The New WalkScore

The popular Gmaps mashup, which made a big splash in urbanism circles last year when it debuted, has a fantastic new color-coded map of Seattle up on their site. Hopefully this is a sign of things to come. I'll be waiting anxiously for the Chicago map.

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!

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)

An Homage to Things

Due to my mostly net-less vacation last week, I am seriously behind on my posting, so there are quite a few excellent (dare I say totally rad?) articles that I know I'm never going to get around to writing about. I have always liked things magazine, so to help clean out my Google Reader, I'm basically going to ape their style. Because I can.





If humanity simply vanished tomorrow, what would happen to our cities? Scientific American thinks that, at least in Manhattan, the subways would quickly fill with water, causing the streets above to buckle, effectively becoming rivers. Why? Apparently the island was once home to 40 different streams, though all water runoff is now diverted underground. “There are places in Manhattan where they’re constantly fighting rising underground rivers that are corroding the tracks. You stand in these pump rooms, and you see an enormous amount of water gushing in. And down there in a little box are these pumps, pumping it away." (via CitySkip)

In other water-related news, a quarter of a small Kansas town was wiped out by an oil-enhanced flood. It's like the Exxon-Valdez in the middle of the Great Plains. Up on the Great Lakes, however, things are clear and blue out at Azkaban, the forlorn perch from which Built Environment Blog surveys the Chicago skyline as one takes in Earth from the moon. Meanwhile, atlas(t) has kicked off its Galleon Trade Edition, planning stops in Mexico, California, and the Phillipines.

Time for a Conscious Urbanism triple shot. A DC blog, Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space, writes about a New York effort to convert schoolyards into public parks / New York's Streetsblog, meanwhile, is writing about London's potential street-decluttering, which sounds an awful lot like what happened Sao Paulo / Speaking of London, the BBC reports that the UK government is planning to allow locals to have a say on where public funds are spent...which, coincidentally, is being modeled after a Brazilian program. / Dickens could not have come up with a better name than Hazel Blears.

In Seattle, urbanism guru Jim Diers laments the city's move away from the more neighborhood-focused way of planning he helped jump-start / Where are the Star Planners?, wonders Robert Goodspeed over on Planetizen's Interchange blog / The LA Times (they had a good week) asks why starchitects are shunning socially-conscious design / Prosper lets loan-seekers join online communities in a rather innovative way.

Speaking of innovative, UC Berkeley journalism professor Paul Grabowicz is developing a video game to help locals learn about the rich history of Oakland's 7th Street jazz and blues club scene. Grabowicz: "Our game defines an important local community and focuses on a very important aspect of that community. In essence, we have used a video game to recreate this community." / With all the recent talk about digital urbanism, I completely forgot to mention Digital Urban, a blog that covers the recreation of the physical world in virtual reality.

Steven Varnelis' blog, "the longest running single-person blog in architecture," has a new feature called Netlab Dispatches / Inhabitat covers the fabulously whimsical Cumulus Light Canopy by Steven Haulenbeek / With its new LED display, the CN tower can be seen over 100 miles away in Rochester, NY (via Architectural Record) / Philly has 60,000 vacant parcels (the highest per capita in the country) / The Tate's Global Cities exhibit features super-high-density urbanity (via Spacing Wire / Cities as Innovation Engines at the CEOs blog / Alive in Baghdad gives voice (and video coverage) to the war zone metropolis' citizens (via WorldChanging.com)

The Carnival of Cities - Summer is Festival Season!

We start off this week in Seattle, where Mary Jo of The Seattle Traveler has compiled a list of upcoming festivals for her city. Even for those who don't hail from the Emerald City, it's a great reminder to check out local happenings...it is the festival season, after all!

Going to San Antonio's Jami writes this week about a trip to the Natural Bridge Wildlife Ranch, where she had some close encounters with freakishly large birds and a gaggle of goat-like creatures.

Jul at This Non-American Life writes about, ironically, an American city this week: Gatlinburg, the kitch capital of Tennessee. Airbrush art, anyone?

And on to my own home turf: Chicago blogger Praveen has written a great post at My Simple Trading System about the many interesting nomenclature evolutions in the greater "Chicagoland" region.

Another Chicago blog, Everyone Needs Therapy, features a post this week about armies of cicadas and women in pink.

The Junky's Wife down in Charlotte laments her city's lack of a real cultural scene. She also describes her dream business: a tattoo parlor/community art center hybrid. Sounds like an unconventional -- but pretty thoroughly awesome -- third-place type establishment.

Jaz at Wicked Winter waxes poetic this week about "Grand Canyon National Park, the power of natural places, and the need to travel".

The San Diego Beat's Carole has put together a summary of D5: The "All Things Digital" conference. Much is made of the Steve Jobs-Bill Gates dual appearances...sounds like a clash of the titans if ever there were one.

The Silicon Valley Blogger's post at The Digerati Life about the price of preschool will likely make your jaw drop. It's all about numbers; in this case, the fact that there are too many of them in the "price" column.

We'll have to hop the Pacific for this next one: Liz of the Christchurch Tour Guide has put together a very visual post about an installation at -- or rather, on -- the city's art museum. It appears that the building's gothic columns have been gift-wrapped by Korean artist Lee Joong Keun!

Thanks to all of the bloggers who participated in this week's Carnival here at Where. Thanks also to Home Turf Media for allowing this blog to host the Carnival, as well as for all of the behind-the-scenes work that went on. Finally, make sure to check out Argentina's Travel Guide, which will be hosting next week's Carnival. You can send your submissions for that event by using this form.

