infrastructure

19 Nov 09

Doc Searls Weblog · Beyond Social Media

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. "

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doc_searls socialmedia infrastructure internet

14 Sep 09

See Span | Monday Mag

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

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johnson_street_bridge victoria blue_bridge infrastructure municipal_funding municipal_politics comments

16 Dec 08

"Need for infrastructure investment nears crisis point," by Mike De Souza (National Post)

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

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national_post canada cities infrastructure_funding infrastructure federal bailout

Canada's crumbling cities are on the verge of getting a multibillion-dollar makeover through a federal strategy that is being billed by the government not only as a shot in the arm for a fragile economy, but also as a long-awaited plan to rebuild the backbone -- from roads to sewage treatment -- of our communities.
For years, the country's ever-growing "infrastructure deficit" took a back seat to other priorities. Now it is on the lips of virtually every politician as a key solution for tackling an economic slowdown by providing funds to companies bidding for contracts and putting people to work.
The Conservative government introduced its Building Canada plan, an infrastructure strategy worth $33 billion over seven years, in its 2007 budget. But key stakeholders have raised doubts about whether it would be enough to fix the problems that are becoming more costly to resolve with each day.
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- Despite repeated warnings since the 1990s that much of the infrastructure has reached the end of its service life, the federal government is at least five years away from completing a study to get a handle on the extent of the problem.
  Perrault's federation estimates that cities would need at least $123 billion to bring essential public infrastructure up to acceptable levels and an additional $115 billion to build infrastructure to meet the needs of a growing population.
  Within that $123 billion, the Federation estimates that $31 billion would be needed for water and waste water systems, $21.7 billion for roads, sidewalks and bridges, $22.8 billion for public transit, $7.7 billion for waste management and $40.2 billion for community, recreational, cultural and social infrastructure.
- A study by economic forecasting firm Informetrica estimated that every billion dollars invested in infrastructure would create the equivalent of 11,000 jobs, including 5,500 in the construction sector. At the same time, the study estimated that better infrastructure could translate into savings for the private sector of up to 17 cents for every public dollar invested. The manufacturing sector, for example, could see reduced maintenance costs if delivery trucks are travelling on better roads.
  - Jeez, why does it all have to focus on ROADS for CARS and TRUCKS??? - on 2008-12-16
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12 Dec 08

Worldchanging: DIYcity Challenge: Build a Rideshare Program that Works

QUOTE
[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."
UNQUOTE

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diycity worldchanging twitter carshare transportation infrastructure cities collaboration

06 Oct 08

"TEDCO gets whacked. Who's next?" by Christopher Hume (TheStar.com)

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.

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thestar toronto christopher_hume canada cities infrastructure municipal_politics tedco waterfront

the need for intervention has been apparent for years, if not decades. But in a city known for timidity and political cowardice, that means little.
From the moment the waterfront agency was set up, TEDCO treated it as a rival. Using the city-owned land it controlled as leverage, it commissioned parallel master plans and made deals for iffy projects such as the Corus headquarters building at the foot of Jarvis St. and the film studio in the docklands.
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- the fact is that the governance structures of Canada, let alone Toronto, are so ineptly framed and out of date it's a wonder we manage to get anything done. Many would say we don't, that we lurch from crisis to crisis always reacting, always playing catch-up and rarely, if ever, leading.
  Perhaps that's why the quality of leadership at all levels has fallen so low. From the received banalities of Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper to the pompous inanities of Toronto City Council, the options range from bad to worse. We inhabit a nation where no leadership is good leadership.
  - That criticism applies broadly all over in Canada, unfortunately. - on 2008-10-06
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- The truth, however, is that Canada and Toronto have many TEDCOs, many governmental entities whose role, intended or not, is to block progress, maintain the status quo and generally serve as obstacles.
- Then, of course, there's Toronto City Council itself, overstuffed and underperforming, it desperately needs to be rethought. Because of its size and ward-based politics, it can no longer cope with the issues that face the country's largest city. Indeed, as far as our civic representatives are concerned, Toronto isn't a city so much as a series of small towns, each with its own boss. Little wonder leadership here no longer comes from city hall but the cultural, corporate and institutional sectors.
  - - interesting that Hume castigates the ward system, which Sue Woods (candidate for Victoria council) proposed as a possible solution to our amalgamation (or: avoidance of amalgamation) issues. Victoria is currently 13 municipalities, each its own fiefdom, each with its own mayor and council. But the city would benefit from a stronger provincial and national presence through amalgamation (which is fiercely resisted by Oak Bay and most of Saanich, however). But would a ward system really alleviate the feudal mentality? According to Hume, it hasn't done so in Toronto... - on 2008-10-06
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- Still, it's the provinces that provide the most glaring example of Canada's failure to keep up with its own evolution. Not only have they outlived their usefulness, these relics have become a divisive force that stand in the way of Canadian cities, which is where the future will unfold. Just look at Calgary and Edmonton, which despite being the most populous centres in Canada's richest province, are dull, dreary and decades behind the times.
  The fact is that the gap between Canada and its political system has grown into a chasm. Our leaders – civic, provincial and federal – no longer reflect or operate in the real world. Unencumbered by the demands of reality, they are free to devote their time to their own needs and inter-governmental squabbling. It's really all they are able to do.
- 1. Ontario Municipal Board
  The Issue: Created in the late 19th century, the widely despised OMB has had final say in civic planning decisions ever since. Unelected, unaccountable and unacceptable, the board has run roughshod over city plans and residents’ wishes too many times. Its powers also have a deadly infantilizing effect on city politicians and planners, especially in Toronto.
  
