Art atop billboards

Missed the MAK Center's how many billboards in LA.

Update: Was wondering how I missed the billboards when I crossed paths with the art so many times...in the car that is. I'm rarely in a car in general. Guess I never looked up in LA. I'm fascinated by driving behavior in general. Everyone trying to talk to each other while muted; imagine trying to tell someone where you are going while covering your mouth. Little signals mean a lot. I also obsess over pedestrian behavior: are they walking for fitness, fun or work, with friends, where are they walking to/from, do they cross with the light? Enthralled by the few mixed-use retail areas. It seemed like LA lacks bus shelters though there are many bus riders. Finally, I literally count cyclists, check out their bike and see if they obey traffic laws. Total urban planning-transpo-geek.

Pothole gardens

Real guerrilla gardening from the artist Pete Dungey.

Fine-grain, useful mapping

Joseph O. Holmes, 20x200

[super wonky post follows]

There were many good sessions at the Active Living Research (ALR) conference, but my favorite one was the session on micro-scale GIS, based on work out of the Urban Form Lab at the University of Washington in Seattle, run by Anne Vernez Moudon (who also moderated the panel I was on) and Chanam Lee. That intersection of anthropology (specifically, collecting observations on human behavior) plus the mapping of data in local-space always gets me.

The methodology she showed us was of particular interest because it employs sophisticated tools for data that some of us working at the local level collect all the time - desire lines, most popular access points, local walking routes, local destinations, local transit use, micro-land use, etc. We do this by hand; lacking the GIS tool, we have literally hand-drawn layers of collected input on top of each other. Very time-consuming and static. Still, it's done because it's really useful for understanding neighborhood-wide transit use and the use of amenities to encourage walkability, for example.

Scale is all so important when it comes to understanding how to make tweaks to systems. An appropriately small scale at 20/50/100 feet reveals useful marks that can be easily lost when you go up to 500 feet. An example she showed us was on local transit use for Seattle. At a transit system level, the neighborhood was well-served by transit stops - an even distribution of bus stops, it appears. When individual self-identified use was mapped at a smaller scale, it became clear that one bus stop was preferred against all others. This stop is essentially the transit heart of the neighborhood. Should more resources go to reinforce this stop? What made the other stops less desirable? This mapping exercise allowed the transit agency to see more about use on the transit line than would be readily available with conventional data sets, though I'm no expert.

Perhaps the concept is well understood in the theory of urban planning, but this micro-level of spatial analysis is rarely applied to real projects going on now. It would be fun to see Open Street Map do a Micro-Street Map version allowing for local built environment condition mapping, maybe as a companion to Open Route Service. Professor Moudon, maybe you should donate your data?

(I tried to find the presentation online but it's not up yet; I'll update this post when it is).

It's not just the mapping that makes this work. The lab makes some good-looking maps too, adding to the overall persuasiveness of the work.

Woody Project

A collection of Woody Guthrie's America sung by people from many different places. Hosted by Akron Family. Send in your own version.

L.A. Mini-story

Oh L.A....groovin to a DJ at my type of club where all tables have two types of mustard // thrifting in Costa Mesa // new sharrows on 2nd St in Belmont Shore // not getting into LA Street Food Fest // Chinatown // Happy New Year! // overwhelmed by coffee indulgence of LA Mill // late night conversations around a fire pit and listening to Raymond Pettibon do spoken word backed by guitar, snare and cosmic video at a warehouse-studio-loft party - no idea where // intelligentsia // home snowy home.

Research to policy change: ALR wrap-up

Nothing compares to the enthusiasm, sincerity and energy of Dr. James Sallis for Active Living Research. I first heard him speak at a NYC Fit-City conference and have been a fan ever since. He and his team have really built this small-ish area of research into a body of work on which policymakers have come to rely.

