Cities, lessons and modern versions...

From: Lessons for a Modern Chicago, New York Times, James Warren

"An estimated 70 percent of the world’s population will live in cities by 2050. The fittest to survive, the consensus goes, are those metropolitan areas — not just cities — that can combine talent, capital, innovation and cooperation in plotting organic strategies for growth, and not just steal businesses from elsewhere."

"...A new ranking of metropolitan economies, based on employment and per-capita income growth, shows American cities plummeting as Asian and Latin American cities rise. In the past year, only one American city, Austin, Tex., was in the top 35, with Chicago ranking 82nd among 150 metro economies worldwide and trailing 30 cities in the United States.

Panels exploring the revivals of Barcelona, Munich, Seoul and Turin underscored that success involved a determination to work with local, state and federal governments; to internationalize economies; to innovate to revitalize traditional industries; to upgrade workers’ skills with technical training; and to shift to a green economy while boosting investment in high speed rail..."

"...Emily J. Harris, program director for Chicago Metropolis 2020, found the big takeaway from the conference was that economic development strategy must depend on innovation “and not trying to attract firms from elsewhere.” Growth must come from within, the strategy used in Turin, Italy’s Detroit, which parlayed a declining auto sector’s technical savvy into powerhouse design and aerospace centers."

KSA's new cities

New Economic Cities planned for Saudi Arabia...
more here at NY Times article:

Service Design

Service Design: “Service design addresses the functionality and form of services from the perspective of clients. It aims to ensure that service interfaces are useful, usable, and desirable from the client’s point of view and effective, efficient, and distinctive from the supplier’s point of view.”

"Developing more sustainable societies will require getting the increasing urbanization of global populations right. Cities, because of their density, afford substantial eco-efficiencies. However, as a result of their ill-considered 20th century development, cities are yet to deliver on that promise. So cities need to be significantly, and rapidly, retrofitted."

"Some examples of their deliverables are: service assessment, needs analysis, service blueprint, customer journey maps, ethnographic studies, concept sketches, mock-ups, feasibility study, business plan, communication strategies, etc.


Moreover, as described by Joe Heapy from Engine in an article called “Make Yourself Useful,” designers are working more and more within organizations to transform their innovation practices and organizational models. In this case, the design deliverables are changing from finished design ‘products’ to ‘knowledge transfer’ activities such as the formalization of innovation processes, pilot projects, training sessions or design toolkits."

Hybridizing Art and Energy

The Land Art Generator Initiative announces its submissions and finalists for their Abu Dhabi based competition for artists to merge sustainable energy production with art.

The NYTimes provides a nice write up. 
..."Its aim is to help participants to develop and ultimately attract investment to construct power-generating plants that are aesthetically and functionally integrated into the landscape.
The contest was established by the husband-and-wife team of Robert Ferry and Elizabeth Monoian, whose firm Studied Impact is focused on the environmental effects of design...."

They plan to hit NYC next!

Sanitation!

The competition is on! Make Sanitation Sexy.
The Search for the Obvious is a great site acknowledging our built environment.

"We believe in the power of creativity to better the world. Instead of seeing problems, a creative mind sees obvious solutions. Look around you and you'll find all sorts of solutions to problems that once seemed impossible. Now Acumen Fund needs YOU to help change how the world is addressing poverty by showing that there's a better way."

Collaborative Consumption

Book: What's Mine is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption
Collaborative Consumption describes the rapid explosion in swapping, sharing, bartering, trading and renting being reinvented in ways relevant to the Facebook age.

Underdome

Underdome:  a project that identifies a range of positions on energy and public life and assigns to each a corresponding architectural icon.

"The guide’s taxonomy covers the political, spatial, and cultural dimensions of energy, and revolves around four main topics: “Power” asks how governments, corporations, organizations and individuals have the potential to restructure energy performance. “Territory” asks how energy transforms and is transformed by the changing networks of today’s metropolis. “Lifestyle” asks what kind of norms and behavior energy performance schemes imagine. And lastly, “Risk,” as a kind of meta-category that cuts across these other fields, asks how we weigh priorities among a diverse set of interests and contingencies."

interview here

Mapping your path

In celebration of the 106th birthday of New York Cities subway system, The New York Times posted a great interactive website that asks people to create their own maps of how they get around using the Subway system. Above, Milton Glaser's own "mental map" of NYC.

