Plan Your Own Route

Mass transit: the democratic transportation mode.

It sounds right, doesn’t it? More than driving (of course), cabbing, biking or even walking, transit just feels like the transportation of the people. Transit does tend to receive the most visible and direct public subsidy, after all, and any way of traveling that forces crowds of people to press up against each other has to be considered democratic.

The countless benefits that cities reap from functional transit systems could be even greater, however, if transit systems could truly match cities’ needs in a timely and precise manner.

Of course, transit service already does approximate the needs of transit riders. This should be obvious—if you’re riding transit, it’s because existing service can get you from point A to point B. If transit can’t meet your needs, though, you’re probably not riding the bus, and non-riders are a blind spot faced by transit service planners.

The actions of communities and neighborhoods within cities hint at a solution to this problem. Since communities know their transit and mobility needs better than any centralized authority, they can approach transit agencies with ideas for improvements to existing bus service. If their suggestions are implemented, both parties benefit—the community for obvious reasons, and the agency by receiving valuable information from a direct source. This process is limited, however, by the incompleteness of information that’s offered. What if only some community groups take it upon themselves to analyze and communicate their transit needs? And what if some groups slip through the cracks or fail to make their case?

A more innovative solution that incorporates more information sources would be helpful, but there are obstacles to such a solution. Urban transit tends to be a natural monopoly—the fixed costs of a transit system are so great that two or more companies could not profitably exist in the same market (actually, cities in most parts of the world can’t even support one transit agency profitably). The result of the single-provider model is that multiple entities don’t get the chance to compete and experiment with different transit strategies. Ultimately, the mass transit “industry” is less innovative than it could be.

However, the internet and GIS technology offer one possible avenue for more direct public participation in the transit planning process. An interactive, online GIS map of a city and its transit network could allow any user to input desired changes to transit service. The GIS database would aggregate all those suggestions and inform the transit agency’s decisions to allocate or modify transit service. The most significant limitation to such an approach would be its reliance upon computer access and technological proficiency, which is not evenly distributed in cities. Despite this and other apparent flaws, a more participatory method of transit planning seems attainable given the technology currently available, and transit agencies can most likely use any additional information they can get.


(Photo from Flickr user pbiongriffin.)

Air Show

It's Air Show Weekend here in Chicago, which means the US Air Force's Blue Angels are "practicing" overhead for the next few days. "Practicing," of course, translating to "flying so ridiculously low and fast over one of the most densely populated areas in the country that the noise they make sets off car alarms and makes pictures tilt on their wall hangars."

Seriously, who thought this up?

Any thoughts on urban air shows? They're a blast to watch, but really...do they have to practice over the 'hoods for three days? Listening to the roar of the jets flying overhead, I feel a bit on edge...I have to wonder if an event like this has some sort of subtle psychological effect on people.

WEEKEND READING: April 26-May 2, 2008

It's back! Did you miss it? Hooray for Weekend Reading.

ITEM ONE: First things first -- Jane Jacobs' birthday is coming up this Sunday. In her honor several cities around the US and Canada are hosting "Jane's Walks," free guided neighborhood tours. Whether or not you are living in a Jane's Walks city, make sure to get out and stroll around your neighborhood at some point this weekend.

ITEM TWO: Attributos Urbanos presents an awesomely thorough glossary of contemporary urbanism terminology. (via atlas(t))

ITEM THREE: CEOS for Cities on how homogeneity hurts innovation.

ITEM FOUR: NASA releases spectacular high-res images of cities at night, seen from outer space. (via The Map Room)

ITEM FIVE: Straightforward title for a great Planetizen post: Neighborhoods Are Building Blocks of Civic Life.

ITEM SIX: Jetson Green takes a look at deconstruction (material salvaging) and the green benefits. Video included!

ITEM SEVEN: We'll wrap up with some more watchable goodness. 'But it's supposed to be reading,' you say? Rules are made to be broken. Check out Peter Zumthor discussing his absolutely brilliant thermal baths in Vals (pictured).



(Photo from Flickr user Bau TW. The original full-color version can be viewed by clicking the photo.)

Integration 2.0

Links:
MoveSmart.org

WEEKEND READING: February 16-22, 2008

You know how once a month or so Weekend Reading starts off with me getting all excited and writing something along the lines of "OMG you guys this week is SO GR8!! Read all of these they are AMAZIN! FURRILZ!"? Well, this is one of those weeks.

Read all of these. They are amazing. For reals.

ITEM ONE: Tijuana's enterprising spirit influences the design of a new affordable housing project in Hudson, NY.

ITEM TWO: Airoots features another great post about resistance to the Dharavi Redevelopmet Project in Mumbai, this time focusing on the efforts of the fiercely independent neighborhood of Koliwada.

ITEM THREE: Hayley Richardson on the obnoxious futility of twenty- and thirtysomethings bemoaning the loss of "authentic New York," a place that most of them never really knew in the first place.

ITEM FOUR: All About Cities pulls some great Lewis Mumford quotes, including the following gem: "The chief function of the city is to convert power into form, energy into culture, dead matter into the living symbols of art, biological reproduction into social creativity."

ITEM FIVE: A spectacular and almost disturbingly detailed map of London, reimagined as an island. (Photo credit)

ITEM SIX: Part IV highlights some recent articles about the Untergunther, a subgroup within les UX, which is itself a group of people "who are on a mission to uncover and exploit the city’s neglected cultural underworld."

ITEM SEVEN: AdaptiveReuse.net is a blog about creative adaptive reuse projects around the world (natch).

See, what did I tell you? That's some good stuff right there. See you next week!

Conscious Urbanism: Sister Neighborhoods

Happy Valentine's Day. Who's your neighborhood's sweetheart this year? Yeah, you read that right. Who are you and your neighbors sending a gift to? If the answer is "nobody" (and I'm guessing that it is), consider this February 14th a missed opportunity.

There are no shortage of complaints about neighborhood associations and other community groups, the most common being that they tend to be insular, cliquey, out of touch, and outright anti-change. Another major complaint, which results directly from the aforementioned, is that these groups tend to be made up of only the higher end of the neighborhood's age range. Young people, we are reminded time and again, aren't active in their communities. They don't care enough to get involved, or they're too lazy, or they're something else that isn't the fault of the people doing the complaining.

But what if young people avoid joining community groups (as has been speculated before, no doubt) because the community groups just aren't active in a way that appeals to them? Could it be that college students, twenty- and thirtysomethings just aren't interested in joining what they view as stoic, regressive groups with their heads in the sand? I'm betting that, with a bit of elbow grease and some new ideas, we might see people below the age of 40 start to get more involved in their neighborhoods.