  The Gain: Abolishing the OMB would force cities to grow up and take charge of their own destiny
  - - happily, I don't think we have a BC equivalent of this organization, which sounds frightening in terms of its ability to interfere in municipal self-governance. - on 2008-10-06
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- 2. The Toronto Parking Authority
  
  The Issue: The TPA showed its hand earlier this year when it announced plans to buy Club Matador at Dovercourt and College to make way for a parking lot. The main users of this proposed lot would have been visitors to the nearby YMCA.
  
  The Gain: The 1950s are over and Toronto is trying desperately to redefine its relationship with the automobile. The city needs to focus on pedestrians and bike riders, not drivers. Its useful days are over.
  - - ditto, we don't have anything as asinine as this. - on 2008-10-06
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- 3. The Toronto Port Authority
  - - we do have this; we have probably about 5 levels of government owning and interfering in Victoria's waterfront: the Feds, the Province, the Port Authority, the CRD, the City.... the military (or is that the Feds again?, probably), and so on... - on 2008-10-06
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- 4. The Toronto Planning Department
  - - some parallel problems here in Victoria, insofar as Planning is routinely interfered with by councilors. - on 2008-10-06
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- 6. The Provinces
  
  The Issue: Established at a time when Canada was little more than its landscape, the provinces have failed to keep up with the country’s emergence as a post-modern, overwhelmingly urban nation. The British North America Act gives provinces control over cities and allows them to become major obstacles. Until they are eliminated or reduced, they will continue to stand in the way of Canada’s ability to realize its potential.
  - hear, hear. - on 2008-10-06
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02 Oct 08

Connected Urban Development - Connected Urban Development - Cisco Systems

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:
QUOTE
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
UNQUOTE

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cisco urban_design cross_use connectedness infrastructure ceos_for_cities

09 Sep 08

Inhabitat » Solar LED ‘Leaf’ Streetlights by Jongoh Lee

Street lights that look like plant leaves...

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inhabitat public_art infrastructure street_lights

13 May 08

Do tourists miss 'Toronto the Good'? - Posted Toronto

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.

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toronto infrastructure infrastructure_funding economy competitiveness

the Royal Ontario Museum’s chief executive officer said yesterday that all the litter, dead trees, graffiti, cracked pavement and posters plastered across the cityscape detract from major attractions and leave visitors with an impression that Toronto is a metropolis in decline.
“The devil is in the details,” William Thorsell said. “Public spaces in Toronto are inferior to those in other comparable cities in the world. Just go to New York City or Chicago and walk around downtown. You would see much higher standards for public space than you do in Toronto. I’m just back from Seoul, Korea, which makes Toronto look extremely shabby.”
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- suggests Toronto needs to polish its tired image if it wants to maintain its status as a top-tier tourist destination, starting with such basic steps as better signs, cleaner streets, fewer panhandlers and an increase in overall friendliness.
  - Yeah, but it's not just a question of "polishing." It's a question of INVESTING: funding, supporting, repairing, improving. If my house's windows are cracked, single-pane, and leaking heat -- as well as dirty -- then polishing them won't do the trick. I need to caulk them, I need to replace cracked panes, and I need to invest in storm windows. - on 2008-05-13
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- “It’s going to take an approach where we look at sprucing up, for example, things like our washrooms in this city,” Mr. Thompson said. “That’s one of the things I got from a lot of people, that ‘Ya, your washrooms really need to be cleaned up.’ ”
- One complaint among downtown and entertainment district business owners especially, has been the number of aggressive panhandlers accosting tourists. Tim Finlayson, who operates ShopDineTour Toronto, said he has gotten negative feedback from tourists about the number of homeless and seen his clients avoid streets with a high number of panhandlers.