Resilient City Design Competition

http://www.resilientcity.org/

"ResilientCity.org is a not-for-profit network of architects, urban planners and designers, engineers, and landscape architects focused on developing creative, practical, and implementable planning and building design strategies that help address one of our century's most important challenges: namely, dealing with the significant future problems that will be associated with the impacts of climate change and energy transition in the context of human settlement"

Small-House Utopia

The Home for the New Economy was announced at the International Builders’ Show. So interesting to see the building climate change in what seems like a blink of an eye.

Nice write up about it all by Andrew Rice here

Suburbia Reborn

And the results are in: "Build a Better Suburb"
read more about it here

Pushing Green in the Heartland

There were some really important points that came up in the recent article in the New York Times by Leslie Kaufman. The tools and techniques that we use to adjust peoples perceptions and behaviors of the environment and the impact our built environment can have on it are not "one fits all."

Coming from this part of the world myself, one can only image that using Al Gore, Climate Change Science and environmentalism isn't a way to get people to listen... instead

"Ms. Jackson settled on a three-pronged strategy. Invoking the notion of thrift, she set out to persuade towns to compete with one another to become more energy-efficient. She worked with civic leaders to embrace green jobs as a way of shoring up or rescuing their communities. And she spoke with local ministers about “creation care,” the obligation of Christians to act as stewards of the world that God gave them, even creating a sermon bank with talking points they could download."

...brilliant

read whole article here

Smart Mobility

Transportation for America has recently posted some interesting case studies on transportation. What is of interest is their look at excess capacity and the rubric they use in exploring it: increased efficiency, travel options, better information, pricing and payments and trip reduction. How can we learn from their industry and apply these tools for other industries/infrastructures in need of rethinking, redesign...?

Tektonomastics

Tektonomastics:  “tekto-” — Greek for “building” — with “onomastics” — the study of the history and origin of proper names.

Great project in New York that is identifying residential buildings bringing to light a forgotten landscape, a new digital historical record and simply as a means of getting to know your hood.

Urban Omnibus article link

Aquaponics

Fish Farms with a Side of Greens
I have always had an eye on this industry in terms of its ability to work in a closed loop...where waste becomes food and vice-versa. The "cradle to cradle" for the food industry?

" Aquaponics — a combination of aquaculture, or fish cultivation, and hydroponics, or water-based planting — utilizes a symbiotic relationship between fish and plants. Fish waste provides nutrients for the plants, which in turn filter the water in which the fish live. Cuttings from plant are composted to create food for worms, which provide food for the fish, completing the cycle."

Masdar: Progress report

Great progress report from "Critic's Notebook" on the opening of Masdar...the first buildings.

Ouroussoff states:
"...What Masdar really represents, in fact, is the crystallization of another global phenomenon: the growing division of the world into refined, high-end enclaves and vast formless ghettos where issues like sustainability have little immediate relevance...

...This has involved not only the proliferation of suburban gated communities, but also the transformation of city centers in places like Paris and New York into playgrounds for tourists and the rich. Masdar is the culmination of this trend: a self-sufficient society, lifted on a pedestal and outside the reach of most of the world’s citizens."

Well said...

City Grid as Canvas

"...Over the last four years hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers who have walked by or on top of the orange lines have unwittingly passed what is possibly the biggest graffiti tag in the world. The tag, which is so vast that all parts of it cannot be viewed simultaneously, was created in 2006 by an artist known as Momo and consists of a paint line that he said runs about eight miles long and spells out his name.
It runs from the East River to the Hudson River and extends north to 14th Street and south to Grand Street. The line runs over curbstones and subway grates and zigzags around lampposts and manhole covers. Its route begins at the edge of a West Side pier and ends after crossing a footbridge over the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive..."

