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

Yep.
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In recent months, Dr. Jackson has released another scholarly book, an edited collection on the topic, called Making Healthy Places: Designing and Building for Wealth, Well-Being, and Sustainability (Island Press), and he is also the host of a four-part miniseries called Designing Healthy Communities, which will air on public television starting this week. The series, which features a companion book, is clearly meant to sway public opinion.

"If we are going to change the way we build our communities, it has got to be done because of the demand of the citizenry—a demand that the average, very busy local political leader can understand," Dr. Jackson says. "We humans are so adaptable that we look at the world that we are in and we think, It has to be this way. But everything around us was an idea in someone's head before it was built. In large part, the idea behind the series is to alter what's in our head."
(...)
In the mainstream media, the work of Dr. Jackson and researchers with similar interests has been pithily condensed to a variation of this eye-grabbing headline: "Suburbia Makes You Fat." But his focus in Designing Healthy Communities is actually broader than that, with as much emphasis on our need for social connection and beauty as on our need for physical activity. (...)

The series also laments the loss of a social contract in America, looking at places like Detroit, Syracuse, and Oakland, Calif., where crushing poverty or pollution have hampered or even dissolved once-thriving communities. (...)

He also challenges the free-market, individualist ideology that has become popular in recent years. Communities and public health are things we build together, with the help of good planning and effective government, Dr. Jackson contends—even as companies that sell junk food, oil, cars, and sprawl pump money into politics and advertising to try to push society in the other direction.

"The fundamental paradigm that nobody else matters but me is making us fundamentally unhealthy and unhappy," he says. "This is a myth that has been foisted upon us by those that profit from this belief system."
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richard_jackson chronicle_of_higher_education sprawl cities urbanism socialtheory socialcritique

"Appleyard published his compelling research in 1981 in a book called Livable Streets. Sadly, he died the next year — struck by a speeding car in Athens, Greece — and perhaps that is why he is not better known, even among urbanists. But his findings, which have recently been replicated in the United Kingdom, should be part of any discussion about the erosion of social ties in modern society.

Appleyard did his research in San Francisco in 1969, looking at three categories of streets: light traffic (2,000 vehicles per day), medium traffic (8,000 vehicles), and heavy traffic (16,000). What he found was that residents of lightly trafficked streets had two more neighborhood friends and twice as many acquaintances as those on the heavily trafficked streets.

Residents who were interviewed by Appleyard also talked about what they saw as their home territory. On the heavily trafficked street, respondents indicated that their apartment, or perhaps their building, qualified as “home.” On the light-traffic streets, people often saw the whole block as home. They also included much more detail when asked to draw pictures of their streets."

atlantic_cities donald_appleyard traffic cars automobile socialtheory urbanism

I left a comment on this:
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Not every society reacts to pedestrian congestion the same way. A recent comparison of Germans and Indians revealed that although people from both cultures walk "in a similar manner" when alone, their behavior varies greatly in the presence of others. As one might expect given the densities of their respective countries, Indians need less personal space than Germans do, according to the researchers. As a result, when Germans encountered traffic during a walking experiment, they decreased speed more rapidly than Indians did. "Surprisingly the more unordered behaviour of the Indians is more effective than the ordered behaviour of the Germans," the study concludes [PDF].
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My comment:
Re. the Germans slowing down when in a crowd vs the Indians not lessening their pace as much: I'm really curious to know whether Moussaid's research has anything to say on who arrives at their destination most efficiently / quickly? Is it more efficient to act counter-intuitively to your body "needs" and just to continue plowing through a crowd, body contact and all, even if your acquired cultural norms demand more distance? Since the study says the "unordered" behavior is more effective, it suggests it does get the job of moving from A to B done more efficiently, yes? This is fascinating, I think.
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cities atlantic_cities eric_jaffe walking pedestrians socialtheory

Hoping there's a good follow-up online about Head's research findings; the topic is intriguing:
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Our findings indicate that nearly all students intentionally use a small compass for navigating the ever-widening and complex information landscape they inhabit. These and other findings of Project Information Literacy have profound implications for teaching, learning, work, and play in the 21st century.
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education research berkman alison_head socialtheory