There are already examples of this, to be sure. Guerilla Gardening comes to mind, as do organizations like Neighbors Project and Rebar, as well as government programs like City Year. In its own (ironic) way, a lot of street art -- the kind that challenges and inspires, not those aimless spray-paint scribbles -- is evidence of young peoples' interest in their communities and their cities at large. It's not everyone's idea of being involved, but the desire to be involved in the neighborhood dynamic is apparent nonetheless. So what do all of these things have in common? What is it that gets younger generations excited about where they live, and what gets them involved? From the look of things, there is definitely an anti-bureaucratic attitude. These groups and activities are all perfect for someone who's looking to skip the runaround and get involved right away. Access is easy, and the activities are usually very social. In addition -- and more importantly -- these groups are defined more by what they stand for, not what they stand against.

Could there possibly be a way to create that kind of attitude on a larger scale within slightly more traditional community groups -- ones that might actually encourage people on both ends of the age spectrum to work together not just to improve their own neighborhoods, but their city as well? One idea: look at the Sister Cities movement.

While it is not particularly well-publicized (and, thus, utilized), Sister Cities International is an organization that pairs cities with similar economic structures, natural features, or demographics up in an effort to build a worldwide network of diplomatic relationships between urban areas. Cities help each other out by sharing policy ideas, discussing problems, and forging economic and trade agreements. What might this kind of program look like at a more local level?

On the international level, this might be a challenge, since getting people across oceans is much easier with large civic budgets instead of community group coffers (which are never full enough to begin with). But might it be productive to partner with community groups in the same city? Cross-community meetings could be held, local solutions and problems shared and discussed. The residents of a neighborhood across town cease to be faceless, and the city begins to feel smaller, its residents more tightly bound together.

There would be benefits within community groups, as well. The more hands-on, social activity of meeting and working proactively with neighbors-across-town could bring in a younger crowd. The older members of the group would gain new allies, as newly-joined young people will have more of a vested interest in preserving and strengthening their own communities through their involvement with their neighborhood group. As Matias wrote in a recent Airoots post: "[C]ommunity groups...do not defend 'local identity' as much as they create it. In other words, the moment of activism is more meaningful than the cause being defended."

Try getting together with some neighbors to form a Sister Neighborhood-esque relationship with a community group across town. Maybe next year you'll be planting a flower garden for your neighborhood's sweetheart in addition to buying a bouquet for your own. (Unless you live somewhere where it snows in February. Then you'll have to figure something else out).

(Photo from Wikimedia Commons. The original full-color version can be viewed by clicking the photo.)


Links:
Sister Cities International

Guerilla Gardening

Neighbors Project

Rebar

City Year

The Moment of Activism (airoots)

Buy One House Get One Free (Springwise) (Not mentioned in the post, but a cool related idea)

Bite-Sized City

The bite-sized book is an idea being pioneered by a site called DailyLit, where, according to Trendwatching.com's blog Springwise, "books are sent by email or RSS in individual instalments on the days and times selected by the reader—for example: every weekday at 7:45 a.m.—and each instalment is small enough to be read in less than 5 minutes."

This format strikes me as a particularly interesting (and easy) way for a person to explore the urban environment. Imagine that you've just moved to a new neighborhood. You go to the neighbors' association's website and subscribe to a free daily mini-tour. Each Saturday at 1:00 pm, you receive a text message with a starting point. Once there, you open a temporary audio file on your Blakberry or iPhone or whatever wired mobile device you're carting around, and you're talked through a 15- to 20-minute exploration of another corner of your new surroundings. The tours could even be recorded by a variety of people who are active in the given neighborhood, and could seamlessly integrate opportunities for community involvement into what might otherwise be aimless walks by highlighting local events, organizations, and landmarks.

Now imagine that you're a tourist on a first-time trip to New York. Subscribe in advance to a feed like this and have bite-sized neighborhood tours sent to you every three hours. These tours could even be sequentially linked to start you off in each neighborhood, allowing for a few hours of independent exploration between tours. Heck, with the ubiquity of GPS technology, you could download a series of geo-coded tours in advance that would be triggered when you passed from one neighborhood to the next. As you walk north across Houston Street from SoHo to the Village, your phone rings. You answer, and a voice suggests that you walk three blocks east to Houston and Thompson to begin the Greenwich Village tour.

With this sort of technology, unfamiliar territory becomes a bit less intimidating. Recent transplants get out and meet more of their neighbors. Tourists get a boost in confidence that would likely encourage them to cover more ground and venture farther off the beaten path than if they were wandering about with nothing but a street map and a dated copy of Fodor's New York. Perhaps part of the reason that there are so many people in Times Square is that people can recognize where they are; they understand their position in the city. For the intrepid urban explorer this may seem superfluous, but any city hoping to increase tourism or revitalize a neighborhood is woe to underestimate the power of the sense of disorientation.

Making cities and neighborhoods more friendly, inviting places -- for visitors and locals alike -- is an important step in the struggle to improve urban conditions. People naturally avoid places where they feel uncomfortable. Encourage them to expand their understanding of their surroundings, and half the battle is won.

(Photo from Flickr user morethanreal. The original full-color version can be viewed by clicking the photo.)


Links:
DailyLit

Books in bite-sized portions (Springwise)

Traversing Newark Avenue (Guest Post by Tyson Thorne and Josef Reyes)

On a windy Sunday this past October, we walked the entire length of Newark Avenue in Jersey City, New Jersey, starting from one end of the avenue and finishing at its other end on the other side of the city. This avenue cuts westward through Jersey City from the downtown section in the east, slipping underneath the New Jersey Turnpike, and terminating at the city's outskirts near the Hackensack River. As we walked down this avenue, which takes a little over an hour to fully traverse, we shot photographs of its surroundings and recorded the avenue's sounds and noises.

In documenting Newark Avenue block by block, the resulting photographs and sound recordings reveal the shifting temperament of this city street. From the densely modest dimensions of the downtown area to the barreling vehicular traffic at the leg heading up to Dickinson High School to the richly polychromatic/polyphonic environs of India Square, Newark Avenue continuously mutates in scale, in typology, in demographics and in meaning as it maneuvers its way around Jersey City. These mutations are made perceptible when Newark Avenue is documented in a linear fashion and the visual and aural textures of the street is organized and collated in their real-time order.

The following photographs and sound recording of Newark Avenue, specially edited for Where, is a condensed version of our visual/aural documentation of the avenue. This Newark Avenue document is part of a street recording project that we will be conducting at various streets in different cities and locales.

Click this image to launch the
Newark Avenue photo essay/sound recording:


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Big thanks to today's guest bloggers! Tyson Thorne is a graphic designer and photographer based in Jersey City (Website). and Josef Reyes is the editor of Conveyer, a zine about Jersey City.

WEEKEND READING: October 27-November 2, 2007

Colin will be taking over this feature next week...many thanks to him in advance. I'll be busy, novelling away until December.

ITEM ONE: City of Sound on Dresden, Los Angeles, and destructive urban systems. (Photo credit)

ITEM TWO: A great article from the NY Times City Room discussing society's inept politicization of Jane Jacobs.

ITEM THREE: Airoots on the organic growth of outer Tokyo.

ITEM FOUR: Planetizen interviews Seattle neighborhoods guru Jim Diers, now sprinkling some urban pixie dust in Australia and New Zealand.

ITEM FIVE: Why do we travel? City of Faded Elegance on human curiosity.