Wheeels

Interview with Wheeels creaters, David Mahfouda and Alex Pasternack.

"Transit, and the hard infrastructure that undergirds it, is a system that could obviously benefit from greater efficiency and less waste. But it was the less tangible infrastructure of the Internet that led to her eureka moment, ten years ago: “This is what the Internet was made for, sharing a scare resource among many people.”...

Small Scale, Big Change

New Show opening at the MOMA...NYC
"...This exhibition presents eleven architectural projects on five continents that respond to localized needs in underserved communities. These innovative designs signal a renewed sense of commitment, shared by many of today’s practitioners, to the social responsibilities of architecture...."

James Corner Interview

Interview by Jill Fehrenbacher at Habitat.com with James Corner on the topic of the High Line in NYC.

Icons and Development

This recent article highlights the latest debate of historical preservation vs. development.
Its a matter of icon, history, memory and perhaps ego. How long to be hold onto images? Who has the right to fight for them, and what this the reason we move forward, change, alter and adapt? In this case, the all mighty recession is given the reason to build, leaving the Empire State Building in the shadow. But what is reassuring about this recent development plan is the possibility that New York City isn't dead yet. Not dead as in debt, no jobs or a defunct rail system. But dead in the sense of soul. What are the global cities of today? Dubai, Doha, Shanghai. And what is it about them that sparks the excitement of city, of living and of a future tomorrow. Wasn't New York City THE one city that brought all those terms to mind? When the city was at its explosive youth, it set the standards for codes, setbacks...It redefined an urbanity, it created an synergy and it imagined a future. Now, bogged down in its own history, stagnate from its own memory, its own inhabitants are themselves holding back its greatest potential - that to evolve.

Sure, this is just one building, but numerous other projects in the city can attest to the old age amnesia the city and its inhabitants have taken on...while the young, restless and future-seeking global cities leave it in the dust.

From Pyramids to Suburbs...

And the cities just keep coming... Cairo is next and is in need, no doubt. This NY Times article sums up the progress of serveral new cities being built on the edges of civilization...


"Greater Cairo needs 2 million new housing units within the next 10 years..."

"A few miles farther out in the desert is the extreme side of replacement Cairo: an exclusive golf course community called Allegria, already half built, and the planned luxury development of Westown, flanking the main highway from Cairo to Alexandria. Developers are building a replica of downtown Beirut, which will serve as an urban hub for all the gated communities and other developments proliferating in the desert."

St Louis Arch Riverfront Design Comp

The City + The Arch + The River
St. Louis and the International Design Competition to rethink the arch national park, the waterfront and the city.

"Higher" Transportation

Some interesting developments in the land of hyper urbanization...China. This new elevated bus system promises to decrease the increasing traffic congestion while decreasing the pollution load on the ever increasing cities of China. To be tested out in Beijing, the opportunities to see our street scapes as layers in the cities for multiple programming could yet be seen.

Designing beyond idealism

Sometimes the amount of need for the urban and architectural condition is overwhelming...and the idealism and Utopian visions are numerous. I like this article from Core77 that invites us as designers to remain effective.

“Faced with a potentially inevitable catastrophic set of circumstances, the designers embodied principles of pragmatism over idealism in the artefacts they created, all the while working within a realization that some problems cannot be solved. This might be hard for us to come to terms with as designers, but Protect and Survive demonstrates that it's certainly a useful space for us to explore. When faced with an unsolvable problem, how can we still be effective?...”

“…By being honest in our design work about the imperfections of the worlds both outside and inside us, we might craft more products and services that speak to who we are in a straightforward way…”

“…I hope that with these few examples, I've begun to hint at how a design process that doesn't necessarily default to an optimistic view of our behaviour or our future can form a valuable and productive mode of enquiry, and lead to equally impactful outcomes. By being honest in our design work about the imperfections of the worlds both outside and inside us, we might craft more products and services that speak to who we are in a straightforward way, and, in doing so, offer more meaningful, true support for the way that we really live our lives—and maybe lead us to less artifical utopias…”

Rural design vernacular

Another nice essay from Core 77

I would ask, how could we look at this in terms of rural vs. urban? Design, planning and infrastructure?