Another book I need to read (and so should you):
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Lawrence Lessig has an answer. In his new book, Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress -- and a Plan to Stop It, he spends 20 pages reviewing the the 30 years of deregulation that led up to the financial crisis and outlining our present circumstances. In fact, this book, published just before Occupy Wall Street began, is perfectly positioned to become the movement's handbook. While few protesters will need convincing that the government is corrupted by money, the book lays out the case in a such a comprehensive and persuasive manner -- and proposes such specific and radical solutions -- that it seems tailor-made for the Occupy movement. And it's ambitious proposal for state-based activism on behalf of a Constitutional Convention could provide the movement with a next organizing step as it nears its two-month anniversary Thursday -- and faces such questions as how to ride out the winter and how to respond to police crackdowns.
(...)
So how do we begin a popular movement that might end with states petitioning for a convention? Lessig calls for mock conventions to happen all across the land: assemblies of regular people to think of these, and other, problems, and come up with solutions that might work. Not only would these conventions come up with a spectrum of solutions which could be evaluated and selected from, but they'd build national support for the idea that a convention like this could work.

It sounds unlikely to happen. But this is where Occupy Wall Street comes in. Properly leveraging its support, it could generate enough energy to do what Lessig, while writing this book, couldn't quite picture. In fact, the original call for Occupy Wall Street, from Adbusters, called on president Obama to "ordain a Presidential Commission tasked with ending the influence money has over our representatives in Washington." Already, "The 99 Percent Declaration" is calling for "a NATIONAL GENERAL ASSEMBLY beginning on July 4, 2012 in the City Of Philadelphia" to address the influence of money in politics and other issues.

Properly presented, the strategies and aims of Lessig's book could make it the handbook the protesters have been looking for -- and provide a pathway for them to ride out the winter ahead.
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occupy_wall_street lawrence_lessig socialtheory politics

This is really interesting (and not good). Religious people are less mobile. Poor people are less mobile. Poverty and religiosity is making the US stuck?
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If mobility was once considered to be a quintessentially American attribute, it is now one that only an elite sliver of the population can lay claim to. It is both a significant shift and a sobering one.
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richard_florida atlantic_cities mobility socialtheory

This is a must-read article about Linda Katehi's shameful UC Davis fiasco, and about the Occupy movement generally.
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If I had to sum up the attitude of America's governing classes in one word, I would say: contempt.
(...SNIP...)
People say that the Occupy movement has not been clear in its demands. I would say that their demands could not be more obvious.
(...SNIP...)
They want a fairer tax system. They want a sane energy policy that addresses climate change and searches for cleaner ways to power our civilization. They want a government that is not wholly owned by the rich. They want access to justice and education. They want a reasonable hope of getting and keeping a job that gives them a living wage and the ability to invest for the future.

They want a rational health care system that they can afford. They want government policy that is driven by thoughtful attention to rational research, not ideology. They want a transparent government that holds the powerful accountable. They want a government that understands the importance of investing now in human capital and infrastructure.
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psychology_today michael_chorost ows socialtheory socialjustice uc_davis police

Great article, must read. Basically, capitalism disrupted. A small excerpt:
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So for the publishers, the next step was clear: Make the book destroy itself.

An ebook sold to a library will thus delete itself out of existence after a year, or after X number of times it had been lent out. This is a big source of controversy between publishers and public libraries, maybe because both of them know they've found the loose thread that can unravel all of society. After all:

A. Why can't the library just buy as many digital copies as are needed for the customers, and keep them forever, if they don't naturally degrade?

B. Wait a second. It's just a digital file. Why not just buy one copy, and just copy and paste it for every customer who wants to read it?

C. Wait a second. Why do you need the library at all? Why can't a customer just buy a copy from the publisher and "lend" copies to all of his friends?

D. Wait a second. If no printing and binding needs to be done, why do you need the publisher? Just buy it directly from the author.

E. Waaaaait a second. Why buy it? Once the author makes one copy available, why can't everyone just grab it for free?

Stop and think about everything that just vanished there. Skyscrapers full of publishing company employees, warehouses full of books, book stores, libraries, factories full of printing presses, paper mills, all the stuff the author bought with his writing money. Gone.
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david_wong cracked futurismo bs socialtheory

Fantastic analysis and riff on the internet and our present prospects, by Jaron Lanier.
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To expect liberty from democracy without a middle class is hopeless because without a middle class you can't have democracy. The whole thing falls a part.
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edge jaron_lanier internet futurismo technology interview video socialtheory

