January 2010: This month on World Streets
We very much doubt that most of our readers have the time to check into World
Streets on a daily basis. For that reason we have from the beginning offered, in
addition to the daily edition, a monthly summary which brings together in one
place all postings and comments in a manner in which the busy reader can review
the month's offerings in a few lines and make a decision as to whether or not to
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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
An interesting slideshow on how vacant car dealerships have been converted
to other uses.
http://www.thebigmoney.com/slideshow/car-showrooms-reborn
Best,
Lloyd
Viva
Changing the world...one street at a time.
Lloyd Wright
Executive Director
Email: Lwright@...
Skype: vivacities
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/03/space-its-still-a-frontier/?hp
February 3, 2010, 6:45 pm
Space: Its Still a Frontier
By ALLISON ARIEFF
Our beds are empty two-thirds of the time.
Our living rooms are empty seven-eighths of the time.
Our office buildings are empty one-half of the time.
It's time we gave this some thought.
R. Buckminstter Fuller
That quote is 40 years old, but I continue to be amazed by the extent to which
we haven’t begun to address the problem Fuller highlighted. There’s a
staggering glut of empty space around the country right now, unused space
that’s not doing anyone much good. That in itself isn’t new; what is
unprecedented is our ability to visualize that data in an entirely new ways.
The ability to use G.I.S. (geographic information systems) to locate data
spatially, for example, is one reason Barack Obama is president today. His
campaign turned a database of voters and volunteers into a map and was able to
strategize house by house about how to get those votes. More broadly, G.I.S.
allows us to literally view our place both globally and in a hyperlocal context.
That level of specificity, both at the micro and macro level, is helping
revolutionize the way we think about, plan for and design the space we inhabit
(or abandon). A visual map can show us patterns of overbuilding, abandonment,
mis- (or lack of) use; it can teach us something about our current tendency to
overbuild.
How can this now-instantaneous access to data add clarity to ingrained patterns,
and perhaps allow us to change those patterns according to evolving needs and
requirements?
Nicholas de Monchaux, an assistant professor of architecture and urban design at
the University of California, Berkeley, has been thinking about all this a lot.
Last year, he and his students developed a project called Local Code, which
takes as its focus unused pavement space in major urban areas. Though most of us
barely notice or give any thought to this seemingly useless space, finding
pragmatic ways to use it can have a beneficial impact on the social, economic
and environmental health of a region.
Courtesy Nicholas de Monchaux An analysis by Local Code of vacant city-owned
parcels in San Francisco, in which physical and ecological problems (storm-water
remediation, heat-island effects) and social and medical problems (risk for
respiratory ailments, incidence of crime) are highlighted. The mapping helps to
visualize these sites as a resource, and shows that they are located exactly
where there is most need of help. Click to enlarge.
Local Code took much inspiration from the artistic interventions of Gordon
Matta-Clark, whose (literally) ground-breaking project “Fake Estates: Reality
Properties” (1971-1974) uncovered what he called “spaces between places
alleys, gutters, weedy no-man’s-lands. Where it took Matta-Clark months of
methodical sifting through microfiche to locate the 15 “gutterspace” sites
demapped and operationally isolaated fragments of New York real estate that
form thhe work “Fake Estates: Reality Properties,” de Monchaux and his
students were able to map the more than 1,600 sites of Local Code in seconds.
Courtesy Nicholas de Monchaux Abandoned by traditional development,
under-utilized areas identified by Local Code are precisely those in need of
ecological and social attention. As de Monchaux explains, You couldnt pick a
better archipelago of sites if you wanted to help the city out.
Local Code (video here) proposes a systemic re-greening of leftover pavement
space on a large scale. Culled from a database maintained by the Department of
Public Works, the many sites for Local Code have been deemed “unaccepted
streets,” that is, sites in the San Francisco grid that occupy the position of
streets but are not maintained by the municipality, or necessarily even passable
to traffic. Seen separately and individually, these are litter-filled, residual
spaces and there are 1,625 of them, mostly around hhighways and industrial
sites. But seen as a whole, they have a combined surface area of more than half
of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, for example.
Courtesy Nicholas de Monchaux Local Code takes G.I.S. data on buildings, sewer
location, topography, etc. and then recommends an optimum design for each site
(instead of a general design strategy). Click to enlarge.
“When we examined all the leftover spaces in San Francisco, New York, New
Orleans, Minneapolis we found the same thhing to be true in every city, de
Monchaux says. You had a whole archipelago of city-owned lots lying fallow. In
New York they add up to the size of Central Park and Prospect Park together.
It’s a massive untapped resource that’s impossible to visualize without
these contemporary tools.
Neglected at the local level because they neither provide nor generate revenue,
these sites are markers of larger patterns of neglect (much as we’re seeing
with homes abandoned to foreclosure). In San Francisco, they often outline the
shape of entire, mostly lower income neighborhoods like Hunter’s Point,
Bayview and the Outer Mission. Abandoned by traditional development, such areas
are precisely those in need of ecological and social attention.
Courtesy Nicholas de Monchaux Visualization of Step 1 of the Local Code process:
A case study for a site in San Francisco, its specific needs indicated by, for
example, pink arrows for energy and thermodynamic inputs/outputs like carbon;
blue arrows for storm water, rainwater; and green arrows for a transportation
network. Image has been cropped. Click to enlarge.