"In an attempt to discover how rural habits of mind and making could inform a design practice, I've been investigating the qualities of agency in a project entitled Objects of the Rural Vernacular."

“There is a unique borrowing from the rural by the urban in design, both past and the present. At their roots, these projects exude a sense of self-sufficiency, informed by a romanticized sense of rural autonomy and resourcefulness. Still, objects that can provide the means to this self-reliance expose agency—the ability to deliberately and directly affect one's environment in an undisciplined, creative manner."

Feedback Loop Urbanism

Always a great read, Urban Omnibus discusses the issue of city and citizen responsiveness.

"311 provides an online point of entry, but its primary form of engagement is a phone call between a citizen with a question and an operator able to point her towards the proper resource or department. But once this connection is made, the caller is deposited right back into the big-city bureaucracy. Similar things are true of FixMyStreet, which collects issues on its users' behalf and then forwards the aggregated complaints to the relevant department of government.
How might we close the loop? How could we arrange things so that the originator, other members of the public, the city bureaucracy itself and other interested parties are all notified that an issue has been identified and is being dealt with? How might we identify the specific individuals or teams tasked with responding to the issue, allow people to track the status of issues they're reported, and ensure that observed best practices and lessons learned are gathered in a resolution database?..."

Build a Better Burb results in

And the results are in! Check out the finalists for envisioning a new suburban future for Long Island...

Making Mega Projects

The recent article from The Bay Citizen highlights the difficulty in cities handling growth management. On the one hand we hear that our cities our growing and that we must prepare for the millions more that will need to be housed in the global cities of tomorrow. But on the other hand, we have the millions already in the city, resistant to such planning, hesitant for such sudden mega-projects.

Some opt for more "small scale infill" projects - a less obtrusive, abrupt design procedure that operates perhaps more on the scale of our human comprehension, a better sense of security...

What have we learned from the mega planning projects of the Modernist? Where do we now stand in the forethought to prepare for the future while sensitive to the presence of "now"...

The "urban acupuncture" ideas throw into question a lot of the common place zoning, property rights and such that many would be hard pressed to allow (NIMBY - not in my backyard).

Is it the "master plan"? The large scale, cream colored shaded squares, tied together in a network of make-believe roads surrounded by green geometric shapes? Is the way we represent the future leave out the concerns of today and thus leave the viewer, the concerned citizen, out of the picture? (or the environment, the nature preserves...)

In times of emergency, we adapt to large adaptations...Massive planning is comprehended through massive loss or destruction. But when we have just a trickle of people entering the cities, the vision of massive planning is intimidating...its not for the city perhaps, but for the anticipated city...a plan for the others...

piecemeal development, renovation, in-fill allows the resident to feel the scale of self and its city in a comfortable relationship with the addition of the new, the other. What we as architects vision is a reality of the new, but perhaps we fail to create a vision for the old. 

Getting Around the Mega-Cities

related article: Envisioning a Small Electric BMW for the World’s Very Big Cities

In thinking about how we will move about the new more congested cities, several auto companies are preparing to introduce new smaller "people movers"...

" The Mega City Vehicle is imagined not simply as an in-city errand hauler, but as a commuter car. “In the beginning of the program we asked, what does ‘megacity’ mean?’” he said. “What kind of people will drive this car? What will they do everyday?”"

Third Spaces

Interesting article not only on how we are changing the live/work dynamic, but on how our cities themselves can change, evolve to foster that. Ray Oldenburg talks about these new spaces as "third spaces"...":where we go not just to drink coffee but also to send an e-mail; the hotel lobby where we take a meeting; or the local library where we write a report, edit a document or revise a business plan." Its those places where no one looks like they are working, but in fact are.

And these places can be anywhere...so people are looking at where we live over where we work. Bigger cities then become the magnets for this sort of "senergy".... but the author offers some interesting perspectives of how any size place can foster this sort of momentum...