Evgeny Morozov notes that public outrage over rioters might be playing right into the hands of repressive regimes only too eager to tighten social media controls in their own countries...
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In their concern to stop not just mob violence but commercial crimes like piracy and file-sharing, Western politicians have proposed new tools for examining Web traffic and changes in the basic architecture of the Internet to simplify surveillance. What they fail to see is that such measures can also affect the fate of dissidents in places like China and Iran. Likewise, how European politicians handle online anonymity will influence the policies of sites like Facebook, which, in turn, will affect the political behavior of those who use social media in the Middle East.
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socialtheory socialmedia riots evgeny_morozov socialcritique facebook

Interesting personal take on Marshall McLuhan. Also, this:
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Like all original thinkers from Blake to Einstein, McLuhan was much misunderstood. He never promoted TV over books as popular accounts gave out. He never expressed a preference for tribal culture over individualism. He never said the patterns of perception imposed by the ear are superior to those of the eye. One small aphorism sticks with me: “When the globe becomes a single electronic web with all its languages and culture recorded on a single tribal drum, the fixed point of view of print culture becomes irrelevant, however precious.” However precious! Those are the operative words, about as far as McLuhan went in taking sides. But they also bring his innermost sympathies to the fore.
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marshall_mcluhan bob_rodgers biography socialtheory

Man tweets about his stolen laptop; a thousand miles away a posse forms to retrieve it for him. The paragraph that follows is very suggestive, possibly giving an insight into mob psychology and how Twitter / online social media might enable the good, the bad, and maybe even the ugly...
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While he appreciates the generosity of the people who helped him, Power also notes that the situation took on a mind of its own and at some point it seemed the more he told the people in the bar not to take action, the more determined they were to do it.
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twitter theft crowdsourcing mob_psychology socialtheory

Fascinating exegesis by Peter Wynn Kirby on the meaning of "Godzilla" for Japan.
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The film was inspired by events that were very real and very controversial. In March 1954, a massive thermonuclear weapon tested by the United States near Bikini Atoll in the Pacific, codenamed “Bravo,” detonated with about 2.5 times greater force than anticipated. The unexpectedly vast fallout from the bomb enveloped a distant Japanese tuna trawler named the Lucky Dragon No. 5 in a blizzard of radioactive ash. Crew members returned to their home port of Yaizu bearing blackened and blistered skin, acute radiation sickness and a cargo of irradiated tuna. Newspapers reported on the radioactive traces left by the men’s bodies as they wandered the city, as well as “atomic tuna” found in fish markets in Osaka and later at Japan’s famed Tsukiji Market in Tokyo. The exalted Emperor Hirohito himself was said to have eliminated seafood from his diet.

In a nation fixated on purity, the revulsion against this second nuclear contamination of the homeland was visceral. In late September 1954, the Lucky Dragon’s radio operator Aikichi Kuboyama died. “Gojira” appeared in cinemas the following month, breaking the record for opening-day receipts in Tokyo and becoming one of the top-grossing films of the year. During the same month, there was an upsurge in anti-nuclear petitions in response to Kuboyama’s death, and the peace movement went national.

Audiences who flocked to “Gojira” were clearly watching more than just a monster movie. The film’s opening scenes evoked the nuclear explosion in the Pacific and the damaged Japanese bodies so poignant to domestic viewers. Godzilla — relentless, vengeful, sinister — looms as an overt symbol of science run amok. The creature’s every footstep and tail-swipe lay bare the shaky foundations on which Japan’s postwar prosperity stood. The great reptilian menace onscreen — actually a man in a 200-pound lizard suit stomping through miniaturized versions of Tokyo neighborhoods — illustrated both Japan’s avers

peter_wynn_kirby nyt godzilla japan socialtheory

This post can be applied to glean insights into how the Sendai earthquake and subsequent tsunami and nuclear disasters were *mediated* (both in the mainstream and via social media).
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FOMO [fear of missing out] is a great motivator of human behavior, and I think a crucial key to understanding social software, and why it works the way it does. Many people have studied the game mechanics that keep people collecting things (points, trophies, check-ins, mayorships, kudos). Others have studied how the neurochemistry that keeps us checking Facebook every five minutes is similar to the neurochemistry fueling addiction. Social media has made us even more aware of the things we are missing out on.
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caterina_fake fomo socialmedia socialtheory

One of the best, most thought-provoking articles on education I've read in a long time, by Maria H. Andersen. Brilliant, brilliant insights and suggestions...