Courtesy Nicholas de Monchaux Visualization of Step 2 shows a Web interface that
could be used to transform the site(s) identified by Local Code. Designers,
community member and other users would be able to select from a palette of
options (from benches, say, to plants). The online/social media component moves
toward building digital democracy in community design and activism. Click to
enlarge.
Local Code isn’t about making pleasant parks. “It’s the difference between
Newtonian physics and quantum physics,” de Monchaux enthuses. “You can’t
do something the same way once you discover the new way exists!” Using G.I.S.
in conjunction with parametric design tools, Local Code suggests a set of
individual landscapes for each site with the goal of mitigating larger urban
performance variables like storm-water retention and heat-island effects
referring to the 1.8 to 5.4 degrees Faahrenheit temperature increase that occurs
within densely built environments. (De Monchaux suggests that his intervention
would most likely render redundant San Francisco’s current multi-billion
dollar effort at increasing sewer storm-water capacity). Together, the
aggregated sites project an alternative green infrastructure with potentially
measurable benefits to safety and public health as well.
Looking through this lens also enables us to think about infrastructure in a new
way. The era of massive, expensive, centralized projects like the Big Dig in
Boston has passed. “Now, with the ability to model dynamic systems, we can
show a much more decentralized collection of resources could provide greater
benefit,” de Monchaux says. “If, in the 19th century, it was a biological
metaphor that fueled the creation of Central and Golden Gate parks, the idea
that a city needs hearts and lungs to grow, there’s now a networked metaphor.
The city is a dense network of relationships. The best way to provide
infrastructure is to not go in with a meat ax but to practice urban acupuncture,
finding thousands of different spots to go into.”
Much as Google Maps has given us all a staggering new perception of the world we
inhabit, this methodology can provide an avenue to a wider understanding of
data-driven design, which can most certainly be applied to any number of spatial
dilemmas. Other projects in the same vein as Local Code are proliferating: The
Long Island Index, for one, uses interactive mapping to highlight opportunities
for downtown redevelopment, aggregating a different class of sites than Local
Code but following the same path of inquiry.
Consider the case of Silicon Valley, where, as of the third quarter of 2009, 43
million square feet of commercial space stood vacant. Four million of that was
added in just the past three years. There’s a certain irony to the fact that
the center of innovation is ill-equipped to accommodate the cyclical nature of
business.
Then there are shopping centers, which are modeled more on the monolithic Mall
of America rather than centralized, walkable European-style high streets.
Mega-malls have proliferated so that a Web site exists solely to document their
demise. (That site, by the way, has just celebrated its 10th anniversary, its
founders more aware back then of the coming demise than the retail industry ever
was.)
Changing space requirements plague our nation’s schools as enrollments ebb and
flow. I spoke with a parent recently whose fifth-grade son had spent his entire
school career in trailer classrooms: his school district, in anticipation of
projected declining enrollment a decade out was forced to continually
re-addresss the problem of operating within the confines of a school not
appropriately designed for its population.
And in boomtowns like Phoenix and Tampa, developers with an eye more to profit
than market realities far surpassed any realistic demand for housing. The
result? Rampant foreclosures, thousands of abandoned homes and even streets, and
acres of excavated land awaiting stalled-out projects that won’t get built.
How do we design and build to accommodate changing economics, family sizes, and
employee and student populations? How can we merge online technologies with
physical architecture to more directly serve our real-time needs?
Data-visualization capabilities can’t solve all the problems, but it’s hard
to overestimate the extent to which this information can help us to think about
larger systems and their interrelationships, so that we see a building as not
just a building but an ecological infrastructure.
These challenges are massive; the attitudes responsible for them, deep-seated.
Inquiries like de Monchaux’s illustrate that there is intelligent inquiry and
actionable theorizing happening about how patterns might be broken, planning
might be more flexible and dynamic, and our visions of space and its functions
could expand and, perhaps,, contract.
Editors note: G.I.S. stands for geographic not graphic information systems,
as we had it in an earlier version of this post.
----- ### -----
J.H. Crawford . Carfree Cities
mailbox@... . http://www.carfree.com
What can I tell you, Seema and friends.
On this your first Car Free Day in Mumbai I suppose the most useful thing
that I can advise based on my experience is for you and all involved to keep
your eyes open, wide open, to determine what the real lessons are of your
first Big Day.
This may seem self-evident, however I have to say that one of the most
notable things I have observed in the thousands of car free days that had
been organized since that fatal day in October 1994 is that (a) the
organizers more often than not tend to be generally pleased with what they
have accomplished after their day, but (b) not very neutral and analytic in
determining what they have done and learned. Hence in all too many cases
the second car free day more often than not ends up looking like the first
one, and on and on.
If you go to http://tinyurl.com/ws-cfds you will be taken to a handful of
the articles we have published in World Streets on this topic over the last
year. Then too there is the information that you will find on the World Car
Free Days site at www.worldcarfreedays.com ("Every day is a great day to
take a few cars off the street and think about it"). And if I were to
propose a single piece that summarizes my best counsel, it would be the
original Thursday piece, www.thursday.worldcarfreedays.com, the subtitle of
which tells the story I wanted to tell at the time (and since): " A
Breakthrough Strategy for Reducing Car Dependence in Cities".
There you have it. I wish that I could be there to join you and who knows
if we can work out a collection of projects in Mumbai in a couple of other
nearby cities in time for your car free day run in 2011, we might have a
look at this together.