06 May 08

City needs to put its foot down, by Christopher Hume (Toronto Star)

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.

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thestar pedestrians infrastructure toronto urban_design christopher_hume

Architecture is important, but planning is crucial. Though Toronto's known for second-rate design, our real problem is poor planning. Throughout the city there are examples, painful examples, of the lack of intelligent planning. The result is not just visual chaos, but a clear feeling that nothing adds up, that nothing makes sense, that the city consists of a growing number of disjointed projects.
insist on certain basic elements that will eventually allow a number of unrelated developments to be transformed into a genuine neighbourhood? And why doesn't the city do what's necessary to give the pedestrian a fighting chance? As it stands, the residents of these new condos are at the mercy of (usually bad) drivers more focused on their cellphones than pedestrians. They block the crosswalks, drive too fast and generally treat walkers with utter contempt. Given that Lake Shore Blvd. has six lanes and Fleet two, pedestrians must take their lives into their hands just to cross the street. This isn't just suburban; it's dangerous, dumb and no way to build a city. It also reveals the hollowness of a community that loves to congratulate itself on its creativity, and its innovative spirit. When it comes down to making choices between cars and people, we invariably choose cars. This is outdated and marks us for the civic dinosaur that we are.
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- Lake Shore must be narrowed and new buildings designed to have a relationship with streets with adequate sidewalks and connections beyond. Right now, unless you're a resident, there's no reason to be here. And the south side of Lake Shore, with green space and of course the lake, is almost completely unreachable from the north side of Lake Shore. The result isn't a city but a series of enclaves cut off from one another and everything else by highways. Fleet St. isn't just a missed opportunity; it's a disaster in the making.

A flaneur's lament for the sidewalk, by Christopher Hume (Toronto Star)

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

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thestar flaneur pedestrians infrastructure christopher_hume toronto

If only people were cars, maybe then we could get the city to take our sidewalks seriously.
In addition to the decayed state of city sidewalks, many are too narrow to begin with. And given the city's love of widening roads whenever possible, that makes for a dangerous combination.
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- Have we forgotten the importance of sidewalks? Did we ever know?
- They are an essential element of the public realm, not, as we have come to believe, simply a way of getting from A to B. Indeed, they are an irreducible part of the urban fabric.
- Sidewalks are stage sets, backdrops and seating areas all in one. They are the very place where urban life occurs. Without them, a city can't be a city.
- That's why so much more than broken ankles is at stake when they are allowed to deteriorate. Urbanity depends on sidewalks.
- Fleet St., Lake Shore Blvd. and around the Rogers Centre. These islands of condos separated by six-lane highways are hostile, even dangerous, for walkers. Pedestrians are definitely not welcome here; they get in the way of drivers, who are always in a hurry.
  This is not how to build a city. This is how to destroy a city.
- "Having adequate space and lots of sunshine means a lot psychologically," Brown insists. "But what we're getting is suburban dimensions infiltrating the city. Traffic lanes in an urban condition need be no more than 3.1 metres, that's about 10 feet. On a highway where you have greater speed, lane widths have to increase. But engineers are used to working on an average, a standard. You need to approach things more finely, taking what you can find here and there."
  - - this idea that road engineers use the same rule in urban & suburban settings for arterials, secondaries, etc., reminds me of Andres Duany's critique, and how the transect should be used to contextualize what's needed. - on 2008-05-06
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03 May 08

Escapable Logic » Blog Archive » “Oh, if only government went in for an open source make-over…”

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:
QUOTE
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"

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infrastructure britt_blaser collaboration_mall