It's always good to be immersed in a context in which you're unfamiliar. The conference was fairly multi-disciplinary, as professional conferences go, with researchers, advocacy, urban planners, and designers, but it was focused on the needs of researchers. Safe Routes for Seniors and Harlem River Park ped improvement projects went over surprising well given our lack of co-efficients and model names (e.g., Likert scale a very popular one, even T.A. was in on it without knowing it).

I don't think I've seen more shorthand for concepts since...maybe college calculus. In the world of shorthand, transportation is filled with an alphabet soup of acronyms that only insiders intuitively understand (at least you can always try to figure out the words to the letters). Public health studies are full of proper nouns that researchers recognize as the author who did the past study that came up with the concept. (Hence JD got the question for the poster, "You didn't put an author for this study?" since it only had our logo on it.)

I only bring this up because I think it incredibly important that we (all of us, advocates and researchers and policymakers) make research accessible to people from all backgrounds. What is the point of research if it can't be communicated? There are so many fabulous studies that are going to come out later this year (looking forward especially to one on Bixi from the University of Montreal that might have the right data to draw some conclusions about mode shift; walkability and depression from Andrew Rundle and the Built Environment and Health group at Columbia University; and the health impact assessment of congestion pricing from the San Francisco Department of Health). Let's make it open and accessible!

Maybe next year's conference should have a working session on how to communicate the results of your study. So many smart and fabulous researchers had to talk through their posters - which presumably are a digestible version of their very long and important study - for anyone to understand what they did and found. What if the posters did the work and the people could do the discussing? I went to a lot of sessions excited by the topics listed and sometimes left wondering what the study found although I agreed with the policy recommendations in the conclusion (almost all studies had policy recommendations.)

To get us to that policy change, make it accessible. I remain excited by the potential of ALR and I'm looking forward to learning more (and getting a handle on public health proper nouns).

Mapping play

Urban Cursor

Make Bike Buddy a reality

Vote for this project - $250,000 at stake! We all know that when there's more cyclists on the road, there is greater visibility, fewer crashes and ultimately higher prioritization of bike-friendly city policy on all sides - infrastructure, enforcement, etc.

Yes, I know at least a little bit about all the big picture stuff on why biking is good - climate change, global warming, urban transportation systems ... but starting to ride in a dense urban environment can be really intimidating, especially in the beginning.

Just orienting yourself to the street - which side is best to ride on? What about an avenue? Skirting buses? Handling left turns? How do you let drivers know your movements? What's actually safe?

Then all the prepping to get on the bike: what to wear - for work, for evening parties, for long rides, to City meetings. How to stay warm or cool, what's helpful vs. extraneously cool (or dorky) gear. What should I use to carry my stuff, where do I go to buy those things? When my bike breaks down, what's something I can fix on my own and something I should take into the shop?

I was incredibly lucky to be surrounded by a large group of seasoned bike commuters when I started riding in NYC nearly two years ago. I literally had a "buddy" who was willing to work out the small details with me, like best footwear while riding, to big decisions, like which routes are the safest. People met me in the morning and rode home with me at the end of the day and at night, never resenting the fact that I doubled their trip time since I rode so slowly. They patiently showed me how to change the tube in my tire endless times and would give me a tune-up while they were at it. And after a few months (and only a few mishaps, like when I nervously stopped at a stop sign, got rattled at the too-close shy distance with a fellow biker and literally fell over slowly and sideways on top of him in front of 10 aforementioned cyclists), I started to get the hang of it.

I couldn't imagine living in the city without biking now. Riding has become one of the best ways for me to get around, live, work, and play in New York. I would love for every new bike commuter to have the same experience of getting up to speed. Go Bike Buddy!

p.s. An individual email can vote for the same idea 1 time every day during the entire voting cycle from February 1 - 28. Please vote!

A balanced electoral college

Might it look like this?


From Fake is the New Real

Here it is, a plan to plan

I knew someone had figured this out. Absolutely, the first response is not one of reconstruction...here's some ideas for the long-term.

