- Is There a Better Word for Doom? – Six disparate views on the value and ethics of actively re-framing the public discussion surrounding climate change. (tagged: politics policy environment communication propaganda climate change science )
- Clay Shirky: How cellphones, Twitter, Facebook can make history – A talk given by Clay Shirky to the State Dept. a month or so ago, on the global, social, ubiquitous and cheap media landscape of the 21st century. Especially relevant in light of Iran's elections and protests at the moment. (tagged: web2.0 media propaganda technology social twitter politics transparency )
- Iran's Disputed Election | A Revolution in Pictures – Images are streaming out of Iran. Hundreds of thousands of people marching. Guns, fires, roads blocked by burning busses, riots and blood in the streets. The para-military storming the University. Protesters improbably evacuating an injured riot cop. Tear-gas ping pong. All revolutions look the same on the ground. They are not in practice ideological affairs. (tagged: iran politics election 2009 photos protest police )
- Gadget Teardowns – How to completely and utterly disassemble… just about anything, from a banana to your brand new Macbook Pro. Unclear whether you can put it all back together again! (tagged: technology design maker )
- The New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society Is Coming Online – An essay by Wired editor and Long Now pundit Kevin Kelly, making analogies between the "socialism" of the 20th century, and the open collaborative systems which have taken hold of the Internet. Larry Lessig hates the fact that he used the S-word, since it's got such a black name in the US, but I'm not so sure it was a bad idea. Actually I think that more than anywhere else, "socialist" ideas can probably work in the world of pure information. We're certainly nowhere near the limits of sharing online yet. (tagged: technology economics politics internet web2.0 socialism lessig longnow )
Tag: design
Shared Links for Jun 15th
- Being “Used To” Our Lifestyle Makes Change Seem Difficult – The range of lifestyles which people have been able to become accustomed to and enjoy throughout history and spread out over the globe, is immense. Some of them are sustainable; ours is not. The willingness to experiment and accept change, to be flexible at a societal level, is of paramount importance today, and has in the past meant the difference between survival and obliteration for countless other civilizations, as detailed in Jarod Diamond's book "Collapse". But change is hard, whether you drive an SUV and have managed to shave your lifestyle requirements down to 8 earths from 10, or whether you're the child of a prostitute in Calcutta. We are creatures of habit, quite literally. (tagged: sustainability film energy green stuff money )
- The Need for Geoengineering – A WSJ op-ed advocating near term geoengineering, of the stratospheric sulfate aerosol variety. It would be fast acting, relatively easy to reverse, and of the options on the table today, is the least mysterious, since it's not so different from the effects of a large (historically speaking) volcanic eruption like Mt. Pinatubo. The author cautions that even at best, all this would do is give us time: we still need to get the atmosphere back to ~350ppm. What a fascinating modern age it is we live in! (tagged: climate technology geoengineering )
- Early Reviews of NYC’s New High Line Park – A round up of several reviews of the High Line Park, which has just opened in NYC. (tagged: architecture urban design landscape garden parks nyc )
- The High Line – An abandoned elevated freight rail line in Manhattan is reborn as a long linear park three stories above the streetscape. I love how the design incorporates the rails and the overgrown feeling that the old line had developed on its own. This and the closure of Broadway at Times Square makes me want to visit New York. Inspiring to see that this kind of change is possible. (tagged: urban design architecture green garden parks nyc )
- Pedalpalooza 2009 – Wow, a two week long bicycle festival in Portland, spanning the summer solstice? Sounds like a wonderful way to start a bike tour! Hopefully it will still be going on next summer. (tagged: bicycle transportation oregon portland festival activism )
Shared Links for Jun 7th
- Home by Yann Arthus-Bertrand – It's like his photography, but moving. Visually stunning. About 2/3 of the film is great, especially the almost mythologized story of our creation. Poetic, without being flowery or playing too fast and loose with the facts. Short on concrete suggestions for what to do, unfortunately. (tagged: sustainability green earth climate film )
- Web Site Helps Bicyclists Avoid Crash Hotspots – LA's local CBS affiliate did a story on Bikewise, featuring… me! (tagged: bicycle transportation technology maps google urban planning tv )
- The Artvertiser – Ad replacement technology not for your browser, but for your ad encrusted urban reality. Augmented reality goggles not included. (tagged: urban art technology advertising )
- L.A. County raids homeless camp under 10 Freeway – This is like something out of a William Gibson novel. A vast vault underneath the 10 freeway called "The Cave" by its denizens. Drugs, cooking, bicycles, babies, rats. What would LA be like today with 30% unemployment I wonder? (tagged: losangeles freeway homeless society police urban design architecture )
