Three Innovative Finance Options for Retrofitting Cities
Could these three innovative financing models from New York, California, and Melbourne make retrofitting cities more economically viable?
Start Up Street - What will you start up?
I absolutely love the ambition of this! It’s a very commendable example of using local skills, knowledge and assets to make something bigger!
Architecture+Design Scotland have launched ‘Start Up Street” in Stirling (Scotland), in response to an ideas workshop attended by the members of the local community, business owners and the Council, to examine how to generate sustainable economic activity and employment opportunities locally in Stirling.
The ‘start up street’ in Stirling is a local street that currently has 7 empty shops. They plan to use the underutilised assets to set up a hub to explore creative solutions that could stimulate and develop local enterprise and economic activity and deliver positive outcomes. To set the ball rolling the video also gives some great examples of various projects that could be launched that focus on health and well-being.
The High Street is a key element of our settlements. Its role as the central space of villages, towns and cities has been challenged by changes in the pattern of retail, of leisure, and living. In many High Streets in many settlements there are vacant and underutilised assets. In some cases the High Street is under pressure. It is an issue of concern for many, from businesses, to citizens, to investors.
Meeting the challenge of how to re-think the High Street as a central place requires creative thinking about how we make the best of what we already have. The communities in Stirling City Centre recently participated in a co-design exercise to re-think the centre of the City. The Urban Ideas Bakerybrought together citizens, officers of the Council, businesses and other stakeholders to look at how the people resources of the city and the spatial resources might be managed differently. Out of this thinking emerged an idea to re-consider King Street as a ‘start up street’, which enables business start ups, scaling of small business and curating events and activities in the public space. The proposal is to explore how people with ideas, talents and capabilities in the city can be matched with the available spaces in the city, supported by a community of interest. This idea is being tested in a prototype phase to engage a wide range of interests in exploring how the idea works, what is feasible, what is not. The objective is to use this practical method of testing the idea to develop a live project, to start small and build up a sustainable, self supporting enterprise.
The project is open to anyone with an interest in High Streets, how they work, and how they can be enhanced. This short video explains the thinking behind ‘Start Up Street’, whats involved and how you can get involved.
via irishboyinlondon:
polis: The Real Cost of Climate Change in Cities
Politically motivated underestimates by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are a severe threat to cities in the short and long term. In its last report, the IPCC does not seriously consider the meltdown and detachment of the two largest ice sheets at the planet’s poles, which could precipitate an “albedo flip” (critically reducing the earth’s capacity to reflect radiation), as James Hansen suggests in “Climate Change and Trace Gases” (PDF). In Hansen’s words, “the Earth is getting perilously close to climate changes that could run out of our control.”
Under pressure from large polluters, the IPCC calculated a probable 0.4-meter sea level rise. Considering all available scientific evidence, the rise will most likely reach several meters. The complete meltdown of the Greenland and West Antarctica ice sheets would cause a 13-meter rise; even a fraction of this would be a global catastrophe. Under these conditions, most of the world’s largest cities (Tokyo, New York, Seoul, Mumbai, LA, Manila, Shanghai, Jakarta, Karachi, Rio, Istanbul, Lagos, etc.) and smaller cities would have to confront the disastrous effects of rising temperatures and sea levels.
(via smarterplanet)
Streetsblog New York City » Park Smart Pilot Has Cut Traffic in Park Slope, DOT Finds
They call it No-Park Slope for a reason: At many times of day, motorists looking for a legit spot in this Brooklyn neighborhood wind up cruising the streets endlessly in frustration. Because on-street parking spaces are some of the cheapest real estate in the city, drivers snap up the bargain and create parking shortages, leading to excess traffic and double-parking. In the end, everyone pays for the cheap price of parking: motorists who lose time, pedestrians and cyclists endangered by excessive traffic and double-parking, and bus riders delayed by congestion. Now it looks like there’s some relief in sight. NYCDOT’s Park Smart program, which raises the price of on-street spaces when demand is highest, has helped more people find parking in Park Slope while relieving the traffic caused by cruising for a space, according to new data released by the agency. In Park Slope, the only Park Smart pilot area outside Manhattan so far, meter rates went up 75 cents per hour along parts of Fifth and Seventh Avenues between noon and 4 p.m. (when curb spaces are scarce and traffic is intense), bringing the total to $1.50 per hour. The goal is to increase parking turnover, freeing up spaces sooner so motorists spend less time searching for a spot.