With all good wishes for your much deserved success,
Eric
Eric Britton
World Streets . <http://www.worldstreets.org/> www.worldstreets.org
8/10, rue Jospeh Bara . Paris 75006 France
+331 7550 3788 . <mailto:eric.britton@...>
eric.britton@... . Skype newmobility
New Mobility Partnerships . <http://www.partners.newmobility.org>
www.partners.newmobility.org
9440 Readcrest Drive . Los Angeles, CA 90210
+1 213 984 1277 . <mailto:fekbritton@...> fekbritton@... .
Skype ericbritton
From: Seema Tiwari [mailto:seemat29@...]
Sent: Monday, 08 February, 2010 16:13
To: eric.britton@...; admin@...; editor@...
Subject: [Norton AntiSpam] Mumbai Car Free Day - please spread the word
Hi Eric,
Inspired by all your work on world car free day and following the lead of
several cities around the world, esp Bogota and NYC, Mumbai is observing its
first car free day
When: Feb 21st, 2010, 8 AM - 10 PM
Where: Carter Rd, Bandra
The ' Mumbai Car Free Day' aims to:
1. Raise awareness for environment and quality of life
2. Provide citizens with an opportunity to experience the absence of exhaust
gases, traffic jams, traffic accidents and traffic noise
3. Lower pollution levels
4. Encourage healthy living
5. Promote improvement and use of public transport, cycling and walking
The event is organized by Khar Bandra Santacruz (KBS) Foundation, a local
NGO, that has embarked on a mission to motivate people to take up cycling as
a way of life and improving the environment and quality of life.
Thanks,
Seema
On behalf of Mumbai CFD Team
Mumbai CFD Facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mumbai-Car-Free-Day/248020591215?ref=ts#!/page
s/Mumbai-Car-Free-Day/248020591215?v=info
<http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mumbai-Car-Free-Day/248020591215?ref=ts#!/pag
es/Mumbai-Car-Free-Day/248020591215?v=info&ref=ts> &ref=ts
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Hi All,
Todd Littman of VTPI has just posted a review
of Carfree Design Manual at Planetizen:
http://www.planetizen.com/node/42838
I'm glad to see this, as there have been very
few reviews so far.
Best,
Joel
----- ### -----
J.H. Crawford . Carfree Cities
mailbox@... . http://www.carfree.com
The review is very brief. The reviewer is critical of the scope of the book,
however, and contradicts himself in some ways, but in the end recommends it.
"Planning practitioners should find plenty of inspiration in the book, but are
likely to be frustrated by the lack of practical guidance for dealing with
common planning problems. Crawford has strong opinions: he insists on totally
car free cities with only grudging respect for New Urbanism or other incremental
change. Much of his analysis assumes greenfield development: a parcel of land
upon which a new neighborhood or entire city will be built, controlled by a
central authority that has virtually unlimited control of urban design and
management. There is little guidance for planners in existing communities who
may want to support incremental change toward more multi-modal development. Such
neighborhoods could be called "car light," but are usually described as walkable
communities or transit oriented development."
I am only halfway through the book, but I suspect the reviewer's opinion would
be shared by many. Although I sympathize with the frustration, I don't think
that the intent was to provide a manual for incrementally converting a car-based
development into a carfree one. I think the principles/concepts in the book CAN
be used to develop such an incremental transition plan, however.
I also disagree with the emphasis in this brief review that the book assumes
greenfield development. Any development is easier if you can start with a clean
slate, but the ideas in this book can be used in any development.
In fact, I can imagine a situation (not described, or at least not yet at the
point where I am in the book) that our author could find favor with, better than
greenfield development. Consider a brownfield development within a city,
particularly in an old "rustbelt" city like Cleveland or Detroit, incorporating
both empty lots and existing buildings in a new framework of streets to create
carfree districts according to the guidelines in the book. Based on the stated
preference in the book for cities created over generations rather than
overnight, the book seems to suggest that the proposed development that
incorporates existing buildings into a new street framework would be preferable
to greenfield development.
So far in my reading, the book has described desirable features of cities, such
as plazas, building height, street width, etc. None of these require greenfield
development and the concepts could be applied to existing areas equally well.
The book does not say or imply that these concepts cannot be applied in making
incremental changes to a car-based development, even if it does not describe in
detail how to implement an incremental transition from autocentric to carfree
development.
I also disagree that the book assumes control by a central planner of a
development, and even having said that the reviewer seems to contradict that
point in a preceding paragraph. I don't think I have reached that point in the
book, but the reviewer suggests that the book at the very least provides ideas
on how to plan a carfree district or city by involving users and using the
internet.
"Crawford's book provides detailed discussion of carfree design concepts,
[including] the principles by which they can be implemented. His analysis begins
with the most general concepts and works down to economic and engineering
details, such as how to design communities (involve users), the best method to
allocate land (use the Internet to allow households to bid for the properties
that best reflect their preferences for location and building type), and to
where to locate utility lines (bury them)."
I can only hope that more planners and designers and architects read Carfree
Cities and the Carfree Design Manual so that more carfree development will take
place. The photographs alone in both books are amazing.
A university campus perhaps? Brownfield redevelopment in a nearly-abandoned
section of Detroit? Gather some stakeholders, have them all read the books and
let's get to work!