- HEET: Home Energy Efficiency Team – HEET is a bunch of collaborative energy efficiency "barn raisers", volunteering their time and knowledge in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to get home weatherized, insulated, and otherwise energetically improved. Now, it might be even better if one could, um, get some support (or at least a lack of obstruction) from the powers that be for this kind of behavior, but failing that, this is nothing short of brilliant civil disobedience. (tagged: sustainability architecture energy efficiency volunteer cooperation )
Shared Links for May 29th
- Post-Scarcity Prophet: Economist Paul Romer on growth, technological change, and an unlimited human future. – Reason Magazine – An excellent interview with Paul Romer from Stanford, who has apparently been thinking along the same lines as I have about the deep differences between material and informational goods (he calls them "things" and "ideas"). I don't think he's skeptical enough about the motives and powers of large "market" players to subvert the markets they participate in, but he certainly gets that all growth, in the fullness of time, must be based on knowledge and not stuff. Malthus and Erlich aren't wrong, they just haven't been right yet. Will have to look up much more of his writing! (tagged: economics science history capitalism technology growth non-linear wto corporations interview )
- This is not "socialism" – Semantic arguments are both catastrophically boring, and necessary. What does "socialism" mean? Is the Wikipedia socialist? Is the Internet inherently socialist? Do the ideas associated with "socialism" even have meaning when considered in the context of informational goods that once produced, are non-rivalrous and non-excludable? Why are so many people unwilling (unable?) to try and understand what a speaker or writer actually means, instead tending to just attach all their own cultural baggage to the words they use. All important words subtly change their meaning… (tagged: economics capitalism politics internet socialism copyright technology lessig )
- bikewise – Hooray!!! Somebody implemented basically exactly what I wanted in a bicycle issue reporting system, and licensed under Creative Commons to boot! It lets you report hazards, crashes, and thefts, register your bike, subscribe by e-mail or RSS to changes in your area, etc. Absolutely fantastic, clean, and easy to use. I'll populate it single handedly for Pasadena if I have to! (tagged: bicycle transportation maps wiki google planning policy )
- Housing and Transportation Affordability Index – a nice little application that allows you to browse geographically through several interesting slices of census tract data, looking at transit and housing affordability in various big metro areas in the US. (tagged: maps economics transportation economy urban )
- A Low Impact Woodland Home – A beautiful hobbit hole in wales. Left alone for a century, it would just melt back into the hillside, like many well-designed things. (tagged: sustainability green design architecture )
Shared Links for May 26th
- The Story of Stuff – A 20 minute video on where "stuff" comes from, and where it goes, and a little bit on why, and how we might do it differently. Yeah, it's sustainability propaganda, but sometimes that's okay. (tagged: sustainability green economics politics energy environment recycling design )
- Russia makes major shift in climate policy – I will be amazed if Russia actually shifts its climate policy in any functional way. I suspect they feel free to make this politically advantageous statement because there doesn't appear to be any real threat of the world doing anything substantive about climate change, so why not get on the hypocrisy bandwagon and avoid any unnecessary conflict over it? Perhaps more than any other nation, Russia stands to benefit from climate change: gas and oil sales, and a massive unusable northern seaboard, as well as huge oil and gas reserves on its northern continental shelf, increased agricultural productivity, less harsh winters, no serious domestic population or water pressures, etc. This is normal Russian politics. (tagged: russia climate economics politics )
- Short version of the CEPHEUS final report – A Europe-wide study of passive houses and the passivhaus standard developed in Germany, for possible use as an EU-wide energy efficiency building standard. (tagged: architecture sustainability green energy europe policy passivhaus design system:filetype:pdf system:media:document )
- Automobile Dependency and Economic Development – A study on the economic costs and benefits of automobile dependency, showing that up to a certain point cars can have economic benefits, but that encouraging dependence on them to a greater degree than that actually ends up being worse economically. (tagged: transportation cars economics urban design science policy sustainability system:filetype:pdf system:media:document )
- Growing Power – A two acre farm in Milwaukee growing food for 2000 people in greenhouses and hoop houses year round, heated by decomposing compost, with fish producing fertile waters for the plants, and worms breaking down the incoming nutrient stream: 80,000 lbs of food scraps every week from restaurants and institutional kitchens. (tagged: sustainability urban food agriculture garden )
Shared Links for May 24th
- Math and the City – The same scaling laws seem to apply to both cities and organisms: infrastructure requirements per capita (or per unit body mass) go down as population (size) go up. Not so surprising, since both cities and bodies are connected to themselves by networks of wires (neurons) and tubes (pipes, transportation, blood vessels) (tagged: urban design economics sustainability transportation infrastructure biology )
