WEEKEND READING: May 14-20, 2011

It's a week full of revivals. Weekend Reading is back. In truth, it should never have left. Apologies. My Google Reader is overflowing, so most of these are a bit older; we'll catch up soon enough. Anyway, let's get to it—

ITEM ONE: Top billing goes to a guest post by Utazó over at Polis (the ace blog run by former Wherebloggers Peter & Katia) on gentrification and demographic shifts in the Józsefváros district of Budapest.

ITEM TWO: The fabulous Nina Simon writes about Case by Case, an experiment by the San Diego Museum of Natural History that invites museum-goers to affix post-its with questions, comments, etc. to cases containing un-labeled historical artifacts. It gets the artifacts out on the floor faster and helps staff develop exhibits that are more responsive to visitors' interests. Would love to see someone develop an app for doing this in a public space.

ITEM THREE (& 1/2): Richard Florida presents new info supporting his argument that happier cities are more economically prosperous, while Jay Walljasper suggests that neighborhoods with common shared spaces are happier neighborhoods. Happier neighborhoods = happier cities; more proof that Americans need to re-learn the importance of sharing.

ITEM FOUR: Where's friend Mimi Zeiger (@loudpaper) writes at Places about the creative use of posters, pamphlets, and guides in activating the urban environment.

ITEM FIVE: Fascinating article in re:Place about public space in West African cities. Strikes me as especially interesting that the main form of urban social space in Accra is the street—this is also often said of New York. (Union and Madison Squares are nice, but the real action is on the sidewalks).

ITEM SIX: Edwin Heathcote slays ridiculous city rankings (a la Monocle's whitebread circus of a livability list) in The Financial Times. Certainly among the best articles I've read on the subject.

ITEM SEVEN: Flavorwire rounds up a "Retrospective of Interventionists and [Museum] Crashers." Not even the Met is safe from DIY/participatory urbanism. Bwahaha! (via @fastcodesign)

ITEM EIGHT: I've been doing analysis of the data from the @IfUD's By the City / For the City  over at our project blog; add our feed to your RSS reader, there will be a lot of interesting stuff coming over the next couple of months.

Got suggestions for next week? Tweet them to @thewhereblog!

WEEKEND READING: March 22-28, 2008

Sorry for the slow week. Regular posting should resume after this weekend. In the meantime, there's always plenty of weekend reading to go around!

ITEM ONE: First off, a bit of self-promotion. I have a new post up at Next American City projecting some possible outcomes of the rise of online virtual worlds and increased advertising in Western culture. The French Quarter as an export? Perhaps...

ITEM TWO: WorldChanging with a stirring piece on the powerful political act of optimisim.

ITEM THREE: Is your city a "Paris" or a "London"? Read this Economist piece comparing the two euro-glam-capitals and ponder that question for a bit. (Via Pittsblog)

ITEM FOUR: PlannersWeb takes an in-depth look at the role of urban planners in a Chavez-led Venezuela.

ITEM FIVE: Core77 reports on the book containing the radical designs generated by participants in eVolo's '06, '07, and '08 Skyscraper Competition. Flashy stuff. (Photo credit)

ITEM SIX: Speaking of radical architecture, Richard Florida posted news of a massive floating city-cum-cruise ship. This definitely falls under "You gotta see it to believe it."

ITEM SEVEN: Over at Interchange, Barbara Faga looks at the somewhat comical tug-of-war in public perception of which is worse: density or sprawl.

Hasta luego; enjoy your weekend.

Exploring the City of Tomorrow

A hypothetical Aura Map of Istanbul's Golden Horn.

Google Transit wants your city to get on their bus. At the American Public Transportation Association's recent TransITech conference the web giant's mass trans-tracking maps app (say that five times fast) challenged every transit agency in attendance to upload their schedules and information to the site by Earth Day of 2008. If Google's effort at TransITech is successful, live, up-to-date GPS-powered transit tracking for every major city in the country (and beyond) could be a reality much sooner than one might imagine.

It's a bit freaky at first; there's a whiff of Big Brother, and a dash of 1984. But once the knee-jerk paranoia passes, the benefits begin to sink in. With live-feed transit information, Google Maps and Google Earth could eliminate the need for standing on a windy or snowy street corner for twenty minutes, waiting for a late bus. Outside it could be pouring rain, but you'd know exactly when to leave the house to catch your train. Even making connections could be more easily choreographed. Suddenly, one of mass transit's biggest drawbacks -- unreliability -- is eliminated. Overcrowding becomes less of a problem, and the whole system runs more smoothly. Everyone wins.