ITEM SIX: WorldChanging examines the pressing need for a dramtic increase in green building practices between now and 2030.

ITEM SEVEN: Digital Urban maps the top 25 Web 2.0 companies -- 19 of which are located in the San Francisco-San Jose CSA.

Happy Friday, everyone!

Speculative Urban Blogging

I came across two great new blogs this week that do what you might refer to as "speculative urban blogging" in two very different (if equally innovative) ways. So consider tonight's post sort of an in-depth lead-in to Weekend Reading, if you will.

Audacious Ideas takes a look at how things are going in Baltimore and makes some rather audacious suggestions as to how these problems might be addressed more effectively. Here's the catch: the entries are written by Baltimore professionals who work in fields that deal directly with the problems that they are writing about. Audacious Ideas takes big questions and provides answers sized to match. And even with only five posts (not including the introduction), AI has provided audacious[ly pragmatic, in most cases] suggestions for policy reform in the areas of public health, the city budget, childrens' safety, drug treatment, and education.

Even better, the audacity is apparently just what the doctor ordered, so to speak. Every topic has spurred a discussion at least a dozen posts long. Baltimoreans are taking inspiration from this new public forum, and from everything that I've read the readers are taking the discussions seriously -- a rare occurence on the internet. It certainly helps that these discussions are being started and led by community leaders with experience and wisdom. Online conversations almost always benefit from having a curating presence, and as this blog continues to build a body of posts and public discourse, it stands a better chance of becoming a real engine for change in Baltimore. Speculating on the future of the city opens up possibilities and puts some 2.0 juice into public policy.

The Blurgh looks at Pittsburgh's future from an entirely different angle: the writers are already living in it. Written in an imagined 2027, The Blurgh is a rather audacious blog, itself. "Frank" and "Gretchen" are two twentysomethings, a student and a writer, making their way in the now-resurgent Steel City. Written as a simple journal-style blog, The Blurgh is coy. The bloggers mention massive changes in the city's physical and economic environments -- Pittsburgh's status as a hub of sustainable technology, the city's impressive literary scene, an über-extensive mass transit system -- in passing, stopping only occasionally to do a sort of "gee, whiz" look back at the past (aka our present) and comment on how glad they are to be living in the "new" Pittsburgh (aka the one in 2027).

It's the realism that is so clever. If this very blog were being written in 2007, it would be wholly unremarkable, another drop in the massive bucket of naval-gazing public journaling that has earned the field blogging its currently somewhat uneven reputation. Well, okay...it is actually being written in 2007, but you get what I mean. The writer(s) of The Blurgh seem to know exactly what they're doing and, while it's too early to tell, they could turn this blog into a very important forum for the discussion of Pittsburgh's future, and how the city got/could get there. At the very least, it will be interesting to see how The Blurgh -- and its community of readers -- evolves.

So much of urblogging is focused on keeping tabs on what's going on right now in a neighborhood or a city. The local everyday politics of potholes, homelessness, new construction, and Starbucks are important to local discourse, and this is not a knock against of-the-moment urblogs. But it certainly wouldn't hurt, I don't think, if bloggers in a few more cities took on the challenge of trying to imagine a better and brighter future for the places they live. The hyperlocal movement is very much tied to the immediate present, and sometimes this means that urbloggers can't see the forest for the trees. A better future for our cities is something worth speculating about, and blogging provides those interested with the perfect medium to address rapidly-changing problems. As Audacious Ideas and The Blurgh show us, there are many different ways to use this technology to speculate on a brighter urban future.

(Photo from Flickr user joey kennedy. The original full-color version can be viewed by clicking the photo.)


Links:
Audacious Ideas (via CEOs for Cities)

The Blurgh (via The Burgh Diaspora)

Civic Crowdfunding

As technology becomes increasingly ubiquitous, the internet is fast becoming the new Agora. The social functions of the public square are being transferred into cyberspace, and we are being forced to come up with new ways of doing things in cities. Public discourse is the perfect example; urbanites, once able to voice their opinion in the public square, are finding a new voice online. City governments have a real opportunity, then, to tap into public opinion and get to work on citizens' real concerns.

One of the most interesting web 2.0 developments has undoubtedly been the rise of crowdsourcing, and now by extension, crowdfunding. A particularly interesting and grassroots-y example of crowdfunding comes from the site Sellaband, which allows music lovers -- whom Sellaband refer to as "believers" -- to pool their money with other believers to help artists, who submit their music to the site, fund a trip to the recording studio. This method breaks a band down into 5,000 "parts," which are each sold for $10. Once $50,000 has been raised through the sale of these parts, Sellaband provides the artist with an A&R professional to guide them through the recording process. The full amount must be raised before the recording process can begin, so this turns both artists and believers into music evangelists, spreading word of the fund-raising effort to friends, neighbors, co-workers, etc.

It would be great to see something like this applied to neighborhood, or even city-wide improvement projects to create a kind of civic crowdfunding. The Sellaband method makes a great deal of sense since it pools money from a large number of people who then provide free marketing and PR. By tapping into peoples' passion for where they live, city officials and even developers can enliven the civic discourse by using internet technologies. Just imagine the potential of a site where people didn't just complain about local problems, but offered feasible solutions and invited their neighbors to get involved in getting real results. City Hall could even have an agreement whereby it provided a city official in a related office to help guide a fully-funded neighborhood project through the implementation.

If it sounds pie-in-the-sky, you might be surprised to hear that there are already somewhat similar programs in several cities. Seattle, for instance, has its own Department of Neighborhoods, a city department that deals with neighborhood projects and services. The SDoN even has a matching grant program that helps groups of Seattleites to fund projects that address the problems they have identified within their own neighborhoods. From their website: "Funds are limited so it's a competitive program. Applications are considered during specific funding cycles and the highest rated applications are awarded funds." From the sound of it the ratings come from a government body, but this looks like an early form of civic crowdfunding.

Next we turn to Minneapolis' Neighborhood Revitalization Project (NRP), which is "an investment program based on truly empowering residents by bringing them into the priority-setting process of the city. It is based on the belief that the empowerment of residents and the mobilization of untapped resources, energy and creativity can make our collective desire for a better future a reality. Neighborhood based priority setting, planning, and implementation are NRP's core. Residents and other neighborhood stakeholders create Neighborhood Action Plans (NAPs) that describe the neighborhood they want in the future and the goals, objectives and specific strategies that will help accomplish their vision. NRP completes the empowerment process by providing funding to each neighborhood to help implement their approved NAP."

The Neighborhood Action Plans seem to be another form of primitive civic crowdfunding. While the funding structure is still traditional (read: external), it is neighborhood residents that are creating the plan for their neighborhood (I knew someone had to be doing this already) and setting the priorities of the plan. Will everything that these plans address work out as residents had hoped, or even in their favor? Probably not. But it would be foolish to suggest that developers and/or City Hall always gets it right when trying to "fix" neighborhoods. There is a certain amount of risk involved in a program that asks lay citizens how their neighborhood should be improved -- but there is a wealth of unprofessional expertise, as well. After all, planners may know best how to move traffic efficiently through a theoretical neighborhood, but residents understand the idiosyncrasies and unplanned tics of their neighborhoods better than anyone who doesn't live there.