…But the developers of OSS2, whose work we desperately need, to escape from the political specialists who’ve hijacked governance, don’t behave like that. The OSS2 developers we seek to serve are ready and able to form groups and describe their pain and hopes. But, just like OSS1 developers, they need an organizing environment suitable to their skills: a collaboration mall with all the tools they might need as they become more engaged.
I called it a collaboration mall because the Open Source Society engineers are regular people, who won’t even blog, unless tricked into it, and need a UI as user-friendly as the malls that have worked so well, regardless of sophisticates’ sniffing at them as proletarian.
- - very true. Right now (social) media participation/ blogging/ etc. becomes a self-selecting population, which skews the picture, too. - on 2008-05-03
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- But if some of us are persistent enough to build hundreds of expandable little collaboration malls, located where they (we) will try them and engage our neighbors and find it easy to shop for hope there, then we’ll become the unwitting designers and producers of little patches on our governmental structures.
  - - "shopping for hope" is a very interesting way of putting things. - on 2008-05-03
  - - community aggregators, but also sites that make it easy to "shop" (participate). Forums are really easy -- lurk, participate, whatever. But they don't have RSS and remain isolated and potentially silo-esque. - on 2008-05-03
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02 May 08

The House That Twitters Its Energy Use, by Katie Fehrenbach « Earth2Tech

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.

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twitter earth2tech andy_house energy consumption infrastructure

Comparing hard and soft infrastructure | Linux Journal

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.

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infrastructure linux doc_searls

- Infrastructure is natural. That is, we try to make it as additional to nature as possible. It sometimes improves on nature, but more often serves as an adjuct to it, altering it in some way, always for practical purposes.
- Infrastructure is patchy. In computing terms, we patch and debug it all the time. Even terminology changes. CATV becomes COMS becomes BROADBAND, all on a series of manhole covers. Sidewalks of brick are torn up and laid down again, over and over. Asphalt streets are patchworks of exposed and buried culverts, piping and conduit.
- Credit is interesting, but secondary.Companies providing infrastructure sign their work, often in forms that last decades or centuries. At a certain point this credit-taking ceases to be promotional and begins becoming archival, historical. Steel service covers bear the signatures of Edison Electric Illuminating, the Bell System, Cambridge Electric Lighting, McClure (a dead fiber company), MetroMedia (another dead fiber company), and Simpson Brothers, and countless other names once considered, mostly by themselves, as permanent.
- Re-usability matters. Pipes and poles made for one thing get used and re-used for other things. Poles that first carried electricity later came to carry phone, cable TV, and fiber optic cabling to carry phone, TV and internet service.
- Ease of servicability matters. Streets are marked everywhere with red (electric), yellow (gas), green (non-potable water), orange (communications), blue (potable water) and white (planned construction) graffiti. That these are all ugly is of little concern.
- Infrastructure is vernacular. It's local, and the expertise behind it is local.
- So in other words, infrastructure works or manifests differently depending on the density context -- and it might be much more efficient the more dense and networked its connections and build-out are.
  
  Efficient doing what? Efficient at giving people time to focus on things other than providing their own private infrastructure (personal car, eg.). - on 2008-05-02
- For reference, the Bloomberg article:
  http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/05/01/967843.aspx - on 2008-05-02
- Something else to consider here: density affects infrastructure, and therefore how socio-political trends manifest. For eg., NYC Mayor Bloomberg, in support of Obama's opposition to a gas tax holiday, said, "The last thing we need to do is to encourage people to drive more and to take away the monies we need for infrastructure in this country."
  
  He added that we need to get people out of their cars. I completely agree, so I was really struck by some "tweets" that high gas prices would keep people from driving to the polling stations! Ok, those tweets were a bit tongue-in-cheek, but there was a kernel of truth in them. If you live in a city (like NYC), which has great density, you'll have access to public transportation (infrastructure) and you won't need a private car to "get to the polling station." However, as soon as you get to the suburbs, that piece of infrastructure could easily not be there, and you then might well be dependent on having a car to vote. - on 2008-05-02
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Home Tweet Home: Energy-Savvy House Broadcasts on Twitter | Wired Science from Wired.com

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.)