Hm...at least it's now serving bus riders

image source

...and not just car drivers, but on the plus side, this also prevents people from circling around looking for a spot...but still. You have to give to get. Check it out: Roadify, a service for community transportation driven by user-input. I like the idea of BusAroundMe, now possibly augmented with MTA data?

Can't get enough of this

Cut a break, it's related to cities after all!

In public service

This is a little rumination I've been sorting out, so apologies upfront for the rudimentary nature. If I've been workshopping in my head, BttN seems to be a good spot to lay everything down and geek out.

I've been spending some time thinking about the multitude of ways planners can contribute to change; learning about the situation in Haiti has made it more immediate. (To be honest, I was also inspired by the Bauhaus exhibit at MoMA where examples abound of workshopping and testing the flex of combining multiple disciplines to contribute to society.) Other professions have figured out a succinct and valuable way to apply the skills of their profession for public service. Examples of those groups include Medicins sans Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders, Union of Concerned Scientists and Architecture for Humanity. There are myriad smaller organizations that do similar work: engineers working on eradicating TB, architects working on affordable, community-based sustainability, for example. All of these groups are emblematic of specific knowledge and skills applied to a specific situation. Sometimes the need is much more immediate, as in Haiti. Other times, it's a longer-term need. Doctors may be the only profession with a common oath; however, it seems that the creation of the organizations is an implicit recognition that many other professions also have distinct power through their specific knowledge to save lives and make people's lives better.





What would a so-called Planning Corp do? Sorting through this brings up more questions than answers. Fundamentally, what do planners do? They help make decisions about how the built environment will be formed, how the natural and built environments will relate to one another, and all with the goal of making people's lives better. Planners collect data, and conduct research and analysis against an understanding of space. How does planning happen? Through a series of decisions, sometimes through an established public process or a private development process, usually a combination of both. How do those decisions get made? What's required to make them? Yikes. The arc of planning always seems long-term; what do planners have to offer in the short-term?

(In disaster situations, there must be (hopefully?!) a typology of responses that has been established among relief agencies. The process of response also carries with it a geo-political context. For example, without knowing the particulars, the decision to cede control of the airport to the U.S. seems loaded. Who gets to go into Haiti - what groups? Who receives access to resources to set up and has legitimacy to be there? Who decides?)

Planners often get lumped with architects and designs. A quick look through the Architecture for Humanity opportunities list shows that the focus on the building facility first; the design process proceeds from that starting point. Architects probably take on a huge amount of the planning responsibilities too, but it's hard to know where that starts and ends. There's Architects, Planners and Designers for Social Responsibility too; role? It would be interesting to follow-up with folks who worked on the Katrina reconstruction and see what lessons and best practices could be found.

I think it's dawned on everyone that the practice of planning needs to extend beyond the effort of making the planning process more inclusionary - or maybe the definition of inclusion needs to be expanded. Though that aspect of planning is absolutely necessary, planning as a discipline seems to have to make a bigger change than just getting community input per se.

Outside of physical design, planners also deal with a lot of data - from how it's defined to how it is collected to how it is communicated. I've become more and more curious about open data and the politicalization of analysis and access, thanks to the nudging of a couple of good folks in NYC. I guess it's about time! In this vein, the CrisisCamp response to the Haiti situation seems extremely appropriate and efficient. The application of data across space is very much an exercise in planning - but participation seems very much defined by computer program developers, not planners (the CrisisCamp folks made a great effort to include a role of non-techies in the projects).


Mobile app developers working on Creole/English tool at Haiti CrisisCamp DC

So I'll put it out there: what do you think a Planning Corp would do? If planners had to band together to respond to crisis, to injustice, to social change, in the long-term and short-term, what would they bring to the world? Sometimes I try something more specific: what would the Hippocratic Oath be for planners? And finally, what's missing here?

Grand Army Plaza - book release!

