the (recipro)city

- From Vinay Gupta: Simple Critical Infrastructure Mapping -...

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 12:01:15 -0600

From Vinay Gupta: Simple Critical Infrastructure Mapping - Understanding Vital Systems and How They Keep You Safe

Retail Infrastructure

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 09:00:24 -0600

Canada has four times more retail space per capita than any European country; second only to the US.

What are we going to do with it?

The CRTC and Conservative government have for the most part adopted a do-nothing approach. Allowing...

Sun, 07 Jun 2009 03:14:39 -0600

The CRTC and Conservative government have for the most part adopted a do-nothing approach. Allowing Bell Canada and others to continue throttling the Internet and limit competition leaves Canada behind in terms Internet speed, cost, and access. Allowing big telecoms to become Internet gatekeepers is bad for free speech, bad for consumer choice, and bad for the innovation economy.

While the benefits, necessity, and easily replicable models for a new, more open and accessible Internet in Canada are clear, Canada lacks what it needs most — a national plan. A new approach could put Canada on a path to a “New Deal” for broadband — a path to a better Internet for everyone, for free speech, and open innovation. As Bell continues to lobby the government for greater control over the Internet, it is imperative that we keep the pressure on policy makers to protect the interests of Internet users.

Steve Anderson - Canada Needs a Serious Agenda for Media Innovation

"International development aid should more and more take the form of freely and actively shared..."

Sat, 06 Jun 2009 14:17:00 -0600

“International development aid should more and more take the form of freely and actively shared knowledge, along with small grants, and less and less the form of large interest-bearing loans. Sharing knowledge costs little, does not create un-repayable debts, and it increases the productivity of the truly rival and scarce factors of production.”

- Herman Daly, From a failed growth economy to a steady-state economy

Traffic-free Broadway, NYC.

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 13:35:45 -0600

Traffic-free Broadway, NYC.

Vancouver Council approves car-free sundays in four neighbourhoods

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 14:12:56 -0600

Vancouver Council approves car-free sundays in four neighbourhoods:

“Council also approved a new program called Summer Spaces, which will close four neighbourhoods — Collingwood, Mount Pleasant, Gastown, and Commercial Drive — to vehicle traffic on several Sundays each summer.”

"It’s the commitment to the lightweight nature of the web, to real-time, to lightweight..."

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 09:01:50 -0600

“It’s the commitment to the lightweight nature of the web, to real-time, to lightweight components connected by open protocols rather than to monolithic systems.”

- Tim O’Reilly on an open source, open protocol Google Wave. (via Tyler)

The "Uncreative Class"

Sat, 30 May 2009 15:39:46 -0600

The "Uncreative Class":

“Not everyone can afford to move and the poorest are left behind amidst urban blight and neglect. What do we do about the immobile? What do we do with cities that are net losers of the “creative class”? For this so-called creative brand of capitalism, the uncreative are someone else’s problem. As Florida says, “We need to be clear that ultimately, we can’t stop the decline of some places, and that we would be foolish to try.” I would say that this is not at all clear. There is an inherent inhumanity in leaving people and their cities in the dust. Besides, the cost of finding ways to get so-called obsolete classes of workers gainfully employed where they live is looking preferable to the social costs of managing huge ghost cities and permanent spatial inequality.”

Krugram on Cities and the Future

Fri, 22 May 2009 22:44:57 -0600

From the preeminent economist Paul Krugman, The future is not what it used to be:

I’m in Hong Kong right now; as always, I’m just awed by the way the city looks. And this time I think I’ve figured out why it’s so appealing.

Hong Kong, with its incredible cluster of tall buildings stacked up the slope of a mountain, is the way the future was supposed to look. The future — the way I learned it from science-fiction movies — was supposed to be Manhattan squared: vertical, modernistic, art decoish.

What the future mainly ended up looking like instead was Atlanta — sprawl, sprawl, and even more sprawl, a landscape of boxy malls and McMansions. Bo-ring.

So for a little while I get to visit the 1950s version of the 21st century. Yay!

But where are the flying cars?

Three Examples of How to Achieve Equity While Building Green

Fri, 22 May 2009 20:51:51 -0600

Three Examples of How to Achieve Equity While Building Green:

Three of Portland’s best examples of affordable, green buildings: Central City Concern’s Richard Harris Building, Reach Community Development’s Station Place Tower and the Turtle Island Development LLC’s Sitka Apartments.

At the Vancouver Observer: Breaks, Banners and BlackBerries at City Council Meeting. From Jon at...

Fri, 22 May 2009 17:51:53 -0600

At the Vancouver Observer: Breaks, Banners and BlackBerries at City Council Meeting.

From Jon at Beyond Robson:

Boredom, breaks and blackberries distract from the powerpoint at the latest city council meeting. Since I can’t throw an emoticon in this post you’ll just have to imagine the little yellow face rolling its eyes. Can you picture what these meetings will look like in 20 years? They’ll be doing the whole thing at home via twitter (in tab-one) while they troll the bike forums and run local youtube comments through some algorithm to determine civic policy.

Text of Vancouver's "Open Source" Motion

Fri, 22 May 2009 14:51:53 -0600

MOTION ON NOTICE

Open Data, Open Standards and Open Source
MOVER: Councillor Andrea Reimer
SECONDER: Councillor

WHEREAS the City of Vancouver is committed to bringing the community into City Hall by engaging citizens, and soliciting their ideas, input and creative energy;

WHEREAS municipalities across Canada have an opportunity to dramatically lower their costs by collectively sharing and supporting software they use and create;

WHEREAS the total value of public data is maximized when provided for free or where necessary only a minimal cost of distribution;

WHEREAS when data is shared freely, citizens are enabled to use and re-purpose it to help create a more economically vibrant and environmentally sustainable city;

WHEREAS Vancouver needs to look for opportunities for creating economic activity and partnership with the creative tech sector;

WHEREAS the adoption of open standards improves transparency, access to city information by citizens and businesses and improved coordination and efficiencies across municipal boundaries and with federal and provincial partners;

WHEREAS the Integrated Cadastral Information Society (ICIS) is a not-for-profit society created as a partnership between local government, provincial government and major utility companies in British Columbia to share and integrate spatial data to which 94% of BC local governments are members but Vancouver is not;

WHEREAS digital innovation can enhance citizen communications, support the brand of the city as creative and innovative, improve service delivery, support citizens to self-organize and solve their own problems, and create a stronger sense of civic engagement, community, and pride;

WHEREAS the City of Vancouver has incredible resources of data and information, and has recently been awarded the Best City Archive of the World.

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED THAT the City of Vancouver endorses the principles of:

Open and Accessible Data - the City of Vancouver will freely share with citizens, businesses and other jurisdictions the greatest amount of data possible while respecting privacy and security concerns;
Open Standards - the City of Vancouver will move as quickly as possible to adopt prevailing open standards for data, documents, maps, and other formats of media;
Open Source Software - the City of Vancouver, when replacing existing software or considering new applications, will place open source software on an equal footing with commercial systems during procurement cycles; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT in pursuit of open data the City of Vancouver will:

Identify immediate opportunities to distribute more of its data;
Index, publish and syndicate its data to the internet using prevailing open standards, interfaces and formats;
Develop appropriate agreements to share its data with the Integrated Cadastral Information Society (ICIS) and encourage the ICIS to in turn share its data with the public at large
Develop a plan to digitize and freely distribute suitable archival data to the public;
Ensure that data supplied to the City by third parties (developers, contractors, consultants) are unlicensed, in a prevailing open standard format, and not copyrighted except if otherwise prevented by legal considerations;
License any software applications developed by the City of Vancouver such that they may be used by other municipalities, businesses, and the public without restriction.

BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED THAT the City Manager be tasked with developing an action plan for implementation of the above.

"Ottawa's lack of vision may derail Vancouver-to-Seattle fast-train service"

Wed, 20 May 2009 09:01:41 -0600

"Ottawa's lack of vision may derail Vancouver-to-Seattle fast-train service":

A second daily passenger train between Seattle and Vancouver might fail if Canada Border Services continues its plan to outsource government costs to Amtrak.

“Tiny Houses” doesn’t offer how-to tips. Instead, the author...

Tue, 19 May 2009 19:15:49 -0600

“Tiny Houses” doesn’t offer how-to tips. Instead, the author prompts readers to reexamine their ecological footprint and think about living smaller. Take the Micro Compact Home by Horden Cherry Lee Architects with Haack Hoepfner Architects. The 76-square-foot aluminum cube has two double beds, a dining table, what Zeiger says is a “well-equipped kitchen,” a toilet, a shower and, allegedly, leftover room for storage.

(via Re-Nest)

Biden Touts Green Cities Amidst Parking Lots

Sat, 16 May 2009 09:01:19 -0600

Biden Touts Green Cities Amidst Parking Lots:

The reason our carbon emissions are so out of proportion to our population is largely because of this disastrous mode of urban/suburban development. As I note in my new article on suburban planning, transportation accounts for 32 percent of total CO2 emissions in the U.S. — the most of any end-use sector. Americans use cars for almost 90 percent of all their trips, compared to 58 percent in the United Kingdom. This is more attributable to the proliferation of unattractive, inaccessible environments like the one I saw today than it is to the inefficiency of city automobile fleets. $300 million for cleaner buses is great as far as it goes, but it does not go nearly far enough in curbing carbon emissions. Only a radically new approach to urban planning will have the effect we need.

re: urban ditches

Fri, 15 May 2009 18:29:48 -0600

Apparently they are common in Etobicoke, a former suburb of Toronto. Peter Kuitenbrouwer, who is walking across Toronto, wrote about them in his Post column today:

On York View Drive, which runs east-west just north of the Queensway, one-storey brick bungalows line the road, pockmarked by stone or stucco-faced infill monster homes that stick out like sore thumbs. The stout oaks and maples here appear much older than the houses. The result is delightful. In the early 1950s, when these homes went in, the Canadian Dream was a modest thing: a bungalow, a car, a fridge, a yard, a TV — that was your dream. Today it appears largely untarnished.

Perhaps the ditches help explain the health of the trees. Much of residential Etobicoke has no curbs —just shallow ditches between the street and the lawns. So rather than flowing into the sewer, rainwater returns straight to the earth. People seem to like it. I walked for an hour and never saw a house for sale. Everyone feels at home, including the birds.

Global Warming May Exceed Infections as Health Threat

Fri, 15 May 2009 15:02:53 -0600

Global Warming May Exceed Infections as Health Threat:

Global warming is the biggest public health threat of the 21st century, eclipsing infectious diseases, water shortages and poverty, a team of medical and climate-change researchers concluded.

The phenomenon will be felt first in the developing world, further burdening a population already in crisis from food shortages, said the report from University College London that was published today in The Lancet journal. The changing climate will also cause real and lasting damage to the Western world, affecting generations to come, said Anthony Costello, a pediatrician at University College London.

On de facto shared streets: Broad Street in downtown Manhattan...

Fri, 15 May 2009 12:01:54 -0600

On de facto shared streets:

Broad Street in downtown Manhattan enjoys limited traffic due to security restrictions around Wall Street. The result is an area where pedestrians frequently spill out into the street, since sidewalks are narrow and frequently squeezed by scaffolding. Cars roll slowly and mix with pedestrians and bicyclists.

Canadian consumers 2nd-worst in environmental impact survey

Fri, 15 May 2009 09:01:44 -0600

Canadian consumers 2nd-worst in environmental impact survey :

And no, it’s not because we’re cold and big.

Canadians lost points due to their preference for car ownership and large houses, compared to other surveyed countries, the report said. Eighty-six per cent of Canadian respondents owned a car or truck (compared to 74 per cent across all surveyed countries) and more than half of Canadian homes have more than seven rooms — well above the 19 per cent average of surveyed nations.

"Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell."

Thu, 14 May 2009 22:09:33 -0600

“Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”

- Edward Abbey