Springwise, the bloggy arm of Trendwatching.com, had this to say in a recent profile of a software crowdfunding site: "In addition to a marketplace for software development, microPledge reckons its site will come to be viewed as a free market-testing service to gauge the reception for new software products and features. Interesting example of the intention economy at work: when consumers have to put their money where their mouth is, it's a pretty good bet you can believe what they say." If you extend this argument to neighborhood crowdfunding in cities, it holds up quite nicely. The risks of trusting what some might term "non-experts" are mitigated in crowdfunding by the wary wisdom of the consumer. Neighbors are more likely to ignore flashy-but-ineffective revitalization projects, choosing instead to fund the kinds of improvements that will raise an area's quality of life in all of the little ways that legacy-laden city officials can overlook.

Little bits add up. That's what crowdfunding is all about.

(Photo from Flickr user djpiesas.)


Links:
Sellaband

Seattle Department of Neighborhoods

Minneapolis Neighborhood Revitalization Project

Crowdfunding software projects (Springwise)

Framing Urbanism

Anyone who lives in a city is a student of urbanism. We have the choice of whether or not to pay attention to the lessons we are being taught, but they are taught either way. Every day of living in a city is a chance to learn about how the place works. So it helps to have a way of organizing the observation process.

That being said, I came across an organizational tatic of which I am particularly fond recently on re:ACT, a blog run by a dozen architecture students in Singapore. Ronald Lim, one of the re:ACT bloggers, put up a post entitled "My Wishlist for Architecture in Singapore." It's short (five items), practical, and the objective is very clear even without being directly stated. That objective is to make Singapore into a more architecturally conscious city, to improve the quality of the buildings being designed there by improving public awareness of architecture and design. Lim calls for an architecture and design department at the Singapore Art Museum, an annual competition similar to PS1 or the Serpentine Gallery, and an interesting set of tax incentives (among other things).

The benefit of having such a list, as an individual observer of a specific city, is that a person can identify what it is they are looking for in terms of an area's strengths and weaknesses. It's a framing technique, really. But a wishlist is especially helpful, I think, because it gives a person something to look for when visiting other cities. Even more than framing how one sees one's own city or even one's neighborhood, it frames how one approaches the urban form in general. This is beneficial because it allows the observer to absorb information from one place and take it home with them, using it to enrich their own city.

I've always thought it'd be really interesting to see a neighborhood group do this kind of thing, collectively. The common perception of the Neighborhood Association or Block Group is that of a stodgy, reactionary coalition of anti-growth crumudgeons with pickett signs and way too much time on their hands. Rather than hearing moaning and groaning about the death of a neighborhood's precious, precious character every time someone so much as proposes to trim their hedges, it'd be fascinating to see how a group might impact their community by identifying what defined the character that they were trying to preserve and coming up with a wishlist of ways in which that character could be strengthened and enhanced, and maybe even improved. Imagine a neighborhood group that actually courted developers to help achieve their goals of enhancing the architectural character of a neighborhood, welcoming and even helping to speed a long the process of approval for a new building in exchange for architectural sensitivity and some streetscaping improvements.

I wouldn't be surprised, actually, to hear that this has been or is being done. In fact it would be great to hear stories of this kind of thing; a neighborhood threatened by the dreaded gentrification beast working with developers instead of against them. I wonder how that works out...are the neighbors better off in the end, or do they wind up getting screwed over time? I'd be willing to bet on the former, but I'm open to arguments for the latter...

***

By the way -- while we're on the topic of taking observing what other cities are doing right when traveling, if you haven't heard of Civic Tourism yet, check out the link below. It's a great concept, and it seems like the kind of thing that could really give some extra oomph to your next urban vacation.

(Photo from Flickr user Erik Sevilla Estrada.)


Links:
My Wishlist for Architecture in Singapore (re:ACT)

Civic Tourism

WEEKEND READING: July 7-13, 2007

Took me a while to get to it this Friday, but here they are: little cures to the boredom of that hour between when the hangover-related nausea wears off and when you have to get ready to go out again.

ITEM ONE: A rosy review of The Great Neighborhood Book: A Do-it-Yourself Guide to Placemaking, which has quickly jumped to the top of my reading list.

ITEM TWO: BLYGAD gives a damn about the Clean Hub.

ITEM THREE: NYC considers a closed-circuit surveillance network for the city modelled after the one credited with thwarting the London bombers.

ITEM FOUR: Wallpaper* has come up with the coolest architecture site on the internet (via Archidose)

ITEM FIVE: Even more exciting architecture-related news -- the world may be getting another Louis Kahn building. (There are far too few.)

ITEM SIX: NewScientistTech speculates on the importance of preparing for the coming hoardes of urban migrants in Asia and Africa by installing infrastructure before they show up.

ITEM SEVEN: Rio's infamous favelas are getting an overhaul. (There might be an upcoming Conscious Urbanism post on this...in the meantime, here's another great article on the subject.)



Oh, what a week this was. It's time for some R&R, right? See you next week!

(Photo from Flickr user joleetraveller.)

The Sensual Experience

I've been reading it for just over a week and already completely enamoured with Spacing Wire. The most recent post from this fresh, thoughtful Toronto blog piggybacks nicely on Friday's post on dreamscapes. In it, Adam writes about Allan B. Jacobs' 1985 book Looking at Cities, which suggests (among other things) that walking is the best way to experience a neighborhood.

Re-purposing a Jacobs quote used in Adam's post: "Walking allows the observer to be in the environment with no barriers between the eyes and what is seen. The sensual experience — noises, smells, even the feel of things — is a real part of walking. There is more than you can take in: sights, sounds, smells, wondering what it might be like to live there, what it used to be like, and much more. It is an exciting, heady business."

So here's the part where several recent posts all fall together. The (Still) Made Hereseries looked at ways that neighborhoods could promote themselves effectively. So to follow up on that, how does a neighborhood convince visitors to return -- or, better yet, relocate -- once they're there? How do you make the walk worth the while?

Guerilla gardening, or just gardening in general, is one way. While urban front yards are miniscule compared to their suburban counterparts, they can greatly enhance both the house they front and the surrounding neighborhood when used effectively as a compact, colorful garden. In neighborhoods without yards, other assets can be highlighted. For an architecturally rich area, a group could post free audio walking tours as mp3s online. Ethnic or cultural enclaves could set up cross-promotional networks between businesses and organizations that add to the neighborhood's cultural cache. This could both strengthen the local business community (hopefully visually) and encourage pedestrians to continue exploring other spots that add to the local flavor.

There are plenty of ways to make a neighborhood exciting and fun to explore, which is the key to attracting people from other parts of the city (and beyond.) They key is to get visitors to slow down and take the time to experience what Jacobs refers to as "the sensual experience" of the place.

(Photo from Flickr user toshimaguy.)