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Mass education is adequate, as long as students are highly motivated to learn and get ahead of their peers. In developing countries, a student who is successful in education will be able to climb the ladder of personal economic prosperity faster than those who are not successful. But in industrialized countries, where prosperity is the norm, an education does not necessarily translate into a significantly higher standard of living. In these countries, there is no longer a large economic incentive to learn, so the motivation to learn must become intrinsic. As we redesign en masse education, we must address learners’ intrinsic motivations, which means that education must circle back to being personal again.
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maria_h_andersen education trends futurismo innovation disruption socialtheory socratic socrait

Great article by Jonah Lehrer about Geoffrey West and urban metabolism(s).
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It’s when West switches the conversation from infrastructure to people that he brings up the work of Jane Jacobs, the urban activist and author of “The Death and Life of Great American Cities.” Jacobs was a fierce advocate for the preservation of small-scale neighborhoods, like Greenwich Village and the North End in Boston. The value of such urban areas, she said, is that they facilitate the free flow of information between city dwellers. To illustrate her point, Jacobs described her local stretch of Hudson Street in the Village. She compared the crowded sidewalk to a spontaneous “ballet,” filled with people from different walks of life. School kids on the stoops, gossiping homemakers, “business lunchers” on their way back to the office. While urban planners had long derided such neighborhoods for their inefficiencies — that’s why Robert Moses, the “master builder” of New York, wanted to build an eight-lane elevated highway through SoHo and the Village — Jacobs insisted that these casual exchanges were essential. She saw the city not as a mass of buildings but rather as a vessel of empty spaces, in which people interacted with other people. The city wasn’t a skyline — it was a dance.
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socialtheory jonah_lehrer geoffrey_west santa_fe_institute urban_energy urbanization nyt

Great question, interesting speculative answer:
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Fleetwood believes that embracing play could have an enormous impact on our everyday, as well as cultural, lives. "We've spent huge sums of money on arts buildings over the last 15 years or so. What if we had put that money into creating games instead? So, rather than spending £60m on building a theatre, what if we had injected the same amount of money over 20 years into the town and its people, to enable them to become more playful and creative? I think it would have a huge impact on civic and social life. It could be transforming – a town in which playing is a way of life."
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hide_and_seek game_design gamers socialtheory

Loved this insight into "back to school" by Sam Ladner:
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Why is the father in the Staples ad so happy? Because his children are reminded that they do not occupy a privileged state in today’s culture. Dad likely works for a company. He likely lives on the earn/spend treadmill. He likely controls few things about his working life. Come September, his children’s summer bubble is over. Just like him, they must consume and plan. Just like him, they must conform to a role set by others. Just like him, they must go “back to school.”
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copernicus_consulting sam_ladner socialtheory

Via LibraryThing, a podcast with Larry Rosen.
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Dr. Larry Rosen's new book Rewired: Understanding the iGeneration and the Way They Learn looks at how technologies available to children today (the iGeneration) are affecting the ways they best learn. He observes children texting during class, studies the technologies they're using on their own time and applies his observations (and clinical research) to suggestions for educators and parents for how to engage students.
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"Everybody multitasks"...
"...a generation that self-interrupts a lot"...

librarything larry_rosen multitasking socialtheory kids

Ethan Zuckerman blogged Kate Crawford's 8/3/10 talk at the Berkman Center. Great points on the history of "noise" and information overload. Seems it's hardly a new issue, even if the technology keeps changing. Eg.:
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Because we’re negotiating this [constant connectivity] in realtime, there are fears about “network noise” that seem to invoke a “myth of the fall”, positing a period when media didn’t impinge on our time. She cites Jaron Lanier as making this argument in “You Are Not a Gadget” and Giorgio Agamben, who made the case that the mobile phone as reshaping Italian gesture and speech, and homogenizing Italian society. But this isn’t a new problem – she notes that the philosopher Walter Benjamin was complaining about telephones as “uncanny and violent” in 1932.

The response to these concerns about information overload are well summed up by Clay Shirky’s pithy quote, “There is no such thing as information overload, only filter failure.” There’s a wave of “productivity porn” (using Merlin Mann’s term) like Lifehacker and Getting Things Done that promises to help readers focus. But total focus was never possible, nor desirable. Excesses of information is part of the human experience – no human could have read all the scrolls in Alexandria – and this tension between too much or too little information – between noise and silence – is an old one.
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berkman kate_crawford ethan_zuckerman connectedness mobile_technology socialtheory