street of Schemes
 By ALEX KALMAN and LOLA SINREICH
The New York Times