"All successful revitalization efforts focus on upgrading existing local assets — developing better ties among colleges, universities and communities, strengthening business districts, upgrading parks and open spaces, preserving and reusing old buildings and supporting local art and music."


image credit

And the Eco Cities fade?

Keeping up with the progress of these grand plans for Eco-Cities...here is an update from the Times.

Power Point - shooting bullets

We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint:
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
New York Times

 I have always been told the linearity of thought that powerpoint enforces can limit your thinking process and understanding of complex systems. This is not so reassuring that the people need the most clarity have discovered the same thing...

UPDATED: article:
"...Great presenters employ the basic narrative techniques used throughout history to connect with audiences and move them to action and new understanding. The presentations that work are not the ones with the most data or the most elaborate charts and graphs; the winners are those with the most compelling and convincing narratives.

We're a distracted, multi-tasking society. So presentations need to lure and re-lure an audience simply to keep their attention. Audiences are looking at the clock or fiddling with their handheld devices throughout a presentation. You don't connect with your audience by throwing information at them -- you do it by taking them on a journey toward your perspective..."

Excerpts: 

“PowerPoint makes us stupid,” Gen. James N. Mattis of the Marine Corps, the Joint Forces commander, said this month at a military conference in North Carolina. (He spoke without PowerPoint.) Brig. Gen. H. R. McMaster, who banned PowerPoint presentations when he led the successful effort to secure the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar in 2005, followed up at the same conference by likening PowerPoint to an internal threat.

“It’s dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control,” General McMaster said in a telephone interview afterward. “Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable.”


In General McMaster’s view, PowerPoint’s worst offense is not a chart like the spaghetti graphic, which was first uncovered by NBC’s Richard Engel, but rigid lists of bullet points (in, say, a presentation on a conflict’s causes) that take no account of interconnected political, economic and ethnic forces. “If you divorce war from all of that, it becomes a targeting exercise,” General McMaster said.


Commanders say that behind all the PowerPoint jokes are serious concerns that the program stifles discussion, critical thinking and thoughtful decision-making. Not least, it ties up junior officers — referred to as PowerPoint Rangers — in the daily preparation of slides, be it for a Joint Staff meeting in Washington or for a platoon leader’s pre-mission combat briefing in a remote pocket of Afghanistan. 

(Thanks Lee!)

 

Mapping the Protest in Bangkok

New events in Bangkok highlight the public-ness and private-ness of spaces of protest.
The above mapping highlights the "area" under control of the "red shirts"

The top horizontal line is Rama 1 Road, home of the gigantic malls like Siam Paragon.

Cities all over the world are privatizing their gathering spaces under the guise of consumerism. These become likely sites of protest for this disruption of financial systems - now having international/global repercussions.

Retrofitting Suburbia

Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs
"While there has been considerable attention by practitioners and academics to development in urban cores and new neighborhoods on the periphery of cities, there has been little attention to the redesign and redevelopment of existing suburbs. Here is a comprehensive guidebook for architects, planners, urban designers, and developers that illustrates how existing suburbs can be redesigned and redeveloped. The authors, both architects and noted experts on the subject, show how development in existing suburbs can absorb new growth and evolve in relation to changed demographic, technological, and economic conditions."

Tedx video here

Google mania

Sorry, but too great not to share or to forget:

10 Simple Google Search Tricks

Google Public Data

Great new access to data and mapping.
Leave it to Google:
"Data visualizations for a changing world: The Google Public Data Explorer makes large datasets easy to explore, visualize and communicate. As the charts and maps animate over time, the changes in the world become easier to understand. You don't have to be a data expert to navigate between different views, make your own comparisons, and share your findings."

Pop-Up Spaces

Real Estate Bust - Allissa Walker

When there is lemons, you make lemonade. At this moment of numerous empty store, a growing concept in "pop-up" galleries are taking charge in a number of large cities. Emtpy storefronts become temporary exhibits, empty spaces become temporary buisnesses, classrooms and any sort of mash-up programming a creative type could think of.

Waterfronts

selected articles:
Brooklyn Bridge Park

“Rising Currents: Projects for New York’s Waterfront” at MOMA
review

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