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twitter infrastructure data architecture housing consumption energy wired_magazine

This revolution is being led by infotech guys like the Google engineer we wrote about, or the creator of the Twitter system, Andy Stanford-Clark, who works for IBM's Pervasive and Advanced Messaging Technologies team. And as Katie Fehrenbacher noted over at Earth2Tech, the creators of Flash are now hard at work on an energy monitoring and automation system called Greenbox.
As we've noted before, the convergence of IT and green tech is beginning as hackers turn the environment we've built and the one that naturally surrounds us into data that can be recorded, analyzed and used to reduce resource consumption.
- The data becomes part of the infrastructure... - on 2008-05-02
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28 Apr 08

City road networks grow like biological systems - tech - 23 April 2008 - New Scientist Tech

- this is fascinating: road systems evolve more along "biological" lines, vs. according to master-planned dictates...

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infrastructure highway_system roads

French and US physicists have shown that the road networks in cities evolve driven by a simple universal mechanism despite significant cultural and historical differences. The resulting patterns are much like the veins of a leaf.
They found that cities' road patterns have a lot in common mathematically, as well as looking similar to the eye.
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- The main influence on the simulated network as it grows is the need to efficiently connect new areas to the existing road network – a process they call "local optimisation". They say the road patterns in cities evolve thanks to similar local efforts, as people try to connect houses, businesses and other infrastructures to existing roads.
  
  Evolution has ensured that local efficiency also drives the growth of transport networks in biology – for example, in plant leaf veins and circulatory systems.
  
  "Cities are not just the result of rational planning – in the same way that living organisms are not simply what is in their genetic code," Barthélemy told New Scientist.
- The study's results might be important for understanding urban growth and "sprawl" says Barthélemy. More than half the world's population lives in cities, a proportion that continues to increase.
  
  "The approach could even help city planners to better predict how some street networks will evolve and to plan accordingly," he adds.
- Previous models of urban development assumed that efficient transport across the entire network motivated the system's growth – as if planned from the top down. Focussing instead on the structure of local connections seems truer to real life, says Flammini.
  - Yes. - on 2008-04-28
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- Using the local efficiency of connections to drive road network growth looks to be a truer fit with reality than using the total cost of travelling across the network, says Onnela. "Especially given that the time scale of city growth (possibly thousands of years) and the time scale of urban planning (perhaps tens of years) are so clearly different."

24 Apr 08

Understanding Infrastructure | Linux Journal

Great essay by Doc, asking if Linux, open source, the web -- all these things -- are infrastructure. "What is 'infrastructure' anyway?"

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infrastructure commentary doc_searls linux open_source

24 Oct 07

Back to Basics in Transportation Planning | Project for Public Spaces (PPS)

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automobile cars highway_system infrastructure planning project_for_public_spaces transportation

23 Oct 07

THE GENIE IN THE BOTTLE: The Interstate System and Urban Problems, 1939-1957

www.tfhrc.gov/...urban.htm - Preview

automobile blight infrastructure planning reference roads transportation

"The plight of the cities,"
the report states, "is due to the most rapid urbanization ever known, without
sufficient plan or control." The focal point of all cities, the central business
district, was "cramped, crowded, and depreciated."

Yule Heibel's Library tagged infrastructure → View Popular

Doc Searls Weblog · Beyond Social Media

See Span | Monday Mag

"Need for infrastructure investment nears crisis point," by Mike De Souza (National Post)

Worldchanging: DIYcity Challenge: Build a Rideshare Program that Works

"TEDCO gets whacked. Who's next?" by Christopher Hume (TheStar.com)

Connected Urban Development - Connected Urban Development - Cisco Systems

Inhabitat » Solar LED ‘Leaf’ Streetlights by Jongoh Lee

Do tourists miss 'Toronto the Good'? - Posted Toronto

City needs to put its foot down, by Christopher Hume (Toronto Star)

A flaneur's lament for the sidewalk, by Christopher Hume (Toronto Star)

Escapable Logic » Blog Archive » “Oh, if only government went in for an open source make-over…”

The House That Twitters Its Energy Use, by Katie Fehrenbach « Earth2Tech

Comparing hard and soft infrastructure | Linux Journal

Home Tweet Home: Energy-Savvy House Broadcasts on Twitter | Wired Science from Wired.com

City road networks grow like biological systems - tech - 23 April 2008 - New Scientist Tech

Understanding Infrastructure | Linux Journal

Back to Basics in Transportation Planning | Project for Public Spaces (PPS)

THE GENIE IN THE BOTTLE: The Interstate System and Urban Problems, 1939-1957

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