Links:
Looking at cities (Spacing Wire)

Looking at Cities (the book, @ Amazon)

(Still) Made Here: Story and Status

While yesterday's post examined the (Still) Made Here trend from the Eco and Ethics angle, today's looks at another subtrend that Trendwatcher.com's editors call Story and Status. In their words: "An obvious example of the link between locality and story/status is the perception of location-specific quality."


Location-specific quality is hardly a new concept in urbanism. However, it is most commonly used to attract tourists. Think about the French Quarter with its penchant for decadence, or Temple Bar's hybrid cultural/drinking scene, or Ginza with its blinking, frenzied energy. The previous references are to New Orleans, Dublin, and Tokyo, respectively, though the fact that you most likely didn't need clarification there speaks to the success of these places in positioning themselves as authentic and unique. But places like these can sell their story with minimal effort; they are veritable monoliths. Perhaps they just got lucky, but that's neither here nor there. What other neighborhoods must figure out is, "how can what is already here or has been here in the past help this place to become better in the future?"

In TW's report, the first part of Story and Status is titled "Inspiring global production trends: quality made here." The case studies include high (percieved) quality goods made by companies such as Ermenegildo Zegna and Rolex. These companies operate smaller factories or workshops, overcoming the challenge of higher production costs for skilled labor and materials by charging much higher prices than the competition for their product because they have earned a reputation for quality. So if we set up an analogy where neighborhoods are the factories and workshops, and a distinct "sense of place" is the product (I admit this is a cynical way to view communities, but bear with me), then the high production costs are the ills associated with aging architecture and infrastructure.

City neighborhoods are already status symbols in most places. If you live in Los Angeles, for example, you can identify yourself as being from The Valley, Hollywood, or Watts and get completely different reactions. By associating ourselves with a certain place, we are associating ourselves with the cultural story that has been created about that place, and that cultural story is the quality that will allow a place to overcome its challenges. To increase investment in a community, neighborhoods can focus on the most exceptional aspects of their local culture (which can be just about anything) in order to craft a favorable cultural story. And in a society where "individuality is the new religion" (credit TW) it seems that marketing a neighborhood's most unconventional aspects would be the best way to go about promoting it.

Here, though, we come to the problem of gentrification and one of its most infamous side-effects: culture drain. When neighborhoods become popular for their distinct local culture, the fear is always that scads of yuppies, hipsters, and other fad-crazed demographic groups will invade, price out current residents, install a Starbucks and a Gap, and erase the culture that made the neighborhood popular in the first place. It's Chinatown as "CHINATOWN™". Also: it's gross. Also also: it has happened far too many times already.

The second part of Story and Status is "Purchasing ingredients for a story." And this, I'm afraid, is where I'm at a loss for compairisons. City neighborhoods cannot go out and purchase a unique history (though they can work toward creating one in the future by fostering progressive and creative communities. Keep Austin Weird would be one famous example of this sort of long-term planning.) Instead, cities must do what is commonly referred to as Asset-based Planning, taking, as suggested above, existing assets and positioning them as engines for neighborhood revitalization.

The "Purchasing ingredients" section does provide this interesting quote: "[We've] seen a rising interest in the truly different, the obscure, the undiscovered and the authentic. These new status symbols thrive on not being well known or easily spotted. They don't tell a story themselves, but require their owners to recount the story." So unconventional neighborhood features, then, can be used to either puff up a place's civic reputation or can be kept vague and slightly mysterious in order to give residents a sort of edge. (This would certainly explain all of that whining New Yorkers do about how they miss the good old days, when getting mugged was part of the daily routine.) Or whole neighborhoods could, themselves, be the quietly tucked-away spots that provide residents with secret satisfaction (though I'm not sure how you'd pull that off.) Either way, this concept seems to provide a way for neighborhoods to sidestep the culture drain process while still improving their local communities. As for how that would all play out, well...

Again, I ask: any ideas?

(Photo from Flickr user Anole.)


Links:
(Still) Made Here (Trendwatching.com)

Keep Austin Weird

Evaluating neighborhoods in terms of assets of all kinds (Rebuilding Place...)

Part I: Eco and Ethics

Part III: Support

(Still) Made Here: Eco and Ethics

More and more of the world's consumers are moving to cities in what is now being called -- by everyone including your grandma -- the "Urban Age," concentrating buying power at an unprecedented scale. As this process takes place, one of the great challenges that central cities face is how to market themselves. Die-hard urbanites and suburbanites aside, what can make the difference between city and suburb for many consumers looking to rent or buy a home in hyper-mobile metropolitan regions is the perceived "authenticity" of a neighborhood. This term means different things to different people, but in this case it usually refers to a high level of historic building stock, independent business, quality public space -- factors that create that ephemeral phenomenon we call "a sense of place."

Over at Trendwatching.com, the new buzz phrase for June is "(Still) Made Here." This most recent report (from one of the coolest sites on the web) describes "the comeback of all things local, all things with a sense of place, and how they're surfacing in a world dominated by globalization." The editors of Trendwatching (TW) break this economic phenomemon down into three parts; this week, I'll take a look at how each of these applies to city neighborhoods and the cultivation of authenticity.

The first of (Still) Made Here's subtrends is Eco and Ethics. The report cautions entrepreneurs to "expect consumers' desire to find out about the origins of a product to become a given." While TW's examples deal mainly with small-scale products -- especially food and clothing -- the concept can be used to market places as well. Life-story labels are the most visible manifestation of this movement, as they provide consumers with the backstory of how and where a product was produced, and how it got to the point of sale. In neighborhoods, then, the question becomes: how do we tell the story of a place in a highly visible and easily accessible way?

Many cities have already begun the process of branding their neighborhoods. Streetlight banners (like the one pictured above) have practically become a requirement for revitalization efforts. Some neighborhoods even have slick websites put together by merchants' groups or neighborhood associations. Neighborhoods in cities all over the world have succeeded in building reputations as attractive, livable places; but, when renewal and growth are based purely on economics, neighborhoods are highly succeptible to fads and changes in public opinion. Life-story lableling for places, then, is one way to increase brand longevity. This type of marketing maneuver could be achieved in a number of ways, from websites to community bulletin boards and everywhere in between. The most important part of the process, though, is to organize and present the neighborhood's history in a way that distinguishes the place as authentic and unique.

I have read, in the past, about suburban "town centers" (that even ickier name for lifestyle center malls) that fabricate entire backstories to create a sense of history (or, depending on your perspective, to justify historicist architecture.) Urban neighborhoods have a leg up on these places in that history is often a major factor in determining the authenticity of a place, and many cities are already bursting with it. This leads us to the concept of what TW calls "taking back production." Cities are incredibly vital, living things. They are constantly changing, so the marketing of a specific neighborhood must be a careful balancing act, promoting the history of a place while allowing the community that inhabits it to continue evolving in a way that encourages that urban dynamism. The only people that can properly brand and market a neighborhood, then, are the people who live there.

