Give a Minute Project Jonathan Schultz Give a Minute homepage features a user interface modeled on Post-it notes. Courtesy Local Projects. One needn’t be a Walden-clutching Luddite to be wary of social media’s creep into the political process. “It doesn’t take a ton of insight to recognize that the existing public participation process does not really work well,” says Jake Barton, founder of Local Projects. His team responded with Give a Minute, a project that encourages urban citizens to organize and act to improve their blocks, stoops, playgrounds, even exercise routines, thereby drawing the attention — and financial support, where appropriate — of city officials. “In our current participation process, the powers that be plop down a plan in front of you,” Barton says. In a pilot program last year, ads in Chicago’s El cars asked passengers, “What would encourage you to walk, bike, or take Chicago Transit Authority more?”
Tom Sanchez | Professor, Virginia Tech Urban Affairs and Planning Burning Man and the Metropolis Essay: Nate Berg "Intersection," installation by James Reagant and Charles Fields, 2010. [photo by MadeIn1953 via Flickr] It's not exactly the ideal place to build a city. No water, little vegetation, limited animal life. August temperatures climb to over 100 degrees Fahrenheit and drop close to freezing at night. But year after year in late summer, a small city rises on this ancient lakebed in the Black Rock Desert, in Pershing County in northwestern Nevada. Summer 2010On the first night of the most recent Burning Man, Monday August 30, it is 11 p.m. before I get through the lines at the entrance gates. The next morning, my tent is an oven, so I escape out into the sun and the surreal. Top: Burning Man center camp, 2010. At its core, Burning Man is an artistic event. Burning Man is the sort of place where a man in a monkey suit will drive past in a motorized banana and a naked baby boomer with a megaphone will offer you a vodka tonic as you walk down a dirt street. Left: The Man, 2010.
Human Scale City Space Makers Agency The Urban Technologist | A personal view of emerging technology and Smarter Cities WikiCity – How Citizens can Improve their Cities This post is also available in: Chinese (Traditional) When governments don’t build infrastructure, citizens usually complain, but can’t do much about it. They pressure public officials and protest against proposed projects, but that’s as far as citizen participation in city building usually goes. It’s reactive, not proactive. However, this model of citizen participation is being rethought by citizens around the world. One example of this type of action is Toronto’s Urban Repair Squad. In Mexico, the movement is called wikiciudad (wikicity), and it has the central idea that anyone can edit and modify cities. In Los Angeles, several different groups have tried to address the lack of seating in the streets. The improvements that citizens are building are not always priorities for local governement, but, however tiny and localized, they do make a difference in the way people feel about and interact with the city’s public space. Images courtesy of diegoehg_ and thinkmo on flickr
Urbanscale | Design for networked cities and citizens betterblock.org What Exactly Is A Smart City? Having worked in the smart cities space for several years now, I am encouraged by the growth of the sector and the pace of technological advancements being developed for urban environments. However, I believe that the smart-cities movement is being held back by a lack of clarity and consensus around what a smart city is and what the components of a smart city actually are. While some people continue to take a narrow view of smart cities by seeing them as places that make better use of information and communication technology (ICT), the cities I work with (and most of the participants in the #smartchat, a monthly Twitterchat about smart cities held on the first Wednesday of each month) all view smart cities as a broad, integrated approach to improving the efficiency of city operations, the quality of life for its citizens, and growing the local economy. Later this year, I’ll publish my annual rankings of smart cities here on Co.Exist. Step 1: Create a Vision with Citizen Engagement
Bike-Share Programs Across the World - Green Transportation This article was reposted with permission from Earth Policy Institute. Politicians, lobbyists, and tourists alike can ride bicycles along a specially marked lane between the White House and the U.S. Capitol, part of the 115 miles of bicycle lanes and paths that now crisscross Washington, DC. In Copenhagen, commuters can ride to work following a “green wave” of signal lights timed for bikers. Residents in China’s “happiest city,” Hangzhou, can move easily from public transit onto physically separated bike tracks that have been carved out of the vast majority of roadways. Cyclists have long entreated drivers to “share the road.” Today more than 500 cities in 49 countries host advanced bike-sharing programs, with a combined fleet of over 500,000 bicycles. Unfortunately, many of those bikes quickly disappeared or were damaged. Vélib' was launched in 2007 with 10,000 bicycles at 750 stations, and it quickly doubled in size. Photo by Fotolia/Anthony Shaw
Saskia Sassen Principles of Intelligent Urbanism Principles of Intelligent Urbanism (PIU) is a theory of urban planning composed of a set of ten axioms intended to guide the formulation of city plans and urban designs. They are intended to reconcile and integrate diverse urban planning and management concerns. These axioms include environmental sustainability, heritage conservation, appropriate technology, infrastructure-efficiency, placemaking, "Social Access," transit oriented development, regional integration, human scale, and institutional-integrity. The term was coined by Prof. Christopher Charles Benninger. The PIU evolved from the city planning guidelines formulated by the International Congress of Modern Architecture (CIAM), the urban design approaches developed at Harvard's pioneering Urban Design Department under the leadership of Josep Lluis Sert, and the concerns enunciated by Team Ten. Axioms[edit] Principle one: a balance with nature[edit] Principle two: a balance with tradition[edit] Principle four: conviviality[edit]
“Urbanismo social”, individuo y vanidad. By Reyes Gallegos. Oil money. Autores desconocidos. Imagen extraida de: www.visualcomplexity.com Este post pretende ser una llamada a la reflexión sobre la dificultad que conlleva salirse de “las esferas” (1) de la sociedad y el urbanismo capitalista y reinventar nuevos modelos acordes a otros ideales, sin que se acaben repitiendo los mismos patrones más propios de la condición humana. En este sentido, y a partir de mi propia experiencia en la búsqueda de un urbanismo más social, me pregunto si está el urbanismo de la participación, tal y como lo estamos construyendo y demandando a través de las “redes sociales”, blindado contra ese individualismo vanidoso, o estamos asistiendo a una encubierta y silenciosa manifestación de los mismos síntomas en dicho terreno. (2) Habría que ampliar ese lugar de excelencia “espacio virtual” a “espacio social”, o podríamos estar creando en estas plataformas nuevas ISLAS de técnicos a los que nos falta más experiencia de participación a pie de calle. Algunas recomendaciones: