Yule Heibel's Library tagged infrastructure →  View Popular, Search in Google

I looked at the video included here, and I thought, "this is simultaneously retarded and brilliant." Chris Burden reminded me of Robert Moses (implied in Burden's artistic construct is an infrastructure for automated cars that can easily obliterate any neighborhood in its vicinity), and at the same time I think he's on the right track (no pun intended) in predicting the end of driver-controlled driving. So, on 2nd thought, scratch "brilliant"...
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“It’s a hopeful future,” Burden says. “Cars will have an average speed of 240 miles per hour as soon as Google gets all their cars up and running. Because the future of automobile transportation is that there won’t be drivers anymore.”
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atlantic_cities chris_burden cars infrastructure sculpture installations video

Fantastic. Putting imagination back into infrastructure. (How much we could have needed that in Victoria BC, both with regard to the Johnson Street Bridge and with the View + Vancouver streets intersection...
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“The strategy is how to integrate the entire community so that in the end they feel that it is theirs, that they own it. The city and the developers start to fall away in the background. If that happens then you’ll probably have a successful project.”

Aquino says that these strategies haven’t really been figured out yet. Public-private partnerships seem to be important for maintaining new parks, but initial funding can be hard to come by. When infrastructure projects are necessary, Aquino says the money will come through. Making that money work harder to create more than a new alleyway or drainage canal is a strategy more cities are likely to take.
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landscape_architecture landscape_infrastructure infrastructure cities urban_renewal urban_parks

Fascinating documentary video (just 6 1/2 minutes long) on the rise of cycling infrastructure in Holland.
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Besides of the historical resume of the process, it is really important to see that there are critical situations in which we have to change our ways of doing. The key for the Dutch bicycles were the amount of car deaths, the first oil crisis and a past history of bicycle use.
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history cycling infrastructure urbanism cities holland

Amen.
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We now know what they didn't in Eisenhower's day: it's possible to remove highways from city centers without ruining either the city or the highway. In fact, both can emerge stronger than before, as they did when Embarcadero Freeway in San Francisco was replaced with an inviting waterfront boulevard. Many other cities now hope to duplicate that success. Earlier this fall the Urban Land Institute released a list of ten urban highways whose days are numbered. Many of these usual suspects have appeared on similar lists released by the Congress for the New Urbanism over the past few years. Moving east to west across the country, here's a look at ten roads that may not be cutting through cities much longer, as well as some of the plans that might replace them.
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highway_system cities urban_renewal infrastructure traffic atlantic_cities

Downloadable PDF of a Land Lines Article, "Cities and Infrastructure; A Rough Road Ahead," by Gregory K. Ingram and Anthony Flint. Published July 2011.
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American cities have promising long-term prospects as hubs of innovation and growth, with expansion in technology and health sciences beginning to offset the decades-long erosion of manufacturing. Cities also remain places of vitality, offering urban design, density, and transport options that attract residents of all ages and backgrounds. In fact, nine of the ten most populous U.S. cities gained population over the last decade, according to the 2010 U.S. Census.

Yet the short-term prospects for cities are fraught with challenges. The recent sharp decline in tax revenues, caused by the 2008 housing market collapse and related financial crisis and economic slowdown, has made it extraordinarily difficult for state and local governments to maintain basic services, let alone plan for investments in infrastructure. Federal funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) helped local governments offset revenue declines in the past three years, but ARRA funds are no longer available for the coming fiscal year (a transition now termed “the cliff”), leaving local officials to confront the full force of revenue shortfalls.
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lincoln_institute anthony_flint gregory__k_ingram pdf cities infrastructure

This is kind of a mind-blowing article, or rather: this is an article that points at some mind-blowing concepts and work and potentials. It's about using using data (derived through geographic information systems) to design (or help structure the design impetus) of urban environments. In particular, it can help urban planners figure out what and how the many, many bits of unbuilt surface in an urban core might be utilized, and it can even be used to re-think "big" infrastructure projects. Some push-back in the comments, but overall this is truly fascinating to ponder...
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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.
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nyt allison_arieff spatial_fix spaces infrastructure surface_parking_lots urban_design

Thought-provoking post by Doc Searls: social media is "a crock." What's ignored in all the social media hype is the infrastructure that underwrites the private real estate of Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc. The other problem with social media is that "as a concept (if not as a practice) it subordinates the personal."

"Personal and social go hand-in-hand, but the latter builds on the former."

"Markets are built on the individuals we call customers. They’re where the ideas, the conversations, the intentions (to buy, to converse, to relate) and the money all start. Each of us, as individuals, are the natural points of integration of our own data — and of origination about what gets done with it. "

doc_searls socialmedia infrastructure internet

Added a comment to Monday Magazine's article on Victoria's Johnson Street Bridge debacle.

johnson_street_bridge victoria blue_bridge infrastructure municipal_funding municipal_politics comments

Yet another article on the massive infrastructure crisis in Canada, and the federal attempts to boost the economy by putting money into infrastructure upgrades.

national_post canada cities infrastructure_funding infrastructure federal bailout

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[DIY city]'s second challenge, issued earlier this week, asks participants to "conceive of a grassroots ridesharing system that can overcome the problems inherent in ridesharing and achieve critical mass."
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Hume rips into municipal politics, as well as provincial rights over cities, in a way that to my mind evokes parallels with Victoria, BC. The point of departure is Toronto's seeming inability to develop its waterfront with any sort of sensibility or vision. Sounds familiar (re. Victoria). See notes & annotations for more.

thestar toronto christopher_hume canada cities infrastructure municipal_politics tedco waterfront

This is the Cisco site that CEOs for Cities blog post pointed to. It describes the Cisco-funded/ sponsored program, "Connected Urban Development" (CUD), now in several cities around the world.

Question: how does a city get involved with this? From the webpage:
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By using network connectivity for communication, collaboration, urban planning, and other activities, CUD will help change the way in which cities do the following:

* Deliver services to residents
* Manage the flow of traffic
* Operate public transportation
* Use and manage real estate resources
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cisco urban_design cross_use connectedness infrastructure ceos_for_cities

Street lights that look like plant leaves...

inhabitat public_art infrastructure street_lights

While some people say that "gritty" = "edgy" (and therefore "cool"), there's an undeniable line that gets crossed at some point, and then gritty isn't edgy anymore, it's just shabby & run-down & dirty. It seems that far too many North American cities are on their way to that. I'm reminded of my oldest sister's visit to Victoria a couple of years ago. She lives in the heart of Tokyo, and her observations of Victoria were that it's dirty. Not the air (compared to Tokyo), but in terms of the litter on the streets, the obvious signs of infrastructural decay, and the obvious signs of social decay (panhandlers, drug users). Maybe things have gone downhill in Tokyo since her remarks, but they have also certainly gone further downhill here.

This article in the National Post (by Barry Hertz) should be read in conjunction with some of the other commentaries appearing on infrastructure, whether on Richard Florida's blog, or on the CEOs for Cities blog, or even on Doc Searls's blog (see Handbasket weaving, http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/doc/2008/05/13/handbasket-weaving/). The basic message is that this is not a question of "style" or edginess or cool or whatever, but a question of underfunded infrastructure, which is crumbling around our ears. And this has long term deleterious economic impacts.

toronto infrastructure infrastructure_funding economy competitiveness

This article, linked to the other Apr.26 piece in terms of theme and championing the idea that sidewalks (& therefore pedestrians) are key to a good urban fabric, tackles the question of planning & design. Too much is individual project driven, vs. falling into place as part of an overall sense of what the city should be.

thestar pedestrians infrastructure toronto urban_design christopher_hume

Together with 2 other articles (Apr.26 and May 3), a nice trilogy in praise of walking and pedestrian rights.

thestar flaneur pedestrians infrastructure christopher_hume toronto

Britt Blaser coins the compelling term "collaboration mall." I left a long comment on April 28, but it appears stuck in moderation or has been deleted. Here's what I wrote:
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Thank-you for using my comment as a jumping off point to a thought-provoking blog entry here, Britt! (And I hope I didn't sound as 'despairing' as all that — my despair, such as it is, stems as often as not from the fossilized pace of local governance here. Other than that, I'm a pretty optimistic, happy-go-lucky person, which is probably why I'm ready to stumble into pre-existing conversations! …Like, duh Yule: one quick google search could have told me that you, Britt, have been talking about open source government for …well, for a while.)

But on to your post: I really like your descriptive term, "collaboration mall." As a city person (and yeah, Victoria is a smaller city, but it's pretty dense and urban and walkable), I'm of course loathe to admit that the suburbs might be places that produce appropriate symbols ("mall") for civitas / civic life. But I can remind myself that in the 1920s Walter Benjamin wrote about 19th century Parisian arcades as localities of social meaning (and manufacture of meaning) — and what were the arcades but urban forerunners of suburban malls?

I'd say that the urban street is still more democratic/ porous/ open, if only because it really is public space, vs. private or semi-private. But the mall can bring together all sorts of different (including "regular") people, and it's a great term (compared to "street") because it acknowledges the reality of markets, fees for services, settings for enterprise, and consumer platforms.

I'm at the very beginning of trying to create a community aggregator type service here, and your suggestion of a "collaboration mall" is intriguing. Just as with Doc's entry on infrastructure, I find it helps my thinking when one (physical) thing typically seen in one context is transposed into another (more abstract) context. Till now, I was thinking for example of "public space"

infrastructure britt_blaser collaboration_mall

Among other things: "The Twitter stream is an exercise in using the data from home automation feeds, and the hope is that, by making energy usage data transparent and easy to digest, it will change consumer behavior and reduce energy consumption." As I noted in bookmarking the related Wired Magazine piece, this relates to Wired Mag's earlier article on "Peak Water," too, where we learn that many London homes don't even have water meters. Actually, it's the same here in Victoria & Oak Bay. Not good.

twitter earth2tech andy_house energy consumption infrastructure

This is the 2nd in what looks to be a series. As the title indicates, Doc Searls compares infrastructures -- what we'd traditionally consider infrastructure (the "hard" infrastructure of roads, sewers, etc.) and Linux/ the Net -- programming -- the "soft" infrastructure that pervades our existence today.

infrastructure linux doc_searls

Wired Magazine article by Alexis Madrigal on "wired" homes, including http://twitter.com/andy_house, by IBM "master inventor" Andry Stanford-Clark who "rigged up his home to twitter its energy use." See The House That Twitters Its Energy Use by Katie Fehrenbacher (http://earth2tech.com/2008/04/30/the-house-that-twitters-its-energy-use/).

Compare to Wired Mag's recent "Peak Water" article, which pointed out that many London households aren't even on water meters, making consumption monitoring impossible.

In addition, consider too the New Scientist article, "City road networks grow like biological systems" (4/23/08).

All this relates to infrastructure -- and to how we're just beginning to understand it from new angles. (See also Doc Searls' continuing investigation of infrastructure in Linux Journal.)

twitter infrastructure data architecture housing consumption energy wired_magazine