Neighborhood promotion has the potential to become a major asset-building operation as a way of bringing new people and investment to a place. More importantly, it has the ability to greatly increase community cohesion and cooperation at the same time (which, in an upward cycle, could also become part of the draw of the neighborhood.) Not only would the process of organizing a neighborhood history require neighbors to get together to share stories and skills, it would also get people thinking about the place that they live in different ways. It would put the public realm into very sharp perspective and, hopefully, draw communities together with the common goal of making their neighborhoods healthier, happier, more livable places to...well...live.

So how can all of this be achieved, in a practical sense? Even if a neighborhood's history and community are eloquently and concisely presented on a website, how does this translate to the physical landscape? Markers for local landmarks? Posters on lightpoles? Sidewalk chalking? These all seem like tired ideas, I know. What are some more innovative ways that a neighborhood could get the word out? I know this blog's readership is still small, but speak up! What are your ideas?

(Photo from Flickr user ashleyniblock.)


Links:
(Still) Made Here (Trendwatching.com)

Part II: Story and Status

Part III: Support

Community 2.0 and the Built Environment: The Phil Tadros Interview

I had a chance to talk to Phil Tadros, who runs Dollop, the coffee shop that serves as a major third place in Buena Park, my neighborhood on the north side of Chicago. Dollop, from the front door to the back storage area, looks like your living room. It's comfortable, cozy, and full of friendly-looking people chatting or typing away furiously on their laptops. Not gonna lie -- I love the place.

So I was really excited to talk to Phil about the website he's developing, MetroProper.com, this past week. The site, which Phil and his team hope to have up within the next month, takes a number of components from different Community 2.0 sites and combines and organizes them into a more locally-focused format that takes a lot of cues from the many third place-type businesses Phil has run over the past few years. It's small business-thinking on a massive scale. Check out the interview, then go sign up at the placeholder site.


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Where: Describe, in your own words, what MetroProper is and why you are developing it.

Phil Tadros: It's a city-based social network that I'm developing because I have a background of opening coffee shops and communty hubs that are productive safe havens that people are able to work out of or be a part of or meet each other in. One of the things I've learned is that there are not enough people that know each other or what each other does or each others' names, even though they see each other's faces every day...so MetroProper is an extention of my coffee shop background. Like, in a way, my whole business history has been leading up to this one, really big coffee shop.

The site also includes an independent, front-page citizen media component as well as classifieds and individual pages for businesses. I really just wanted to create the most productive atmosphere for community-based media...I want to cut the crap, basically. One of the things about the internet is that it is cutting the crap from a lot of the old media. It's getting you your information more quickly and more productively and it's not as controleld by a small group of people and, I guess, manipulated, even ad-wise.

I mean look at craigslist: they're unbelievable, right? They could have sold out but they're actually making a ridiculous amount of money and they're doing it in a really respectful way. They're not insulting the communities they serve or undermining their intelligence and they're treating people with a lot of respect. And that's the kind of environment that I want ot create on land life as far as coffee shops, etc...so MetroProper is kind of bringing that mentality of what I do and what I respect that others do and trying to offer a more productive version and mixture of a lot of the sites that I like.


W: There's still this fear, I think, of the internet for some people where they worry that communities will get increasingly focused on the web and less on the real world. How would you say--or would you say--that MetroProper would deal with that?

PT: Well some people, you know, they're just not into technology at all, and they're more into everything being completely natural and going back to everything being earth and trees and I repsect that highly, but I think we've gone too far in a man-made world to just go back to that, or even to try to maintain the world as it is. We, as animals, have already made up more things than any other animal in the history of the world -- language, art, etc. So it's like the internet, in terms of democracy and information to the masses is, I guess, the only way that i've learned about so far that you can actually organize all of that information and bring back a lot of things that have lost meaning or touch through being controlled by other types of business and media.


W: Like taking what you learn about online and bringing it back to your land life?

PT: Yeah, you've got to take the connections that you make and the stuff you learn about and use all of that along with your values to choose what to be a part of. In a general positive sense -- again, I compare the web to newspapers because those things are controlled by a small, powerful amount of people -- I believe that the masses, as far as people who are more pro-honesty and pro-humanity, would probably like more options. That's what the internet has offered. Anybody can publish information. It's amazing.

MetroProper is basically about offering a true productive democracy. Like with our business listings: you can't give us money to be on the top of the list. We won't take it. If you have votes, you'll be there. The way we would make money (if we make money) is on businesses activating a profile and then customizing their page and making it their web presence if they choose to because a lot of small businesses struggle with that. So on the business side, it's about interacting with local people in a more charming, down to earth, and intelligent, productive way.


W: How do increased connectivity over the web and all of these new ways of learning about other people and working with them online -- how does that play out in the physical landscape? How does that change the way that we build cities?

PT: Well it ties into knowing your neighbor more and knowing your local businesspeople more and just kind of offering something that's useful and charming enough where, if you choose to get involved, there are other people there who are saying "I want to be involved in my community also," and those people can communicate. With MetroProper specifically, we're doing a lot of interesting things for sure but we're not inventing anything new; we're just offering ways to shape the information differently, really -- and in my extreme opinion, more productively once the site is populated.

So as far as tying in with "how does it develop communities" from the net and how does it translate back into each neighborhood...take Bojono's Pizza [the restaurant next to Dollop] for example: they have no website. So if I can give Craig, the guy who runs the shop, the url map for Bojono's Pizza through MetroProper, he's basically running a social network that he can customize. He can let people that come in that shop know about the site and use it to post specials or news or have people leave comments, or just say to new neighbors "hey, we're here." So with MetroProper, we are offering a way for the community that he already has to be a tighter community and a more informed community. It's a really productive way to enhance relationships in your outfit.


W: Let's talk about what you call "land life" a bit...as you mentioned, you've run several "third place," community hub-style establishments...how have you seen, in your own experience, that type of space working within a community and creating change?

PT: Well when I ran Chase Cafe, the space was a 4000sf 1920s hotel lobby and ballroom, and in it we had a kitchen, we had a broadcast-level video production room, we had a sound studio, we had a design office, we had a commercial printer and we were printing posters for bands and flyers and whatever, and we had an art gallery and there was so much going on there...we didn't lock the doors. We didn't need to. There was always somebody working on a project in there, 24 hours a day. People checked in, basically, it was like a lifestyle. It was an independent, artistic, productive community, and I was more in love with the experiment of it and watching it happening than trying to control the majority of it.

Most businesses would not do what I did in land life, with my neck out there, on my dime. But the thing is, that was a place where someone like Eve, this girl who cause a lot of trouble, learned to make beats and make music and got into the music industry. You know, everything I've been a part of, in a way, I feel comfortable in believing that they have been community hubs that were actually helping the community, or evolving peoples lifestyles. There are so many people who, on an emotiional level -- and I mean, we're basically all emotions all the time -- have appreciated having something like that, to be a part of a place where you can just sit there and feel, and it's beneficial...I think we need more of those, period: more coffee shops and local businesses and community hubs.