The fine folks at Design Trust for Public Space have released the book (free download available) on the Reinventing Grand Army Plaza design competition. The book looks wonderful - they always kick out stellar publications, those people.

If you'd like to get involved with the ongoing improvements at Grand Amy Plaza, there are a lot of opportunities through GAPco, the community-based coalition led by residents, business owners, elected officials, and among them, quite a few folks who are experts in public space and transportation. The first meeting is coming up soon...check the web site for updates.

This is a great example of organizing, coalition building, ideas design competition - all leading to physical changes in this space.

For the love of bikes

Recent industrial design Pratt grad Vanessa Marie Robinson has a few great ideas to make biking easier, safer and much more stylish up on her awesome blog, for the love of bikes.

A cool bike bag with expandable helmet area...


Reflective riding gloves that don't scream spandex warrior...


A bicycle tool utility bench for our tiny NYC apartments...

New old news

source

Britta/Window Farms reached its fundraising goal!

Another discussion about defining blight...

What is Affordable Housing?

Center for Urban Pedagogy only gets better and better. It launched this new project, Envisioning Development, that investigates first, "What is Affordable Housing?" Awesome!! Check out the map. Looks like Zoning and ULURP are next in line...

From CUP:

Our work grows from a belief that the power of imagination is central to the practice of democracy, and that the work of governing must engage the dreams and visions of citizens. CUP believes in the legibility of the world around us. What can we learn by investigation? By learning how to investigate, we train ourselves to change what we see.

Yes, yes, yes, and yes!

Modern Shipwrecks

"My belief is that uncertainty brings about a heightened awareness of place." - Marie Lorenz



Anyone who's traveled to a different country knows how much this rings true. I heard Marie Lorenz's talk at the Gel conference back in 2007; she was one of the more memorable speakers. I love her deep commitment to the basic theme, which is a simple idea - build boat, explore shoreline - with the experiences extremely unpredictable. Her execution is impeccable. Simple ideas really are the most brilliant.



Read her statement and go through the many trips (and maybe one shipwreck) she has taken on the shorelines of New York City. You can view her most recent shipwreck at her opening tomorrow night, January 8, at 6 PM at the Jack Hanley gallery.

Narrow streets experiments

One can always dream...




westwood boulevard + pico boulevard, west los angeles

...fun to check out.

Looking for good people

Transportation Alternatives is looking for a few good people to intern and hire.

Down to (vendy) business

A message from Sean Basinski, Director of the Street Vendor Project:

A couple weeks ago at a holiday party, I heard someone describe the Street Vendor Project as "that group who puts on the Vendy Awards."

I was impressed that he knew about our big yearly event, which continues to thrive and grow. But I was frustrated that the Vendys had again overshadowed the work we do at SVP every day, organizing and advocating for hundreds of vendors who will never receive an award but deserve our recognition and assistance just the same.

One of those vendors is Mohammed Ullah, and immigrant from Bangladesh who sells roasted peanuts near Times Square. With no vending permits available, Mohammed can´t open his own business - the cart he works belongs to his boss, who pays him $60 to $70 a day. He lives in a small apartment in Brooklyn with his family.

Read more about Mohammed and a request for micro-lending.

Another one

Am finding endless awesomeness this week (in spite of the wack).
Yay for Candy Chang. Her projects are amazing and the process really illuminating...connecting a design product to advocacy. Yay! Thanks Urban Omnibus for pointing her out again.







(I'm a softy for the Street Vendor Project too. This year's at the Queens Museum was worth the trek.)

Scattered Light

ASDF designed six posters.
One poster will be released a month.
Each poster has a photo by David Horvitz on one side and a text on the other. Together, the photo and text present various themes relating to the concept of space/place/surroundings.

Each poster release serves as an open call for photographic responses. The response should be based on the poster's text and image, along with an “Assignment”. The “Assignment” is announced with the poster release / open call. These open calls are open to everyone who wishes to participate.