Foraker
--- In carfree_cities@yahoogroups.com, "J.H. Crawford" <mailbox@...> wrote:
>
>
> Hi All,
>
> Todd Littman of VTPI has just posted a review
> of Carfree Design Manual at Planetizen:
>
> http://www.planetizen.com/node/42838
>
> I'm glad to see this, as there have been very
> few reviews so far.
>
> Best,
>
> Joel
>
>
>
> ----- ### -----
> J.H. Crawford . Carfree Cities
> mailbox@... . http://www.carfree.com
>
Hi All,
I'd like to respond to a couple of points Foraker raised.
First of all, the book DOES focus on greenfield sites,
as we will be building more new cities in the next 50
years that in all of previous history. (China alone
will double its urban population.)
That said, I do believe that many of the principles
enumerated and some of the methods proposed can be
used for converting existing cities to the carfree
model. However, conversions are a messy, complex
business and the methods will have to be adjusted
to fit local conditions. I am, in fact, now writing
a series for Carbusters on precisely this topic.
That discussion is, of necessity, rather brief.
(The articles are also appearing on Carfree.com
soon after the initial publication in Carbusters.)
http://www.carfree.com/conv_lyon.html
and follow the onward links at page-end
The measures needed to convert existing cities to
the carfree model are the subject of a third book.
I'm not so sure I'm going to be the one to write
that book, however. The response to CDM has been
so tepid that I'm not sure I could find a publisher
for the third book. (This was in part due to a
major mismanagement of review copies by the US
distributor.)
BTW--the reviewer in question, Todd Littman, is
a very good guy who is quite sympathetic to the
carfree movement. He sent me a draft of the review
before publishing it, and I did not suggest any
changes.
>I am only halfway through the book, but I suspect the reviewer's opinion would
be shared by many. Although I sympathize with the frustration, I don't think
that the intent was to provide a manual for incrementally converting a car-based
development into a carfree one. I think the principles/concepts in the book CAN
be used to develop such an incremental transition plan, however.
The opportunities ARE somewhat constrained in
redevelopment/infill/conversion projects. It was
easier to tackle an already-massive subject by
limiting the discussion to unbuilt sites. However,
a lot can be extrapolated from what is proposed
for empty sites.
>In fact, I can imagine a situation (not described, or at least not yet at the
point where I am in the book) that our author could find favor with, better than
greenfield development. Consider a brownfield development within a city,
particularly in an old "rustbelt" city like Cleveland or Detroit, incorporating
both empty lots and existing buildings in a new framework of streets to create
carfree districts according to the guidelines in the book.
As for redevelopment, give me your old, your tired,
your poor cities. I'd start with 100 blocks of
Philadelphia, if anyone is interested. Last I heard
they were busy bulldozing tens of thousands of brick
houses on narrow streets. Sounds like a good place
to begin, if it's not all gone now.
>Based on the stated preference in the book for cities created over generations
rather than overnight, the book seems to suggest that the proposed development
that incorporates existing buildings into a new street framework would be
preferable to greenfield development.
One of the interesting things in design is dealing
with the constraints. Up to a point, constraints are
not a bad thing. Existing buildings can often be
worked into a new plan, and I have said this in CDM.
>I also disagree that the book assumes control by a central planner of a
development, and even having said that the reviewer seems to contradict that
point in a preceding paragraph. I don't think I have reached that point in the
book, but the reviewer suggests that the book at the very least provides ideas
on how to plan a carfree district or city by involving users and using the
internet.
In fact, I do believe that future residents should have
as much influence on planning and especially design as
can possibly be arranged. We'll be doing a field exercise
in York the June that will be based on some of the methods
proposed in CDM.
Best,
Joel
----- ### -----
J.H. Crawford . Carfree Cities
mailbox@... . http://www.carfree.com
Hi folks,
our German Federal President Mr Horst Koehler held an incredible speech in front
of ADAC, which is THE lobby organisation for cars and car culture in Germany.
Now his office published the translation in English:
http://www.bundespraesident.de/en/Speeches-,11165.661675/Speech-by-Federal-Presi\
dent-Ho.htm?global.back=/en/-%2c11165%2c0/Speeches.htm%3flink%3dbpr_liste
Very worth to read it. For the highest german representative this is a
revolution, and it is great that he said that in front of the biggest car
lovers.
Koehler was known as a neo-liberal politician when he was elected (he was
nominated by Merkel and the conservative-neoliberal parties CDU/CSU/FDP), so the
whole thing is really very, very surprising.
Markus
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
All--
I'd like to risk taking a poll here and see what you think about this proposed
local project.
Currently, our local mass-transit system consists of 26 bus routes with 20-60
minute headways. It's obviously inefficient; the longest trip being:
Wait: 0-60
Ride first bus: 30
Wait for second bus: 30
Ride second bus: 30
...a total trip time of 1.5-2.5 hours.
[http://talgov.com/starmetro/systemmap.cfm]
They're currently working on a re-do called "Nova2010"
[http://talgov.com/starmetro/nova2010_routes.cfm] that will reduce the system to
12 routes with 15-30 minute headways. The advantage is obvious: shorter travel
times for the same trip. However, many locals are up in arms over this change
because:
- Out of the 41 bus transfer points, all but six have painted crosswalks, curb
cuts, and pedestrian signals--but only two of them have audible signals for the
visually impaired.
