The Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI) brings together artists, architects, scientists, landscape architects, engineers, and others in a first of its kind collaboration (via New York’s Land Art Generator competition funds Public Artworks that produce renewable energy « Artabase Editorial)
Thanks in part to ARRA funding, solar energy capacity in New York City has increased 800 percent since 2007, with many more solar installations in the “pipeline.” This increase parallels the quadrupling of solar installation companies now doing business in NYC, demonstrating the economic benefits of enabling the solar market in this city of a million rooftops.
Six years ago, NYC had just one megawatt of installed solar power, and the local solar market faced extensive technical, administrative and policy barriers. A collaborative partnership, led by the City University of New York (CUNY), was formed that includes the Mayor’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability and the New York City Economic Development Corporation. Together they are implementing a plan to systematically remove those barriers in order to support large-scale solar energy market growth. The partners have secured three consecutive U.S. Department of Energy grants, including an ARRA grant, that led to the development of five NYC Solar Empowerment Zones, NYC Solar Ombudsman, and the world’s largest LiDAR based map: the NYC Solar Map. The map utilizes 15 billion points of data to estimate the solar energy potential for every building in NYC. Since its launch in June of 2011, the map has received over 150,000 hits, serving as an interactive tool for New Yorkers by educating them about the costs, benefits, and payback periods of investing in solar installations for their properties.
City University of New York, NYC Economic Development Corporation and Mayor’s Office of Long-Term Sustainability, Solar Market Transformation
App offers stranded passengers stories based on delay time
Public transport users in Brazil looking for entertainment while they travel have already been offered 24×7 Cultural’s pay-what-you-want book vending machines located in subway stations. For travelers who weren’t planning on taking a lengthy journey however, the Netherland’s VertragingsApp now offers stories organized by the time it takes to read them for those stuck on a delayed service. READ MORE…
The Future of the City: Crowd-Sourcing & Gamification of City 2.0
By Kyle Rogler, Studio630
This summer Google will install a 1-gigabyte internet speed cable in Kansas City, which is a hundred times faster than the average broadband cable. This new asset will help revolutionize Kansas City’s technology infrastructure, but no one knows exactly how to utilize it to its fullest potential. James Moore proposes a novel idea which could generate interest back toward the city through crowd-sourcing and gamification of urban design.
Read More at ThisBigCity
“People want to live in cities where there’s a high quality of life. These demands are placing a huge strain on city infrastructures and the planet’s resources. We need a “smarter” approach to delivering vital services, such as transportation, healthcare, education, public safety, energy and water. It’s estimated that lost productivity and energy use due to traffic congestion alone wastes between 1% and 3% of the world’s gross domestic product.”
“Technology will play a central role in determining whether future cities are harmonious, vibrant and sustainable or discontented, wasteful and unsustainable. Efficient future cities will integrate technologies to reduce their environmental impacts while sustainably coping with growing populations.”
Some office buildings in Toronto are cooled by water from Lake Ontario instead of air conditioning. Check out this and four other ideas for creating smarter cities.
Congestion pricing has been enormously successful in London, reducing congestion, emissions, and increasing use of public transport. But why aren’t other major cities starting their own schemes? Has congestion pricing lost its buzz?
Read it here.
How Citizen Mapmakers are Changing the Stories of our Cities
“Individuals inside cities and elsewhere are creating maps for themselves and in fact giving us their own narrative of what a cityscape is about. They are telling us what is important to them, and they’re mapping the kinds of things that previously would not be mapped. It’s becoming part of the creation of a culture of a city.”