Assignment 1

WTF - Copenhagen Climate Talks

Read this last night, listened to this just now (check back tomorrow for today's program). Speechless.

Opening up process with open (specific) data

I visited DC a couple weeks ago and hung out with my close friend/doppelganger who works at the National Democratic Institute (NDI). She seems to have no end of interesting projects, but one of her latest, mapping voter data from Afghanistan's November 7 elections, in partnership with DevelopmentSeed, is really amazing. You can play around with some of the results at Afghanistanelectiondata.org.

The issues barring democratic civic engagement in Afghanistan are obviously different than the ones that we face in the US. I think the lesson here is that you have to identify data collection/visualization with a heavy dose of political strategy that's connected to influencing the change you want to see. She and I bandied this around a bit; she's a master at political strategy and can talk you through/out of anything you might think is a brilliant idea (<3 her!)

OK, duh I know, but how many times has data been collected/analyzed/visualized to look cool but still doesn't seem to say very much or remains disconnected to advocating for change? For example, I'm looking at the viability of inserting health impact assessments (HIA) into the planning process for local development projects. Yes, conceptually it totally makes sense. But when you drill down, identifying the most valuable public health indicators becomes really hard. Plus, what difference would a HIA make in NYC's ULURP or CEQR process without advocating for changes in those outdated processes as well?

It doesn't matter how big or small the project is; identifying the specific data needed to create the change in the specific political/cultural context is absolutely necessary. Sometimes simple is good, or the best. Getting to simple specifics is the hardest part of the thought process.

(Whoo-hoo, congrats cc!)

Green It Yourself

My partner in the Grand Army Plaza design competition, Lori Gibbs, and the talented Atom Cianfarani, just finished another project that promotes local sustainability - a DIY workshop book on green roofs, part of their Green It Yourself series. They break down the process and language of this kind of project and give you lots of pointers on what is absolutely necessary and what can be more flexible as you design your greenroof. The greenroof workbook is available now; they'll sell green roof supplies on the same site soon. Congrats!

Kickstart Window Farms

A note from Window Farms:

We are making a big leap and turning The Windowfarms Project into a NON-PROFIT WEB STARTUP dedicated to grassroots R&D on food growing in apartments! We are writing to all of you to ask for your support during our online fund-raising drive. We have until 2pm EST on Jan 4th, 2010 to raise $25K, and we're more than half way there -- please contribute!

Britta Riley started The Windowfarms Project as a grassroots way to start to address issues concerning our food system, and to give ordinary people a way of participating in the "green revolution." Over the last year, through an organized online collaboration of regular folks, we "Windowfarmers" have designed a system for growing nutritious veggies in the windows of homes in a way that looks like an elegant garden/fountain. We have given away the plans and shown anyone how to make them out of cheap, easily accessible and recycled materials. Windowfarmers are continuously testing new techniques and sharing results online to make Windowfarms more efficient, more productive, more nutritious, quieter, prettier, and more tasty.

The project has been exceedingly popular (worldwide, even!)-- so much so that it has grown past Britta's capacity to manage it and financially support the work to be done. It needs to become an organization and have its own patrons until the grants we have applied for (surely!) roll in late next year. Together with Maya Nayak, Britta is attempting to turn it into a nonprofit dedicated to the open research and development of Windowfarms for our homes! We are applying for 501(c)(3) status, and have a 3 member Board.

"Monkeying around" with what you've got...

...it might lead to something good!

The night I was over at Eyebeam working on the Buckminster Fuller competition with some cool folks from the New Amsterdam Bike Slam, I was psyched to get a mini-tour from Britta Riley about her hydroponic window farming system, designed specifically for urban dwellers who have no access to dirt or horizontal space but may have a window available. You can read an interview with her here; I love that she says "monkey around" a couple of times. A Window Farms kit is in the works, I think.