- Transferring buses will involve crossing intersections, while transferring
buses now only involves crossing a controlled-access bus station.
- Some trips will require three buses and two transfers, even though the trip
time will still be shorter than with the current single-transfer system.
- Of course, the fact that intersections are dangerous by design--and that
drivers are intentionally dangerous--leads to even more uproar.
- From some residential neighborhoods, walks will increase by about a half-mile,
which is predicted to increase Dial-A-Ride usage for people who simply can't
walk that far.
- StarMetro is being accused of trying to "get commuters to use the system",
i.e., "choice riders", at the expense of people who "actually need" to use it.
My personal observations are:
- StarMetro is advertising the project as "budget-neutral", which I think means
"If we ask the City Commission for an extra cent, they'll fire our director and
strip our funding even more."
- If, in fact, it does get more use from "choice riders", that could increase
local political support for mass transit. I've always theorized that if you use
the mindset that if a transit system is "just to help the poor and people with
disabilities barely get by", it'll remain exactly that. Kind of like Medicaid.
So, any thoughts here?
[Yes...I know that this route decentralization pays no attention to the big
picture. I know that the City Commission won't touch the "forced parking"
ordinance with a ten-foot pole; I was at a housing ordinance hearing once and
they looked at me like I was from another planet when I expressed opposition to
it. I also realize that we're dealing with a City Commission--and an
electorate--that wants to maintain the status quo as a "drivers' rights above
all others" city.]
"Want to make it affordable? Then just build more of it! More San Franciscos,
more Portlands..."
This is something I've pointed out before. Yes, it's true that property in dense
urban areas is expensive because of high demand and very limited supply.
But why is the supply so limited? Probably because it's illegal to build more of
it! If I recall correctly, even New York City [of all places] forces off-street
parking on all new developments.
Put another way, it's expensive for the same reason Halon 1311 and Freon are
expensive: production is illegal, so we can only trade in what already exists.
On the other hand, it's been an excellent lesson in re-purposing buildings
instead of abandoning or leveling them.
--- In carfree_cities@yahoogroups.com, Richard Risemberg <rickrise@...> wrote:
>
> My post inspired a by musing of Timothy Egan's on crumbling last-wave
> suburbs in the Central vAlley here...with links to the orignal article:
>
> http://www.newcolonist.com/vox/archive/00001156.html
On Thu, Feb 11, 2010 at 11:49 AM, mdh6214 <matt@...> wrote:
>
> "Want to make it affordable? Then just build more of it! More San Franciscos,
more Portlands..."
>
> This is something I've pointed out before. Yes, it's true that property in
dense urban areas is expensive because of high demand and very limited supply.
>
> But why is the supply so limited? Probably because it's illegal to build more
of it! If I recall correctly, even New York City [of all places] forces
off-street parking on all new developments.
>
> Put another way, it's expensive for the same reason Halon 1311 and Freon are
expensive: production is illegal, so we can only trade in what already exists.
>
> On the other hand, it's been an excellent lesson in re-purposing buildings
instead of abandoning or leveling them.
There's lots of available space in all the cities you mentioned. The
problem is speculators holding land off the market while they wait for
it to appreciate. The solution is LVT, Land Value Taxation, as
proposed by Henry George in 1879. A LVT would go a long way in
solving a lot of other ills as well. See "Progress and Poverty" by
Henry George for more.
-Bob Matter
I thought this might interest some people on th list.
Joel
>Dear Colleagues and Friends
>
>It is my pleasure to announce that our annual 4-day short course in
>Urban Design for Sustainability will take place at the Urban Design
>Centre of Western Australia (UDC) in Perth during the week after
>Easter (6-9 April 2010). The short course is co-hosted by the Curtin
>University Sustainability Policy Institute (CUSP) and the UDC. It will
>be attended by professional participants as well as enrolled students,
>and offers a unique opportunity for policy makers, consultants and
>community advocates to learn more about responsive urban design in
>general, and recent innovative practice in this field around Perth in
>particular.
>
>More information can be found at
>http://www.udcwa.org/education/brochure.htm. Registrations for the
>course can also be made via this website.
>
>Thank you for forwarding this announcement to anyone in your networks
>who might be interested. Best regards -
>
>Jan Scheurer
>
>
>---------------------------------------------
>Dr Jan Scheurer
>
>Senior Research Associate
>RMIT-AHURI Research Centre
>GPO Box 2476
>Melbourne VIC 3001, Australia
>P +61 3 9925 9039, F +61 3 9925 9888
>jan.scheurer@...
>
>and
>
>Senior Lecturer
>Curtin University Sustainability Policy Institute (CUSP)
>GPO Box U1987
>Perth WA 6845, Australia
>P +61 8 9266 9030, F +61 8 9266 9031
>
>and
>
>Honorary Research Associate
>Australian Centre for Governance and Management of Urban Transport
>(GAMUT), University of Melbourne
>Institute for Sustainability and Technology Policy (ISTP), Murdoch University
----- ### -----
J.H. Crawford . Carfree Cities
mailbox@... . http://www.carfree.com
Hi All,
This is pretty far off topic, but it's a viewpoint
I haven't heard expressed before.
It does relate to the need to rebuild the infrastructure
for social relations in real space. That would be
carfree cities, of course.