- Sustainable Transport that Works: Lessons from Germany – A 60 page report on how Germany has transformed its urban transportation systems over the Post-War period, moving toward more public transit and bicycle infrastructure, the costs, benefits, effects, etc. What has worked, and what hasn't. (tagged: bicycle transportation policy urban design system:filetype:pdf system:media:document )
- NASA Gets Out of Satellite Servicing Business – And good riddance. Yes, the capability was amazing, but expensive and unnecessary. For the price of *each* Hubble servicing missions, we could have launched an entirely new Hubble-class telescope on a rocket. The shuttle is a solution in search of a problem. Someday we'll have a real reason to send people into space — e.g. long term scientific exploration of Mars, or if we're lucky, the beginnings of a two-world civilization — but until then, we're just going around in circles, and forking over hundreds of billions unnecessarily to the aerospace industry. Better them than the banks… but that's really no argument to stand on. (tagged: space nasa politics policy )
- Buying farmland abroad: Outsourcing's third wave – I don't know how anybody can think this is going to work long term. The whole point is to have food when there's a crisis, but in case of crisis, these deals are going to go down hard, unless those on the receiving end are willing to deploy their militaries on foreign soil to protect their investment. Which isn't impossible, but certainly doesn't seem like a great deal for anyone. (tagged: agriculture food china africa sustainability economics trade )
- Crack Gardens – No, not gardens in which you grow crack, gardens growing out of cracks. A little creative jack-hammering opened up some fissures in this concrete slab, out of which a garden now grows. An homage to the tenacious plants that will take our cities apart when we leave. (tagged: gardening urban design art )
What Are Cities For?
Kurt recently asked me:
Assuming (1) that you like the outdoors, open spaces, gardening, etc. and (2) that you would prefer high-density urban design to low-density, suburban, car-oriented sprawl, then how would you fuse these two together in an ideal town? If my assumptions are wrong, I realize my question is moot.
I am asking because I like the idea of owning acres of land, but not the idea of having to drive everywhere, and I wonder if those two desires are mutually exclusive.
and it got me thinking about what my ideal city would be like, and how close one can get to that in this lifetime, especially on this continent. I’m going to make this an exercise in creative idealism. Kurt’s assumptions are right, and I do feel torn, especially having grown up in a rural area, on 8 acres of oak woodland with a creek running through it. I am completely sympathetic to the pastoral urge, but that urge is not and never has been satisfied by the suburban existence which has come to typify the American experience in the last half century.
Shared Links for May 21st
- Car-Free Housing in European Cities – A survey of sustainable residential development projects across Europe, including Vauban, outside Freiburg. The study is from 2000, so it's a little out of date, but an interesting overview anyway. It would be great to have a decadal survey of such developments, to see how they evolve and deal with growing pains, and issues which arise in their experimental settings… (tagged: urban design sustainability architecture europe bicycle )
- Nuns arrive at eco-convent and leave behind high-carbon habit – An interesting set of design choices by an organization with what one would imagine is a very long time horizon. Their old (stone) convent was certainly built to last centuries, structurally. I wonder if the new one is too, or if the construction methods, while minimizing energy consumption while the building functions, will ultimately require more embodied energy as it has to be re-build more frequently? Most homes today aren't built to last much more than the length of a mortgage contract. In the US anyway. (tagged: sustainability religion architecture design green environment )
- 28 Reasons to Bike – A list of reasons why biking is good for you, for others, and for the city you live in. Of varying importance, quality, and subjectivity. But a good list to discuss in any case, with references for more extensive information. (tagged: politics transportation bicycle green urban sustainability policy economics )
- The Solipsist and the Internet – Larry Lessig offers a (very) lengthly review of of Helprin's "Digital Barbarism", which is an argument (an abjectly bad one in Lessig's view) in favor of infinite copyrights. Oh. My. God. And I thought *I* knew how to rant! (tagged: law internet technology copyright )
- sea kayaking patagonia – This looks like an awesome trip, 50 days paddling south through Patagonia from Puerto Montt. Now, can it be combined somehow with a bike ride from Buenos Aires? (tagged: travel kayak spanish patagonia chile paddling )
Shared Links for May 12th
- Forecast: On Climate Change, Cooler Temperatures Bring Hotter Air – Augh, we are prisoners to so many perceptual fallacies. Recency and narration loom large among them. It turns out that the average temperature of the last 12 months is a reasonably strong predictor of whether or not people think they'll personally experience the effects of climate change (a multi-decade to century-scale process). We are failing to deal with problems we didn't evolve to perceive clearly. (tagged: climate statistics fallacy propaganda science )