Online mapping technology has come a long way since the basic click-navigation maps of MapQuest hit the web back in the 1990s. Nowadays you can easily access street-level views, satellite images, and highly-detailed maps of buildings and amenities of dozens of cities. Certainly, this makes the prospect of taking an exploratory walk through a new part of town less daunting; you can preview your route, get a feel for landmarks, even decide where you want to stop for lunch. But there's still a dimension missing. Online maps are still very much stuck in the 3D-level, at least as far as the masses are concerned. We're still figuring out how to map the most important factor in cities: people. Not individuals (again with the creepy 1984ishness), but crowds, traffic patterns, and even emotions.

Think back, once again, to the SimCity game franchise. In later versions of the game, players could open up maps that charted everything from traffic to crime to the general happiness (aura) of the entire city. Live. Can you imagine the potential of people-mapping technology as a tool for planners and policy-makers?

A scenario: it's 8:00pm on a Friday in the year 2015, and you're looking for something to do. You grab your wi-fone and fire up the GoogleCity live maps app. There are three parties within a ten minute walk of your house being advertised on GoogleSocial (a convenient MeetUp/Bebo-powered mashup), a wifi-gallery showing one of your favorite artists from deviantArt four subway stops to the south, a restaurant opening on the corner where that hookah bar just closed last spring, and a band whose iSpace page you just subscribed to because you heard one of their songs on Pandora's new Loc:Audio channel. There's no excuse to be bored. And oh, look -- if you leave now, you can catch the next bus, but it'll be at least five minutes for a train. Perhaps tonight will be a concert night? The e-stars have aligned...

You're happy. You're entertained. You click a button on the screen that tells Google that someone on your block is in high spirits. The block's aura jumps up one point. At City Hall a few weeks later, the general happiness trend of your neighborhood is noticed to be on the rise. Civic officials study the area to learn why this spike in aura has been occurring, and use this people-powered live information to liven up some less brightly-colored spots on the map. Repeat this process with any resource, tangible or otherwise. The places that need something get it more quickly, and the decrease in wasted funds leaves more tax money to be distributed wherever it's most needed.

Now you, as a citizen, have every right to see this information if your elected officials are looking in. So the aura map overlay is available via GoogleSocial. You tap the screen, pull it up. There's a spike near your friend's apartment building downtown. What's the deal? Street fair. You are so there. You lift the phone to your ear, call the friend, and then check a transit map. You just missed the train, which means 10 minutes of waiting. But oh, there's a cab around the corner. You ping it with the push of a button, and you're on the road a few seconds later.

The next day, you're ready to go for a run. You check out air pollution and crowd overlays. The wind is blowing everything to the south today, so air quality will be best on the north side of town, which is good, because that's where you live. The big orange blob in the middle of the park closest to your house suggests some kind of festival is going on. Not wanting to deal with people-dodging, you check out the riverfront. Clear as crystal. And you're off!

The full potential of maps, in terms of improving the quality of life in cities, is just beginning to be realized. Soon, maps won't just tell you where movie theaters are; they'll tell you which ones are less likely to be crowded, dirty, or noisy. Get ready for the cartographolution.

Links:
Get Your City On Google Transit (WorldChanging)

How Google Earth Ate Our Town (Time)

Conscious Urbanism: Sister Neighborhoods

Happy Valentine's Day. Who's your neighborhood's sweetheart this year? Yeah, you read that right. Who are you and your neighbors sending a gift to? If the answer is "nobody" (and I'm guessing that it is), consider this February 14th a missed opportunity.

There are no shortage of complaints about neighborhood associations and other community groups, the most common being that they tend to be insular, cliquey, out of touch, and outright anti-change. Another major complaint, which results directly from the aforementioned, is that these groups tend to be made up of only the higher end of the neighborhood's age range. Young people, we are reminded time and again, aren't active in their communities. They don't care enough to get involved, or they're too lazy, or they're something else that isn't the fault of the people doing the complaining.

But what if young people avoid joining community groups (as has been speculated before, no doubt) because the community groups just aren't active in a way that appeals to them? Could it be that college students, twenty- and thirtysomethings just aren't interested in joining what they view as stoic, regressive groups with their heads in the sand? I'm betting that, with a bit of elbow grease and some new ideas, we might see people below the age of 40 start to get more involved in their neighborhoods.

There are already examples of this, to be sure. Guerilla Gardening comes to mind, as do organizations like Neighbors Project and Rebar, as well as government programs like City Year. In its own (ironic) way, a lot of street art -- the kind that challenges and inspires, not those aimless spray-paint scribbles -- is evidence of young peoples' interest in their communities and their cities at large. It's not everyone's idea of being involved, but the desire to be involved in the neighborhood dynamic is apparent nonetheless. So what do all of these things have in common? What is it that gets younger generations excited about where they live, and what gets them involved? From the look of things, there is definitely an anti-bureaucratic attitude. These groups and activities are all perfect for someone who's looking to skip the runaround and get involved right away. Access is easy, and the activities are usually very social. In addition -- and more importantly -- these groups are defined more by what they stand for, not what they stand against.