Best,
Joel
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/02/15-1
Published on Monday, February 15, 2010 by TruthDig.com
The Information Super-Sewer
by Chris Hedges
The Internet has become one more tool hijacked by corporate interests to
accelerate our cultural, political and economic decline. The great promise of
the Internet, to open up dialogue, break down cultural barriers, promote
democracy and unleash innovation and creativity, has been exposed as a scam. The
Internet is dividing us into antagonistic clans, in which we chant the same
slogans and hate the same enemies, while our creative work is handed for free to
Web providers who use it as bait for advertising.
Ask journalists, photographers, musicians, cartoonists or artists what they
think of the Web. Ask movie and film producers. Ask architects or engineers. The
Web efficiently disseminates content, but it does not protect intellectual
property rights. Writers and artists are increasingly unable to make a living.
And technical professions are under heavy assault. Anything that can be
digitized can and is being outsourced to countries such as India and China where
wages are miserable and benefits nonexistent. Welcome to the new global serfdom
where the only professions that pay a living wage are propaganda and corporate
management.
The Web, at the same time it is destroying creative work, is forming anonymous
crowds that vent collective rage, intolerance and bigotry. These virtual slums
do not expand communication or dialogue. They do not enrich our culture. They
create a herd mentality in which those who express empathy for the enemyand
the liberal class is as guilty of this as the right wingare denounced by their
fellow travelers for their impurity. Racism toward Muslims may be as evil as
anti-Semitism, but try to express this simple truth on a partisan Palestinian or
Israeli website.
Jaron Lanier, the father of virtual reality technology, in his new book You
Are Not a Gadget, warns us of this frightening new collectivism. He notes that
the habits imposed by the Internet have reconfigured how we relate to each
other. He writes that Web 2.0, Open Culture, Free Software and the Long
Tail have become enablers of this new collectivism. He cites Wikipedia, which
consciously erases individual voices, and Google Wave as examples of the rise of
mass collective thought and mass emotions. Google Wave is a new communication
platform that permits users to edit what someone else has said in a conversation
when it is displayed as well as allow collaborators to watch each other as they
type. Privacy, honesty and self-reflection are instantly obliterated.
Tastes and information on the Internet are determined by the crowd, what Lanier
calls the hive mentality. Music, books, journalism, commercials and bits of
television shows and movies, along with inane YouTube videos, are thrust onto
our screens and into national consciousness because of the statistical analysis
of Internet crowd preferences. Lanier says that one of the biggest mistakes he
and other computer scientists made when the Internet was developed was allowing
contributions to the Internet to go unpaid. He says decisions such as this have
now robbed people, especially those who create, of their ability to make a
living and ultimately the capacity for dignity. Digital collectivism, he warns,
is destroying the dwindling vestiges of authentic creativity and innovation,
including journalism, which takes time, investment and self-reflection. And
while there are a few sites that do pay for contentTruthdig being onethe vast
majority are parasites. The only income left for most of those who create is
earned through self-promotion, but as Lanier points out this turns culture into
nothing but advertising. It fosters a social ethic in which the capacity for
crowd manipulation is more highly valued than truth, beauty or thought.
While the severing of intellectual property rights from their creators, whether
journalists, photographers or musicians, means that those who create lose the
capacity to make a living from their work, aggregators such as Google make money
by collecting and distributing this work to lure advertisers. Original work on
the Internet, as Lanier points out, is copied, mashed up, anonymized, analyzed,
and turned into bricks in someone elses fortress to support an advertising
scheme. Lanier warns that if this trend is not halted it will create a formula
that leaves no way for our nation to earn a living in the long term.
Funding a civilization through advertising is like trying to get nutrition by
connecting a tube from ones anus to ones mouth, Lanier says. The body starts
consuming itself. That is what we are doing online. As more and more human
activity is aggregated, people huddle around the last remaining oases of
revenue. Musicians today might still be able to get paid to make music for video
games, for instance, because games are still played in closed consoles and
havent been collectivized as yet.
I called Lanier in San Francisco. He began by saying that he was not against the
Internet, but against how it has evolved. He has sounded his warning, he said,
because he fears that if we fall into an economic tailspin, the Internet, like
other innovative systems of mass communication in human history, could be used
to exacerbate social enmity and lead to an American totalitarianism.
The scenario I can see is America in some economic decline, which we seem
determined to enter into because we are unable to make any adjustments, and a
lot of unhappy people, Lanier said. The preponderance of them are in rural
areas and in the red states, the former slave states. And they are all connected
and get angrier and angrier. What exactly happens? Do they start converging on
abortion clinics? Probably. Do they start converging on legislatures and take
them over? I dont know, maybe. I shouldnt speak it. It is almost a curse to
imagine these things. But any intelligent person can see the scenario I am
afraid to see. There is a potential here for very bad stuff to happen.
And yet the utopian promoters of the Internet tell us that the hive mind, the
vast virtual collective, will propel us toward a brave new world. Lanier
dismisses such visions as childish fantasy, one that allows many
well-intentioned people to be seduced by an evolving nightmare.
The crowd phenomenon exists, but the hive does not exist, Lanier told me. All
there is, is a crowd phenomenon, which can often be dangerous. To a true
believer, which I certainly am not, the hive is like the baby at the end of
2001 Space Odyssey. It is a super creature that surpasses humanity. To me it
is the misinterpretation of the old crowd phenomenon with a digital vibe. It has
all the same dangers. A crowd can turn into a mean mob all too easily, as it has
throughout human history.
