Urban Constellations The collection explores themes such as new forms of political mobilization, the effects of economic instability, the political ecology of urban nature and the presence of collective memory. Cultural aspects of urban change are also considered including the work of artists, film makers and others, who have sought to critically engage with processes of urban change. The global scope of the collection includes essays on London, Berlin and Los Angeles, as well as less extensively studied cities such as Buenos Aires, Lagos and Seoul. via humanscalecities:

Urban Constellations

The collection explores themes such as new forms of political mobilization, the effects of economic instability, the political ecology of urban nature and the presence of collective memory. Cultural aspects of urban change are also considered including the work of artists, film makers and others, who have sought to critically engage with processes of urban change. The global scope of the collection includes essays on London, Berlin and Los Angeles, as well as less extensively studied cities such as Buenos Aires, Lagos and Seoul.

via humanscalecities:

Permalink

“What would make commerce smarter via social media in Beirut? Berlin? Bogota? Buenos Aires? Chicago? Glasgow? Tell us what it means for you in your Social Media Week city: Los Angeles, Milan, Moscow, Rio, Sao Paulo or Vancouver.”

Social Commerce Scan Question 2 | Global/Local:

Join the Scan for Social Media Week, happening across cities around the world

Permalink

Metropopular (by brainpickings)

An animated short film about what American cities would say to one another if they could talk.

More: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2011/08/31/metropopular/

Permalink

Mapnificent is a tool that visualizes the places you can reach on public transportation given a certain amount of time. Custom settings let you note how long it takes you to get to transit stations, with an experimental option to calculate traffic by adjusting for time of day (though it doesn’t seem to account for L.A.’s gridlock). There are maps for Los Angeles, San Diego, Sacramento and the Bay Area. (via highcountrynews) Map: Shows areas available by public transit within 15 minutes from the Los Angeles Times. Credit: Mapnificent via latimes:

Mapnificent is a tool that visualizes the places you can reach on public transportation given a certain amount of time. Custom settings let you note how long it takes you to get to transit stations, with an experimental option to calculate traffic by adjusting for time of day (though it doesn’t seem to account for L.A.’s gridlock).

There are maps for Los Angeles, San Diego, Sacramento and the Bay Area. (via highcountrynews)

Map: Shows areas available by public transit within 15 minutes from the Los Angeles Times. Credit: Mapnificent

via latimes:

(via wnyc)

Permalink

dtlanotebook:

The architecture giant Gensler, recently tapped by AEG to design the un-approved NFL stadium imagined next to Staples Center, is moving Downtown. So it’s fitting that some of the firm’s best thinkers are imagining what the city center will be like in 30 years. They have to work here, after all. This video (hat-tip Archinects Newspaper blog) is a video by students from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo’s Professional Studio program, with guidance from Gensler’s design directors Shawn Gehle and Li Wen. A little bit of fun, a lot of bit of fantasy-laden Utopia. Dream on, Gensler. 


Permalink

A silver bullet for urban traffic problems

Enter Streetline, a 30-employee company in San Francisco that creates and installs wireless sensor networks to monitor parking spaces. Each sensor uses a magnetometer to detect the presence of large metal objects nearby.

“If the sensor is within two or three feet of the car, it will register a huge increase in metal,” explains Zia Yusuf, 45, the company’s chief executive. “When the metal content suddenly drops, we know a car left.”

The sensors communicate wirelessly, signaling whether spots are occupied or vacant, gradually collecting data to reveal local parking patterns. That information allows cities to price their parking spaces according to their actual value, factoring in supply and demand as they would with any other piece of real estate.

With that data, cities can both help ease congestion and boost their meter revenue.

Streetline charges its clients a monthly usage fee of $25 to $30 per sensor. The fee covers installation, maintenance and management of the software that collects and distributes parking data. The company does not publicly disclose financial information, but Yusuf says that Streetline is now raising its second round of funding and expects to see its annual revenue rise by 75% for 2011.

“I think this technology will transform urban transportation,” says Donald Shoup, a professor of urban planning at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs.

He cautions, however, that city governments are rarely early adopters, and signing them up as clients typically involves many bureaucratic headaches.

So far Streetline has set up networks in areas including parts of Los Angeles, Roosevelt Island in New York City, the parking lots at Fort Totten Metro station in Washington, D.C., and a garage at the conference center in Salt Lake City’s Temple Square. The company has also released an iPhone application called Parker, which shows drivers how many parking spots are available on blocks within the sensor network. An Android version is in development.

Source: Wireless Sensor Networks

via smarterplanet:

Permalink

You Are Listening To | The Sounds of Cities youarelistening.to appeared online on March 6, 2011 and I was hooked instantly. The combination of the police scanner and ambient music is an intriguing, and distinctly live, experience (unlike most of the time shifted audio I tend to consume). Its other appeal is its simple and elegant execution. There are three component parts: a police radio stream from Radio Reference, a pre-screened ambient music playlist from SoundCloud, and a cool photo from Flickr. Each element is from some other source, that never could have envisioned that this is the way their content would be used. This is the power of a shareable and mashable web.

