Yule Heibel's Library tagged o'reilly →  View Popular

Excellent article by John Geraci on how/why "the long tail" analogy has to come alive in cities, and what it would mean.
QUOTE
Most cities right now are models of closed, rigid systems, systems that rely on a few, top-performing agents to get civic tasks done and keep quality of life high for residents. Most of these agents are departments of the city itself, though some are outsourced. Either way, cities rely on one agent per issue, no more. (...)
...imagine instead a city that has totally open, unrestricted access to data (say, San Francisco or DC in 2011). What does it look like? It has all of the familiar city-run departments providing all of the services and assistance they've always provided - that's not going away. Then it also has public services offered by the mega companies, the Google Traffic, IBM's Smarter Cities, and so forth. Those are huge added value to these open cities - they're used by a large percentage of residents and make life in those cities better. But THEN, it also has an insane long tail of services set up and run by anyone with an interest in doing so, just by hooking into city data, distributing it in a new way, improving on it, mashing it up, giving it back to the city, etc. These services each individually get used by a small minority of people, but collectively they get used by more than any other single source in the city.
UNQUOTE
It's interesting to think about the differences between Canada and the US here. In the US, all government data is owned by the people - governments can't keep it back. But in Canada, all government data is owned by the Crown. That means, Canadians have to first get someone in authority to grant them access to it and they have to get permission to use it. #fail #deadendfeudalism

radar.oreilly.com/...w-long-is-your-citys-tail.html - Preview

john_geraci cities data open_source democracy long_tail o'reilly

Fabulous short video clip of Monica Guzman explaining how to be an awesome news commenter

radar.oreilly.com/...e-show-monica-guzman-on-b.html - Preview

local_news blogging business_model newspapers ignite seattle monica_guzman news o'reilly

James Turner interviews Andrea Vaccari of MIT's SENSEable City Lab about using internet and mobile technology data (generated by citizens in their day-to-day lives) to figure out how "digital technologies are evolutionizing the way we live in cities." (Not sure about turning EVOLUTION into a verb...)

radar.oreilly.com/...-20-preview---building-th.html - Preview

senseable_city mobile_city urbanplanning mit o'reilly andrea_vaccari

I despise the way JH Kunstler has managed to make what should be well-placed criticism of the system into an ideological cult that's infused with hocus-pocus and now - egad! - "neo-medievalism" and celebrating the failure of "the Enlightenment mental model." There's so much wrong with his approach that the kernels of usefulness (which are there) get lost. If you listened to Kunstler, you'd never know about all the good work that is being done. Furthermore, does he really think that personal mobility devices (i.e., some form of car) are going to disappear? So why trash the Rocky Mountain Institute - or why trash NASA because it's not focused on teaching Americans how to garden? Aside from that, anyone who "predicts" the future ought to be taken with a bucket of salt.

broadcast.oreilly.com/...view-with-james-howard-ku.html - Preview

james_kunstler futurismo predictions o'reilly peak_oil

Intriguing summing up by Regine from We Make Money Not Art of Eric Rodenbeck's presentation at etech08, "Information Visualization is a Medium." I especially liked this, on the Crime Spotting app:

"...interactive map of crimes in Oakland was developed with the idea of offering a tool for understanding crime in cities.

"You can get a precise overview of what is happening in your neighbourhood (or the one where you plan to rent a house) over time, you can select the crimes you want to see and if you like that sort of thrill, crime alerts can be delivered to you in almost real time via RSS or email.

"Crimespotting helps people explore public information, draw connections, see pattern emerge and find new possibilities for questioning.

The website says: We believe that civic data should be exposed to the public in a more open way. With these maps, we hope to inspire local governments to use this data visualization model for the public release of many different kinds of data: tree plantings, new schools, applications for liquor licenses, and any other information that matters to people who live in neighborhoods."

Yes, data should be "exposed to the public in a more open way."

www.we-make-money-not-art.com/...h08-information-visualizat.php - Preview

apps data data_visualization eric_rodenbeck etech08 gis mapping_apps o'reilly regine wmmna

In Vancouver, Wendy Waters (see http://allaboutcities.ca/stackable-affordable-fast-and-green-housing/) just posted something about using shipping containers for housing (not unknown here in Victoria, with Zigloo -- see http://www.zigloo.ca/index, right in the Fernwood neighbourhood), and presto-bingo, here's a post about using containers to create (one presumes and one hopes affordable) artists' workspaces! Yes, that would be welcome: someplace for the low-cash-flow creatives to live & work...

radar.oreilly.com/...the-shipyard-returns.html - Preview

adaptability container_housing creative_spaces o'reilly shipyard