- In German Suburb, Life Goes On Without Cars – Ah, the New York Times has discovered Vauban! Now if only it had happened when gas was $4/gallon, we might have had a chance. We desperately need more experimentation in urban design, so we can have working examples to look at and build on. (tagged: sustainability green urban design bicycles germany transportation parking architecture )
- Spuds in a Box – Build a box whose sides you can progressively remove from the bottom up, plant potatoes in the bottom, and fill with dirt as they grow. Remove lower slats to harvest spuds. I've certainly heard this suggestion from other people too. Will be interesting to see how well it works for these guys. Seems like you could also do this with some kind of bag, and if you sewed in sleeves/tubes periodically, that you could tie off, and then untie when you wanted to reach in and root around for a spud, you wouldn't have to worry about soil falling out when you pry off the boards. Others are supposedly reporting 50kg of potatoes from 0.5 m^2 area. (tagged: gardening green sustainability agriculture food urban design potatoes )
- How Much Do You Earn? – A great annotated visualization of income distribution in the US as of the year 2000. It would be awesome to see an animated version of this, and see how it evolves through time. Turns out I make just about the most likely income in America ($20k), which is far below the mean (and the median). As a "household" though, I suppose we're right about at the median ($40k). Interesting. (tagged: economics wealth taxes government policy visualization )
- The Capitalist Threat – Geoge Soros on Karl Popper's Open Society, from the mid-90s. He rails against the West's failure to extend a helping hand to the post-Soviet nations. He acknowledges that Truth may not be a strong enough motivator for most people, and that within a society that has decided to be Open, there are still many other choices to be made, but somehow fails to mention the way these two things end up pushing an Open Society closed with propaganda, apathy, and misinformation. Political evangelism – the process of deciding what (arbitrary) values your society is going to have – creates huge incentives for those who do not highly value truth to assert authority. I guess that's part of his point though, to robustly inoculate society against those assertions of perfect (authoritarian) knowledge. (tagged: economics politics popper society philosophy )
Shared Links for May 11th
- Where can you get Cheap Natural Fertilizers and Soil Amendments? – A nice concise list of natural sources for garden nutrients, when your compost pile just isn't quite enough. (tagged: gardening food organic fertlizer compost biology )
- Pinko bastion spawns capitalist solution to solar financing – Boulder city/county passed the same kind of property-tax based financing of energy efficiency (and solar) improvements on the Nov. ballot too – modeled on Berkeley, but with enabling legislation at the state level (to avoid the kind of lawsuit Berkeley had to fight over whether or not they had the power to issue such bonds). The biggest worry I had in reading the Boulder initiative though, was that they had not yet come up with a good mechanism for ensuring that the improvements which were being proposed (more insulation, solar hot water, whatever) would necessarily save enough energy in order to justify the value of the bond being created. Hopefully they’ve fleshed that metric of value out much better by now (in both Boulder and Berkeley) and it’s not possible to abuse it… otherwise I suspect you’ll get deployment of faddish fixes (e.g. sexy-sexy PV instead of solar hot water, or better insulation, or super-windows, etc) instead of the best energy improvement per dollar invested. (tagged: finance capitalism investing energy efficiency sustainability green solar berkeley boulder bonds )
- Campaign for a Car-Free Lincoln Park, Pt. 2 – A lack of car-free options for arriving at Lincoln Park, coupled with poorly lit, unsafe parking far away from the park's main attraction means everyone just drives their cars all over the park, on the grass. Across the street, the DMV has a huge parking lot which is totally unused after business hours, which is when the park gets the overwhelming majority of its use. Why not (gasp!) timeshare the DMV lot? Hopefully no small children have to get crushed by the marauding death machines for someone in the state and city government to take this idea seriously. (tagged: cars parking transportation urban planning design )
- FlyingConcrete – Beautiful biomimetic architecture. Curving vaulted ceilings and stairways. Rounded sleeping nooks and pillars like trees. Traditional rectilinear construction is so boring. This is lightweight concrete (cement with perlite, pumice, and other lightweight filler added instead of sand and gravel) laid up on a mesh that's been shaped such that when the cement hardens, it's a load bearing compressive structure. (tagged: architecture art concrete design construction buildings sculpture )
- Drew Endy and Jim Thomas Debate Synthetic Biology – An unusually good discussion about the future of biotechnology, and maybe the only time I've ever really seen the "debate" format work, and elicit relatively thoughtful interaction. I think they're both dancing around the fundamental question though, of to what extent (if any) society even *gets* to make a choice on this topic. (tagged: biology biotech genetics technology science future debate longnow engineering )