You Are Listening To | The Sounds of Cities

youarelistening.to appeared online on March 6, 2011 and I was hooked instantly. The combination of the police scanner and ambient music is an intriguing, and distinctly live, experience (unlike most of the time shifted audio I tend to consume). Its other appeal is its simple and elegant execution. There are three component parts: a police radio stream from Radio Reference, a pre-screened ambient music playlist from SoundCloud, and a cool photo from Flickr. Each element is from some other source, that never could have envisioned that this is the way their content would be used. This is the power of a shareable and mashable web.

Permalink

smarterplanet: Designing and Funding a Bicycle Revolution in our Cities Source: This Big City The Los Angeles Department of Transport said “for the bike to catch on we need a revolution in our (bicycle) infrastructure”. This is true, but infrastructure – of any type – is expensive. Governments, contractors and financiers around the world are increasingly ‘cash strapped’. Not only do we need a revolution in the type of bicycle infrastructure we design and build but also in the way we fund and finance infrastructure projects. A revolution in thinking about the way we design bicycle infrastructure After being awarded the 2008 AITPM Janet Brash Memorial Scholarship, I was able to facilitate focus groups with those often underrepresented as cyclists; women, children and seniors. In addition to this, visiting 24 of the world’s ‘cycling cities’ allowed me to develop a revolutionary concept for bicycle infrastructure; ‘Cycling Super Highways’ – a network of 7.7 metre wide dedicated cycle paths completely separated from parked/moving vehicles which are wide enough, safe enough, and practical enough for everyone to use, regardless of age or ability (you can download the full study here).

smarterplanet:

Designing and Funding a Bicycle Revolution in our Cities

Source: This Big City

The Los Angeles Department of Transport said “for the bike to catch on we need a revolution in our (bicycle) infrastructure”. This is true, but infrastructure – of any type – is expensive. Governments, contractors and financiers around the world are increasingly ‘cash strapped’. Not only do we need a revolution in the type of bicycle infrastructure we design and build but also in the way we fund and finance infrastructure projects.

A revolution in thinking about the way we design bicycle infrastructure

After being awarded the 2008 AITPM Janet Brash Memorial Scholarship, I was able to facilitate focus groups with those often underrepresented as cyclists; women, children and seniors. In addition to this, visiting 24 of the world’s ‘cycling cities’ allowed me to develop a revolutionary concept for bicycle infrastructure; ‘Cycling Super Highways’ – a network of 7.7 metre wide dedicated cycle paths completely separated from parked/moving vehicles which are wide enough, safe enough, and practical enough for everyone to use, regardless of age or ability (you can download the full study here).


Permalink

‘The science of public transit is not too complicated’ | Grist

A Berkeley transportation scholar offers an appealingly simple rule in Adam Nagourney’s dispatch on the sizeable subway and light-rail expansion in Los Angeles:

Robert B. Cervero, the director of the University of California Transportation Center in Berkeley, said that if the subway expansion cut commuting time as promised, it would indeed change ridership habits. Transit officials said the ride from Koreatown to Westwood by subway would take 24 minutes, compared with 50 minutes during the rush in a car or on a bus.

“The science of public transit is not too complicated,” Mr. Cervero said in an e-mail message. “It comes down to how time-competitive transit is with the private car. If it takes two to three times longer to get from Point A to Point B by transit, the vast majority of folks will drive. If it’s faster going by bus or train, then most will forsake their car and ride transit.”

Is it that simple? Social-science research proves over and over again that people are less rational with their money than we’d like to believe — which has forced the field of economics to reconsider once-cherished assumptions. It’s hard to believe people are any more rational with how they allocate their time.

Don’t habit, social pressure, perceptions about what’s pleasant and safe all affect which mode of transport people choose?

Read more on Grist

Permalink

Departures: Welcome to Chinatown! An interactive tour of one of L.A.’s richest neighborhood.

You think you know everything about LA’s Chinatown? So much astonishing history has just been simply forgotten. Did you know that the Chinese community started the first organized strike in the 1930s to protest against the rise of city’s taxes? Were you aware of all the racial tension and legal discrimination the Chinese American were subjected to well into the 1960s. The Chinese exclusion act of 1882 for example forbid Chinese foreigners to enter the country forbidding the family of the immigrants to join them.

Departures tarted as a simple bet: show that one can wander by foot through L.A’s neighborhoods.

Here are some of its highlites:

The visitors are encouraged to enter submissions to contribute to an interactive portrait of their neighborhood.

Mapping L.A through interactive media -

Permalink