NYC BigApps

Kinda love this competition and the many applications that came out of it. As with many of these types of things, you can see the high potential of pairing technology, information and space; but you also experience many limitations of existing data and our definitions of space. The decisions that get made along the way - whether because of individual biases, data restrictions, existing systems, etc - do have a big influence on what can be served up.

(Course I'm always behind on this stuff...this isn't news.)

Bikes in Buildings

The look of pure glee! This guy, the official photographer of T.A.'s Bikes in Buildings event at WTC 7 last night, won the raffle and took off down the hall on his new bike. The security guys didn't even give him a second glance: another definition of bikes in buildings.

Watersquares

via Pruned

My head is filled with process these days; a part of the practice of urban planning that is somewhat opaque and difficult to show others. So I was keen to find out about this Watersquares project (pdf) in Rotterdam; a cool example of how something moves from:

problem --> design concept --> research and dev --> urban planning --> urban policy

The problem of stormwater management and an overtaxed sewage system led to a potential design solution that was then prototyped and developed, put through the applied planning wringer, and emerged as viable urban policy for the City of Rotterdam. And, to make it completely accessible to those who never come in contact with the wonkiness of "urban stormwater management" it looks like a graphic novel is coming out to explain how it works. The work is by Florian Boer and Marco Vermeulen (friend of yours v?) This project sounds awesome.

Office of Urban Affairs

Fascinating story about the Office of Urban Affairs's agenda by WNYC's Andrea Bernstein.

Defining blight?

How do big organizations who can issue bonds to fund development projects on land that is seized through eminent domain define "blight"?

Hopefully this Columbia University court decision will make more people question the certitude of these projects.

Hard at work

Bedford Avenue is one of the longest streets in New York City, running nearly the full length of Brooklyn. It's a vital corridor that handles a lot of traffic of all kinds (many many peds, bikes, cars, buses, and trucks) and is truly representative of the different neighborhoods through which it travels.

So it was particularly saddening to see this happening, this morning...





It's pretty clear once you get past Flushing where the bike icons have been removed that, as a cyclist, you are not welcome here. So sad, I love Bedford Avenue for its vibrancy, especially in this part of the city. It's hard to be made unwelcome in a neighborhood you like.

(Thanks CS for the images!)

Looking up

My favorite thing at PS1 is James Turrell's Meeting, for the feeling of the sky on your face and for seeing everyone alter their behavior as soon as they enter the room.

Sold Out!

A re-post from Nov 17...

Local coalition vows to fight for living wage with Kingsbridge Armory Development

"The strong local opposition comes as something of a surprise."

Why? Many members of the coalition originally fought for development of Kingsbridge Armory but will abandon support of the project if it doesn't come with a living wage. It's sad that a living wage in New York City is NOT market wage.

"...a pledge to pay more than the market rate would be a death sentence for the project," says a developers spokesman.

Those who play by market rules have obviously figured out how to build big box in New York City. The jobs are welcome at first; the amenities as well. City Planning approves it as a development opportunity, hoping to spur on local business. But then you find out the jobs don't pay a living wage. As the community lives with the unveiled development, it starts to feel the negative impacts of having the development in their neighborhoods: increased traffic, diminished pedestrian experience, a shriveled public life. We're only beginning to learn how to track the physical impacts of such incongruous buildings.

First Gateway Center in the South Bronx. Then East Harlem Plaza. I hope that the Bronx community sticks to its guns on the Kingsbridge project. After the greenlight from the City, the marketplace players can forget all the promises they've made.

After the NYC Marathon...

....let the dancing begin! Lafayette St in Fort Greene was a scene out of movie. After cheering for a couple of hours, it was great to see the party continue with people enjoying the street.

Mapping Main Streets

Image from National Trust for Historic Preservation

A pretty cool project, Mapping Main Street kind of like a StoryCorp with a focus on literal Main Streets.

The goal is to document every street names Main in the country by going to each of these 10,466 places, taking a photo, recording a video or writing a brief story.