And with Dollop, people are so happy about it, it's a very very loved and respected coffee shop, and it's very cozy and productive, It's taken this neighborhood [Buena Park], where people have lived forever, and brought together the whole freakin' community. There wasn't a place for people to hang out and just talk to each other, and that's what we brought here.


W: The internet has this kind of amorphous, fantastical geography of its own but it's not actually a place; we think of it as a place, but it's not actually a physical place. But MetroProper is very focused on specific areas...I don't know any other community sites that focus on that aspect. What made you decide to go that way and really focus locally and give each metro it's own page, instead of the Myspace model, which is more universal?

PT: Well the whole thing started with the name ChicagoProper.com, about five years ago. I wanted to do a newspaper online and interview bands and chefs and whatever was going on in Chicago and do a really unique version of news, whether it was video or articles or whatever. So then I thought, if ChicagoProper works out, I might want to secure NewYorkProper.com and LondonProper.com, and that became an addiction and I wound up doing 400 cities. So now, if I go to London and find a cool bar there and I I ask them "Hey, can I throw a party here for MetroProper," it can be for LondonProper.com and we can let people know this is for their city and about their city.

And there's also the fact that Myspace and other sites like it are more generic...but people like repping their city. If you're browsing for people on sites like that you're going to look wherever is close to your house. So it's about wanting to make real life connections happen more. MetroProper is about making the web experience be honest and productive so that my land life experiences can be enriched.


W: To wrap up, how do you envision, or how do you hope MetroProper as a website and community will affect physical communities?

PT: It feels good to interact with people; you need to. It's more important than eating. So I want to be a part of facilitating good things in general for other people, and that's a huge goal and ambition that I feel good about. We live in a world that we really don't have any answers to at all. So if I know these things [about the importance of connections] for sure, then I want to be a part of facilitating more of that. And I want to be able to help people who are running small businesses, too -- and being a small business owner I know what all goes into that. I have a proven track record of really getting things done. I've contracted and built seven stores in seven years, so I know what it is on the other side in terms of "I need everything at once: I need help with an electrician and a graphics person and I need help with this espresso machine," and you get into the details and the list becomes enormous...so I want to be a part of helping facilitate those resources on a more local level, and that's what I hope MetroProper will allow me to do.


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And so ends "Community 2.0 and the Built Environment." Hopefully you've enjoyed the series...and in case you missed it: Introduction; The New Agora; Communeconomics; Neighborhood Futurism

See you all next week, when I go back to talking about whatever the hell strikes me as interesting.


Links:
MetroProper

MP @ MySpace

(Sorry about the length on this one...I can't figure out how to do those "after the jump" things, but I'm working on it.)

Community 2.0 and the Built Environment: Neighborhood Futurism

"The Long Tail may prove to be a problem for another reason, what Robert Putnam calls 'cyberbalkanization'...Given the vast number of possible clusters one can associate with, it becomes possible, ultimately, to find a comfortable niche with people just like oneself, among other individuals whose views merely reinforce one' own. If the Internet is hardly responsible for this condition, it can exacerbate it while giving us the illusion that we are connecting with others. Through portals like news.google.com or my.yahoo.com and, even more so, through RSS readers, Nicholas Negroponte' vision of a personalized newspaper freshly constructed for us every morning, tailored to our interests, is a reality. Even big media, under pressures of post-Fordist flexible consumption, has itself fragmented into a myriad of channels. But this desire for relevance is dangerous. It is entirely possible to essentially fabricate the outside world, reducing it to a projection of oneself. Rather than fostering deliberation, blogs can simply reinforce opinions between like-minded individuals. Conservatives talk to conservatives while liberals talk to liberals. Lacking a common platform for deliberation, they reinforce existing differences. Moreover, new divisions occur. Humans are able to maintain only a finite number of relationships and as we connect with others at a distance who are more like us, we are likely to disconnect with others in our community who less like us. Filters too can lead to grotesque misrepresentations of the world, as in the case of happynews.com ('Real News. Compelling Stories. Always Positive.')."

This passage, from the conclusion of Kazys Varnelis' forthcoming book The Rise of Network Culture, absolutely sets my brain on fire. The (theoretical) process examined here -- this "Cyberbalkanization," as it were -- strikes me as having the potential to cause one of the most radical and fundamental shifts in urban demographics over the coming few decades. Human beings have always formed local communities by seeking out familiar neighbors. In America, the ethnic clustering caused by massive waves of immigration in the eighteen and nineteen-hundreds carved the social geograpies of major cities into the familiar, nationality-coded neighborhoods that now serve, more often than not, as tourist attractions in a country that is increasingly obsessed with the "other." We have a whole slew of Chinatowns and Little Italys scattered across the nation that allow us safe passage to foreign countries without ever requiring us to bother getting a passport. Or actually leave home.

It seems very possible to me, then, that as Community 2.0 technology creates increasingly mobile and focused networks of people, it has the possibility to shift the emphasis from ethnic demographics to lifestyle-based demographics. Think "Gayborhoods" multiplied on a massive, society-wide scale. Imagine Lower Manhattan, the proverbial "melting pot" of ethnic neighborhoods, reorganized into new, hyperbranded communities: the Bowery as a center of the Dungeons & Dragons community; Little Italy as a robust enclave of Birding-types; the streets of Chinatown filled with immigrant Map Enthusiasts digging through bins of fake antique sextants and folders of illegal knockoff designer topographic charts to decorate the exposed-brick walls of their loft apartments.

If the internet and C2.0 tech turn out to be the great economic equalizers that some hope they are, our city neighborhoods could become intensely focused, dismantling the current, socioeconomically segregated landscape in favor of these types of interest-based communities. Marketing would become less about influencing decisions and more about directing entire social networks (which is already happening, in some ways.) As culture was sliced and diced into ever-smaller, more specified pieces, block numbers would become the new brands. To be from the 300 block of Broome Street in Manhattan would make one instantly identifiable as a Level Three Dungeon Master of Fire...or something. (My apologies to D&D enthusiasts.)

Or think about the potential nightmare of the post-net neutrality real estate market in a world of internet-organized neighborhoods, with users living in server- or website-centered communities. New Yorkers might choose to live in TriBeYa (Triangle Belonging to Yahoo!); San Franciscans could buy trendy lofts in The ComCastro; across the pond, Londoners would flock to the clean-scrubbed, hypernetworked streets of Mayfairspace. Just imagine the advertising fustercluck...no, on second thought, don't.

All of this fantastical speculation leads me to this question: if the internet has the power to reshape urban demographics, what power, if any, does urban design have to combat this kind of ideological, hypercommercialized isolation? I should probably have at least some semblance of an answer to close out this post. But I don't.

Any ideas?