There are some things crowds can do, such as count the jelly beans in the jar
or guess the weight of the ox, Lanier added. I acknowledge this phenomenon is
real. But I propose that the line between when crowds can think effectively as a
crowd and when they cant is a little different. If you read [James]
Surowieckis The Wisdom of Crowds, he, as well as other theorists, say that if
you want a crowd to be wise the key is to reduce the communication flow between
the members so they do not influence each other, so they are truly independent
and have separate sample points. It brings up an interesting paradox. The
starting point for online crowd enthusiasts is that connection is good and
everyone should be connected. But when they talk about what makes a crowd smart
they say people should not be talking to each other. They should be isolated.
There is a contradiction there. What makes a crowd smart is the type of question
you ask. If you ask a group of informed people to choose a single numeric value
such as the weight of an ox and they all have some reason to have a theory that
is not entirely crazy they will center on the answer. You can get something
useful. This phenomenon is what accounts for price fitting in capitalism. This
is how markets can function. If you ask them to create anything, if you ask them
to do something constructive or synthetic or engage in compound reasoning then
they will fail. Then you get something dull or an averaging out. One danger of
the crowd is violence, which is when they turn into a mob. The other is dullness
or mundaneness, when you design by committee.
Humans, like many other species, Lanier says, have a cognitive switch that
permits us to be individuals or members of a mob. Once we enter the confines of
what Lanier calls a clan, even a virtual clan, it possesses dynamics that appeal
to the basest instincts within us. Technology evolves but human nature remains
constant. The 20th century was the bloodiest in human history because human
beings married the newly minted tools of efficient state bureaucracies and
industrial slaughter with the dark impulses that have existed since the dawn of
the human species.
You become hypersensitive to the pecking order and to your sense of social
status, Lanier said of these virtual clans. There is almost always the
designated loser in your own group and the designated external enemy. There is
the enemy below and the enemy afar. There become two classes of disenfranchised
people. You enter into a constant obligation to defend your status which is
always being contested. It is time-consuming to become a member of one of these
things. I see a lot of designs on line that bring this out. There is a
recognizable sequence, whether it is pianos, poodles or jihad; you see people
forming into these clans. It is playing with fire. There are plenty of examples
of evil in human history that did not involve this effect, such as Jack the
Ripper, who worked alone. But most of the really bad examples of human behavior
in history involve invoking this clan dynamic. No particular sort of person is
immune to it. Geeks are no more immune to it than Germans or Russians or
Japanese or Mongolians. It is part of our nature. It can be woken up without any
leadership structure or politics. It happens. It is part of us. There is a
switch inside of us waiting to be turned. And people can learn to manipulate the
switch in others.
The Machine Stops, a story published by E.M. Forster in 1909, paints a
futuristic world where people are mesmerized by virtual reality. In Forsters
dystopia, human beings live in isolated, tiny subterranean rooms, like hives,
where they are captivated by instant messages and cinematophoesmachines that
project visual images. They cut themselves off from the external world and are
absorbed by a bizarre pseudo-reality of voices, sounds, evanescent images and
abstract sensations that can be evoked by pressing a few buttons. The access to
the world of the Machine, which has replaced the real world with a virtual
world, is provided by an omniscient impersonal voice.
We are, as Forster understood, seduced and then often enslaved by technology,
from the combustion engine to computers to robotics. These marvels of
humankinds ingenuity are inevitably hijacked by modern slave masters who use
the newest technologies to keep us impoverished, confused about our identity and
passive. The Internet, designed by defense strategists to communicate after a
nuclear attack, has become the latest technological instrument in the hands of
those who are driving us into a state of neofeudalism. Technology is morally
neutral. It serves the interests of those who control it. And those who control
it today are ravishing journalism, culture and art while they herd the
population into clans that fuel intolerance and hatred.
A common rationalization in the fledgling world of digital cultures back then
was that we were entering a transitional lull before a creative stormor were
already in the eye of the storm, Lanier writes in his book. But we were not
passing through a momentary calm. We had, rather, entered a persistent
somnolence, and I have come to believe that we will escape it only when we kill
the hive.
Copyright 2010 Truthdig, L.L.C.
----- ### -----
J.H. Crawford . Carfree Cities
mailbox@... . http://www.carfree.com
Begin forwarded message:
> From: Jack Risemberg
> Date: February 16, 2010 12:48:32 PM PST
> To: Chris Collins <chris@...>, Josh Cho
> <jcphotograph@...>, Richard Risemberg
> <rickrise@...>, daniel cronin <archi.cronin@...>
> Subject: Bullshit Ruling
>
> To suggest that bikes need parade permits is to deny them
> legitimacy as transport. How about cars file to drive in groups?
> Gimme a break.
>
> http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/judge-rules-against-
> cyclists/
>
> ebruary 16, 2010, 3:16 pm
> Judge Rules Against Cyclists
>
> By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT
> A federal judge in Manhattan on Tuesday ruled that the City of New
> York did not violate the constitutional rights of cyclists by
> requiring them to file for parade permits when they rode in groups
> of 50 or more. The ruling is a blow to organizers of the Critical
> Mass bike protests in Manhattan.