Could there possibly be a way to create that kind of attitude on a larger scale within slightly more traditional community groups -- ones that might actually encourage people on both ends of the age spectrum to work together not just to improve their own neighborhoods, but their city as well? One idea: look at the Sister Cities movement.

While it is not particularly well-publicized (and, thus, utilized), Sister Cities International is an organization that pairs cities with similar economic structures, natural features, or demographics up in an effort to build a worldwide network of diplomatic relationships between urban areas. Cities help each other out by sharing policy ideas, discussing problems, and forging economic and trade agreements. What might this kind of program look like at a more local level?

On the international level, this might be a challenge, since getting people across oceans is much easier with large civic budgets instead of community group coffers (which are never full enough to begin with). But might it be productive to partner with community groups in the same city? Cross-community meetings could be held, local solutions and problems shared and discussed. The residents of a neighborhood across town cease to be faceless, and the city begins to feel smaller, its residents more tightly bound together.

There would be benefits within community groups, as well. The more hands-on, social activity of meeting and working proactively with neighbors-across-town could bring in a younger crowd. The older members of the group would gain new allies, as newly-joined young people will have more of a vested interest in preserving and strengthening their own communities through their involvement with their neighborhood group. As Matias wrote in a recent Airoots post: "[C]ommunity groups...do not defend 'local identity' as much as they create it. In other words, the moment of activism is more meaningful than the cause being defended."

Try getting together with some neighbors to form a Sister Neighborhood-esque relationship with a community group across town. Maybe next year you'll be planting a flower garden for your neighborhood's sweetheart in addition to buying a bouquet for your own. (Unless you live somewhere where it snows in February. Then you'll have to figure something else out).

(Photo from Wikimedia Commons. The original full-color version can be viewed by clicking the photo.)


Links:
Sister Cities International

Guerilla Gardening

Neighbors Project

Rebar

City Year

The Moment of Activism (airoots)

Buy One House Get One Free (Springwise) (Not mentioned in the post, but a cool related idea)

WEEKEND READING: February 2-8, 2008

Did you know that it can actually rain slush? Like, the rain is semi-frozen, so as it hits the ground it collects and forms massive fraeking rivers of slush in the middle of streets. It's true. It happened in Chicago this week. It was the worst winter weather I've ever seen, and I'm from Wisconsin. By the way, here's your Weekend Reading. :-)

ITEM ONE: Great article on the recent trend in happiness-focused urban policies.

ITEM TWO: Interchange post by Greg Smithsimon about sustainability and the importance of having plans for change "lying around."

ITEM THREE: Strange Maps covers "America: The Mall" with an enlightening essay.

ITEM FOUR: Just discovered a fanastic new blog called Making Maps. Take a gander at this post on the principles of map design.

ITEM FIVE: Pruned covers some fabulously futuristic designs for a park in Venice. (Photo credit)

ITEM SIX: WebUrbanist's "5 Innovative Industrial Designs for Ecological Living" will have you rethinking the way you interact with everyday objects.

ITEM SEVEN: In the realm of Crazy-But-True, there is apparently a group trying to raise $10 billion to build a dome over Chicago to ward off nasty winter weather. After this week, I almost want to contribute. Best part: they've already raised $233,085.

No more slush rain this weekend, but it's supposed to get down to ten degrees Fahrenheit. Winter here sucks, y'all. Hope your weekend is warmer than mine!

WEEKEND READING: December 15-21, 2007

Welcome back to another Weekend Reading session, everybody! We have another good batch this week, but if you've only got a little time, make sure to check out Items One and Two.

ITEM ONE: A spectacular piece in The Walrus' Cities Special Issue on suburbia, commute times, and the economics of happiness. Don't miss this one!

ITEM TWO: Simmons Buntin, founder of Terrain, blogs at TNAC on the role of beer in creating the urban-rural society.

ITEM THREE: Some interesting musings on gentrification from a recent transplant to Brooklyn.

ITEM FOUR: Airoots on high-rise squatting in Mumbai.

ITEM FIVE: Megacities all over the world are starting their own climate change initiatives, including one Cuban city that's using horse-drawn carriages for mass transit!

ITEM SIX: The Economist on the Bali climate talks.

ITEM SEVEN: Planning a trip to Rotterdam this February? Make sure to check out The Mobile City conferrence on the 27-28th.

While I have your attention, I want to mention that I've just started blogging over at The Next American City's blog, The Street. I'll be covering all things related to leisure and public life in American cities. If you're interested, you can check out my first post here.

(Photo from Flickr user sarako. The original full-color version can be viewed by clicking the photo.)