Glamorous City/Fearsome Ghetto

"There's an original definition of the word glamour that I did not know about until I read fantasy novels. A glamour is a kind of magical spell, originally. To wear a glamour is to surround yourself with a kind of aura that causes people to see you in a different way, to see you as you are not--it's a disguise. And being on television, I've discovered, is sort of like wearing a disguise; one you didn't necessarily decide to put on, and only other people can actually see it."

So said John Hodgman in a recent piece on This American Life. Hodgeman was speaking about his own newfound celebrity, but what he was saying fit in nicely with a concept that I've been mulling for quite some time: the Glamorous City. Contemporary cities tend to be viewed in one of two ways: they are either dangerous, crime-ridden ghettoes or glittering hives of conspicuous consumption. Cities portrayed as healthy or attractive by the mainstream media (and, from what I can tell, popular opinion) tend to be those that have all of the amenities of the celebrity lifestyle. They are capitals of glamorous, high-tech industries and are rife with gentrification and urban chain stores. Austin, San Francisco, Seattle, and Miami -- these cities dazzle and delight the upper and upper-middle classes, who move into renovated lofts and edgy new condo towers and create a new influx of tax dollars that are supposed to benefit the host cities, but usually wind up providing increased police protection and granite flower planters in the areas from whence the new cash flows.

Now, there's nothing wrong with rich people living in nice neighborhoods. That's pretty much inevitable. What's troublesome about the Glamorous City is that it is a powerfully intoxicating concept that it fits perfectly into that quintessentially American ideal of moving to the city to "make it." But after making it, part two of the dream sequence is the move to a sprawling estate, or at least a house with a front and back yard, in the suburbs. The Glamorous City is a place that does not make room for children...its shimmering skyscrapers often (literally) cast shadows onto the other side of this painful dichotomy -- the Fearsome Ghetto.

The Glamorous City is a mirage. It is a transient place where only the richest of the rich stay put (often because they can afford to own a number of getaway homes elsewhere.) This impossibly attractive metropolis ignores what cities are about, advertising all of the perks of city life (fine dining, active arts communities, exciting nightlife) while not requiring residents to stick around long enough to need to care about dealing with all of the problems. The Glamorous City, then, creates the Fearsome Ghetto, as its sustainability (no green implications, for once) requires the parallel existence of an underclass, both to serve and to provide contrast. Glamorous Cities sparkle on our TV screens, promising luxury and privilege; meanwhile, those who live in the city (or have no choice but to), those who are a part of the actual urban community, don't see the mirage. They're left with the reality.

More on this throughout the week.

(Photo from Flickr user shadeofmelon.)

DisPlace Me

You might have figured out already that I consider place to be a pretty important thing. While it doesn't get the attention that it deserves, individual geography plays a huge role in how we understand our selves and how we fit into the global community. One social problem that I've always found particularly disturbing is the loss of place. Refugees around the world, forced from their homes by war, famine, natural disasters, or any number of causes, often find themselves in places that do not want them. Whether this means that they are not welcomed by the people or by harsh terrain, the outcome is the same. Refugee camps are communities that cannot be, because of the high transience and mortality rates. Nothing in a refugee's place in the world is permenant; they have nothing to hold onto.

Next weekend, in 15 cities across the United States, Invisible Children will be hosting DisPlace Me, a simulation/protest that is designed to help Americans understand what it is to lose their place in the world. From their website: "The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has abducted thousands of children, subjected them to torture or sexual violence and forced them to fight in a violent guerilla army for 21 years—making it the longest running war in Africa. In hopes of providing protection from this rebel militia, the Ugandan government forcibly evicted its Northern citizens from their homes—giving them 48 hours to relocate into camps. Today, more than 1.5 million Northern Ugandans remain far from secure, suffering nearly 1,000 deaths per week due to inhumane living conditions in the camps.

"'Displace Me' is the nationwide event giving Americans the chance to respond.

"By traveling to one of our 15 camps and gathering together, the strength of our size will make a visible statement to our government and media that the citizens of the U.S. demand action in ending the war in Northern Uganda, in order to send the Acholi people suffering in the camps and the abducted children back home. The point is to travel; the point is to become displaced yourself."

Go get lost.


Links:
DisPlace Me

InvisibleChildren.com

Mapping Walkability

"Walkability" is one of the major buzzwords in contemporary urban planning. The idea is simple and makes worlds of sense: living in a neighborhood where you can walk everywhere instead of driving greatly reduces your eco-footprint, encourages a more healthy, active lifestyle, and increases neighborhood safety. It's a buzzword that actually deserves the buzz.

I've always thought that the creation of a system for mapping walkability would be a watershed moment for the urbanist movement. Walkability maps of major cities, provided in some sort of interactive format (read: a website) would not only make choosing a neighborhood easier for homebuyers and renters, but it would serve as a great informal guide for tourists--especially at a time when tourists are becoming less interested in traditional attractions. Knowing where high-traffic pedestrian areas are would be an easy way of figuring out which neighborhoods would provide the best opportunities to explore the local culture.

I found my first walkability map yesterday (there may be more of these out there...let me know if you come across any.) The Sightline Institute, a Seattle-based sustainability think tank, has developed a map of King County's walkable neighborhoods. The color-coded system is easy to understand, though it's not at all interactive and only major highways (oddly enough) are shown as far as roadways are concerned. I also couldn't find any information about how this map was developed (i.e. what factors were included in determining walkability.) Things like living essentials (grocery stores, laundromats, convenience stores), mass transit access, crime, and density are all important factors, I'd imagine. It'd just be nice to see some sort of breakdown. Still, it's a start.


Links:
Map of Walkable King County