Series Posts: Introduction; The New Agora; Communeconomics; The Phil Tadros Interview


Links:
Conclusion to Networked Publics (Varnelis.net)

Community 2.0 and the Built Environment: Communeconomics

It's not exactly news that the internet is an innovative marketplace. While the urban commercial landscape is fairly predictable (commercial activity centers on and near arterial streets to take advantage of concentrated traffic), online marketers are continually figuring out newer and more effective ways to sell you more stuff and/or services. There are no streets in the virtual world along which to concentrate retail. Instead, websites with something to sell (which means every site with a .com address and then some) must take the idea of the traditional urban retail corridor forming a sort of informal, symbiotic and vaguely cross-promotional environment and try to replicate it. As technology has evolved, direct cross-promotional advertising and monitored preferences have created their own commercial "arterials," increasing commercial activity by focusing marketing efforts on increasingly specific audiences.

As Community 2.0 technology begins to influence this evolution, the internet is starting to change how retail is organized at the local level. 43 Places, from the people who brought us 43 Things and 43 People (surprised?), allows users to create pages for locations as specific as individual businesses within their neighborhoods. Well-regarded services like Yelp and UrbanSpoon (which is one of my favorite sites) allow people to check out businesses and restaurants in their neighborhood that provide both sponsored and user-generated reviews and ratings. Local businesses like the third places described in yesterday's post can become exponentially more popular as they receive free, customer/user-based publicity on the web. And with services like Twitter facilitating mass texting, web-based social groups can move their operations off of their desktops and into the proverbial real world. And with neighborhood-focused sites on the horizon, the need for web presence increases for local businesses looking to attract these highly wired groups to hold their meetings at these businesses. (I apologize for the wording there...it's a bit awkward.)

The internet is changing the model for independent, locally-based businesses. For the first time, these businesses are being provided with a marketing tool that allows them to level the playing field, somewhat, with large chain stores that spend more money on marketing than most independents spend in a year. (I'm guessing, but could you honestly say that's a stretch?) Local, community-based businesses have long been shown to reinvest more of their profits in the local community; now, C2.0 tech is enabling people to invest in their communities by promoting local businesses in an unprecedented way. One particularly exciting possibility for this symbiotic relationship is the strengthening of local businesses in the face of gentrification. While the question of how to provide equitable housing to residents in gentrifying neighborhoods remains unanswered, the C2.0 movement is providing a potential answer for business owners who provide a high-quality product but can't otherwise compete against international, hyperbranded machines.

There are an infinite number of ways that this could all play out, so I'm not going to try to make any predictions. But a suggestion, perhaps? I'd like to highlight a website that I almost featured in a Conscious Urbanism post a few weeks ago but decided to save for this series: Kiva.org. From their website: "Kiva lets you connect with and loan money to unique small businesses in the developing world. By choosing a business on Kiva.org, you can "sponsor a business" and help the world's working poor make great strides towards economic independence. Throughout the course of the loan (usually 6-12 months), you can receive email journal updates from the business you've sponsored. As loans are repaid, you get your loan money back."

This wonderful service has an international focus. The idea, however, is easily transferable to the local level. This type of service, replicated in the urban centers of the developed world, could do some pretty amazing things. Imagine a site that allowed neighbors to make small donations or loans to local businesses to help with repairs, expansions, or infrastructure upgrades to help fend off encroaching corporate interests in a neighborhood. Or a site that, more closely along the lines of the Kiva model, facilitated loans from citizens to small business owners in depressed areas of their city in an effort to strategically combat poverty and relieve stress from the social services system. Or even a site that helped residents of a neighborhood to come together to determine what is lacking from their local retail/services district and create community loan funds to encourage and help neighbors who might be thinking about opening a business, or even to create community owned and operated establishments.

The possibilities for the Community 2.0-enhanced economy (or the communeconomy, as I've so facetiously nicknamed it for the sake of creating a snappy title) are endless, and have a great deal of potential in terms of not only empowering local residents to preserve the character of their neighborhoods, but also even to give people a reason to gather together, face-to-face, and really invest in their communities and each others' well-being. This all sounds pretty optimistic, I know, but I'm sure that Kiva's founders were told the same thing. And they've now loaned over $6 million to small business owners around the world.

Series Posts: Introduction; The New Agora; Neighborhood Futurism; The Phil Tadros Interview


Links:
43 Places, Yelp, and Twitter

UrbanSpoon (gets its own line for being so awesome...Chicago is the default, but there are several different cities along the top right of the page.)

Kiva.org (Photo from Kiva)

Community 2.0 and the Built Environment: The New Agora

One of the most important places in the ancient Greek city (or polis, I suppose) was the Agora. The Agora was a physical nexus, the point at which many major roads often converged. This very public space was large and open, sometimes colonnaded, and designed to accommodate large numbers of people. It served first as a gathering place for public functions, then as a marketplace, but most importantly became the center of daily social life thanks to easy access and high traffic. Often surrounded by important civic structures, it was a beating heart, the place from which life flowed to and from, helping the physical environment of the city to transcend its bricks-and-mortar status.

In today's society, the internet has become the new Agora. What began as a media outlet and became a marketplace has now evolved, thanks to increasingly easy access and Community 2.0 tech, into the casual, electronic public square for contemporary society. As C2.0 sites focus on smaller and smaller areas, shifting now from cities to individual neighborhoods, the technology that created the global community is now becoming, ironically, increasingly local.

The most highly publicized sign of this phenomenon -- the shrinking of the internet, in a way -- has been the development of the blogosphere into a neighborhood-based media institution. Neighborhood blogs monitor local goings-on, serving as a touchstone for current residents and a deep well of information for prospectives. Websites like Outside.in (which recently earned a great deal of attention for its "10 Bloggiest Neighborhoods" article, breaks cities down by ZIP code) and Placeblogger are now beginning to compile bloggers' efforts, creating hyperlocal blogging communities that allow neighbors to see exactly what the buzz is around the block.

It has been a long time since most cities, especially Stateside, have seen anything remotely like the Agora. While parks and squares remain social gathering places, there aren't very many great centers of public discourse anymore. While places like Times Square in New York and Ginza in Tokyo maintain all of the characteristics of the Agora -- plenty of media, retail, and traffic -- they lack the social aspect. Discourse has become associated almost exclusively with the internet. Information is readily available just about everywhere one goes in a city, but the discussion of this information, and the cultural process of dissecting and digesting this information, has become increasingly anonymous, as opinions most often belong to avatars and screennames, not actual people.

As a result, purpose-built public spaces -- the squares and "plazas" that are Agora-like in their conception -- have grown more and more anonymous themselves. Far from encouraging any sort of social interaction (much less the kind of chance meetings Jane Jacobs so famously explained to be the root of urban vitality) new public spaces range from desolate to kitschy. As C2.0 sites gain more and more cultural weight, places like web cafes and other ably-wired "third places" are becoming community hubs, taking the intangible Agora of the internet and giving it a physical anchor. And as our cities go wireless, we will likely see these types of establishments become neighborhood fixtures. Put simply, The City will no longer be required, as it was in Greek times, to provide a great public meeting place; instead, this will become wholly the responsibility of The Neighborhood.

Our shrinking world is about to get even smaller.

(Photo from Flickr user stephenwoo.)

Series Posts: Introduction; Communeconomics; Neighborhood Futurism; The Phil Tadros Interview


Links:
Outside.in

Placeblogger