>
> The judge, Lewis A. Kaplan of the Southern District of New York,
> said that he was sympathetic to the plaintiffs concerns and
> acknowledged their inconvenience. However, Judge Kaplan said the
> parade regulations and their enforcement by the New York Police
> Department did not violate the Constitution.
>
> In 2007, the Five Boroughs Bike Club filed a lawsuit after the
> Police Department changed its rules, saying it would ticket or
> arrest a group of 50 cyclists or more who did not have a parade
> permit.
>
> The Five Boroughs Bike Club said that they looked into applying for
> permits but said the process was a bureaucratic nightmare.
>
> During the Republican National Convention in 2004, more than 100
> cyclists were arrested for disorderly conduct after a group of
> about 5,000 cyclists rode past Madison Square Garden, protesting
> President Bush.
>
> After the courts said the rules were too vague, the Police
> Department then sought to change rules, arguing that smaller groups
> of cyclists were safer and disrupted less traffic.
>
>
>
>
>
>
--
Richard Risemberg
http://www.bicyclefixation.comhttp://www.newcolonist.comhttp://www.rickrise.com
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
CarFree City, USA is conducting an on-line survey of people's most frequent
everyday destinations. Other transportation surveys typically use very broad
categories. We are collecting more specific information to help us rate existing
neighborhoods for "carfree living feasibility" and to design successful new
carfree places. The survey is short (one travel question plus a few demographic
questions about the respondants). It takes less than 5 minutes to complete. Just
click on the link below to take the survey:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=yQJQioGFVcnmnnzoaPl90A_3d_3d
Thanks for participating! Please forward this to anybody you know who would be
willing to fill it out, including regular car-driving people. The greater the
number and diversity of respondents, the more useful the results. We'll post the
results when we have compiled and analyzed them.
Gus Yates, President
CarFree City, USA
P.O. Box 2841
Berkeley, CA 94702
Tel/Fax: 510-849-4412
gus@...
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
This story was sent to you by: Rick
--------------------
Cities kicking the tires on new ideas for vacant auto lots
--------------------
Facing a revenue void, officials look at opening the properties for retail and
office space or even housing.
By Catherine Saillant
February 23 2010
In Whittier, city officials are clearing the way for office buildings, retail
shops and even homes to take root on the land where the vacant car lots stand.
The complete article can be viewed at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-auto-malls23-2010feb23,0,5602755.story
Visit latimes.com at http://www.latimes.com
The universal advice for dealing with a stuck throttle is to shift into neutral
and use the brake pedal and steering wheel to come to a controlled stop.
Unfortunately, this involves _knowing that neutral is_. There are plenty of
people who know only how to drive an automatic transmission, and even then, they
are only aware of 'P', 'R', and 'D'. They have no clue what 'N' is, most don't
even use the parking brake, and they all buy into the legend that you're not
even supposed to use the parking brake.
If I recall correctly, there was not one stuck-throttle Toyota crash with a
standard transmission--since knowing how to drive one practically forces you to
know that neutral disengages the engine and wheels.
--- In carfree_cities@yahoogroups.com, Richard Risemberg <rickrise@...> wrote:
>
> What's more dangerous: faulty Toyotas or bad drivers?
>
> http://www.slate.com/id/2244929/
>
> Rick
Let's leave the Toyota problems to be discussed elsewhere, please.
Joel
At 2010-02-23 12:21, you wrote:
>
>
>
>
>The universal advice for dealing with a stuck throttle is to shift into neutral
and use the brake pedal and steering wheel to come to a controlled stop.
>
>Unfortunately, this involves _knowing that neutral is_. There are plenty of
people who know only how to drive an automatic transmission, and even then, they
are only aware of 'P', 'R', and 'D'. They have no clue what 'N' is, most don't
even use the parking brake, and they all buy into the legend that you're not
even supposed to use the parking brake.
>
>If I recall correctly, there was not one stuck-throttle Toyota crash with a
standard transmission--since knowing how to drive one practically forces you to
know that neutral disengages the engine and wheels.
>
>--- In <mailto:carfree_cities%40yahoogroups.com>carfree_cities@yahoogroups.com,
Richard Risemberg <rickrise@...> wrote:
>>
>> What's more dangerous: faulty Toyotas or bad drivers?
>>
>> <http://www.slate.com/id/2244929/>http://www.slate.com/id/2244929/
>>
>> Rick
>
>
----- ### -----
J.H. Crawford . Carfree Cities
mailbox@... . http://www.carfree.com
This is something we've been yakking up on New Colonist for years.
anyway, though NPR is hardly mainstream news, some word is getting
out there. They mention location-efficient mortgages (good tag for
carfree city housing!) near teh end, though not by the name everyone
in the field has been using for a long time now.
http://tinyurl.com/yabgymg
Rick
--
Richard Risemberg
http://www.bicyclefixation.comhttp://www.newcolonist.comhttp://www.rickrise.com
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
This story was sent to you by: rick
A little condescending, but actually pretty good for the LA Times....
--------------------
Riding the bus changes her view
--------------------
A self-described 'snob' makes the switch to public transit. Though frustrating,
it proves enriching in ways she never expected.
By Ari B. Bloomekatz
February 27 2010
The first time Jacquelyn Carr decided to take a bus in Los Angeles, she felt as
if she were navigating a new world.
The complete article can be viewed at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-bus-snob27-2010feb27,0,7122671.story
Visit latimes.com at http://www.latimes.com
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