W(e are )here

The following post contains the introduction that this blogger wrote for the W(e are )here show, which opens today at the Intermedia Arts Gallery in Minneapolis. The show is being curated by the founders of Solutions Twin Cities, one of whom happens to be Mr. Colin Kloecker of BLYGAD fame. If you're going to be around the Cities at all between now and May 9th, 2008, do stop by and take a look. For more information, see the link at the bottom of the post.

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During the Age of Discovery, great explorers crisscrossed the planet in search of uncharted territory. They left a visual legacy in the maps that recorded their journeys, and with each new discovery, mankind's knowledge of Earth grew. One can only imagine how thrilling it must have been to live in a world that was seemingly growing larger by the day. The very concept of "where" -- humanity's understanding of our relationship to the world around us -- was expanding.

Today, the internet revolution has democratized exploration in ways that Columbus and Magellan could never have imagined: everyone has become an explorer. New cartographers are adding their personal explorations to existing maps and creating new records of their own experiences. If that which is observed is inherently altered, it follows that a person's experience of a place directly changes the place itself; places are what people believe them to be. That means that today's maps are about much more than hills, valleys, rivers, and roads. Maps have become tools for examining the emotional, sociological, and philosophical aspects of the human experience.

The concept of "where" is changing once again, expanding to include increasingly minute and varied facets of our world. The ever-ephemeral sense of place is created by human interaction with the physical world. Maps have always charted changing systems, but in the internet age the more intense focus on the hyperlocal has sped up the rate at which cartographers work. Slower-moving features of the planet -- shifting continents, growing cities, and eroding shorelines -- have already been adequately mapped; places are now being recorded as they exist for short periods of time. New maps record what could be termed the "hypercurrent."

Within this gallery, you will find a sampling of how cartography is being redefined by this change in scale. Whether recording a tiny patch of previously unremarkable forest floor down to the tiniest twig and blade of grass, reorganizing the contents of the Bible to visualize cross-references and social relationships, or taking a fresh look at urban growth by examining the construction date of houses currently on the market, today's cartographers are rethinking how the world around us is recorded and represented to assert the fact that we are here. This new breed of explorer is taking the impersonal maps and graphs of yesterday and making them deeply personal.

Welcome to the New Age of Discovery.
Where is expanding. W(e are )here.


Links:
W(e are )here (Intermedia Arts)

Solutions Twin Cities

Blog Like You Give a Damn

WEEKEND READING: February 9-15, 2008

Good stuff, good stuff, good stuff. Enjoy some reading this weekend, folks. There's something here for everyone...

ITEM ONE: Deputydog explores Portland's Dignity Village, the "most organized shanty town on earth."

ITEM TWO: Creative class guru Richard Florida, MIT Department of Architecture head Yung Ho Chang, and Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybek are just a few of the experts to which Architect Magazine posed the question: "How Would You Spend $1.6 Trillion on Infrastructure in the US?"

ITEM THREE: A pleasingly astute assesment of the Gentrifyer's Guilt from the blog Believe in the Greatest City that Reads in America (which is Baltimore, apparently).

ITEM FOUR: Landscape Urbanism with a great (and well-illustrated) profile of Jean Nouvel as part of the Veg.itect series. (Also check out this review of the Worlds Away: New Suburban Landscapes exhibit, which opened this week in Minneapolis). (Photo credit)

ITEM FIVE: WorldChanging on how peak population -- and the inevitable decline to follow -- should frame the current discussion of susatinability.

ITEM SIX: Guest blogger Dave Atkins reviews Suburban Transformations over at All About Cities. Where featured a review of this book last month, and if you missed that, make sure to check out Mr. Atkins' post.

ITEM SEVEN: In case you missed it, Science just put out a special issue focusing on cities and the "urban planet" phenom.

See you Sunday for Urbanffffinds!

US Election 08: The Mayors Speak

The Nation and the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy recently did a video-survey of big-city mayors across the US to find out what they thought about the current state of the US and its cities, the current presidential administration, and the 2008 that's now in full swing here in the States. Of the ten mayors surveyed, all have interesting things to say, but there are two issues that get an especially high level of attention. They are:

1) Urban crime problems -- or, more specifically in many cases, gun control and illegal drugs.
2) The need for a presidential administration that takes cities seriously, as opposed to the standoffish relationship established by the Bush White House, which the mayors almost universally decry, outright.

What this seems to suggest is that day-to-day life for most Americans has little or nothing to do with the "hot-button" issues that presidential candidates are so concerned about. Abortion, gay marriage, and the Iraq war, while all important in their own ways, are by no means the issues that have the greatest impact on this country, yet they receive a greatly disproportionate amount of attention in the media because they are easily polarized issues, and thus much easier to sell. Meanwhile, people struggle every day with crime, education, drugs, and economic issues that go largely unaddressed.

At least, that's what the people in charge at the local level are saying. And how many people do you know that live their lives internationally, or even nationally for that matter?

Many of the mayors interviewed in the series speak fondly of the work they are doing as a part of the US Conference of Mayors, a group that has only increased in importance as the Bush Administration as proven itself to be utterly incapable of remembering that there is an actual country full of people that they are trying to "defend" with their wars overseas. What is especially interesting is how several mayors commented explain the stark difference between the ways that the Clinton and Bush administrations dealt with the USCoM: Clinton met with each mayor individually and attended group sessions, while GW has dropped in on a handful of meetings.

The videos each run about 4-5 minutes, and the series is worth an hour of your time. If you only have a few minutes, try one of the following, which I found to be highlights:

"Frankly, the Federal government has become largely irrelevant to most of the significant work that we're doing ... My city is stronger because we have different values than the Washington values that have been pushed onto us." -- Minneapolis, MN Mayor T. R. Rybak

"You just do not get a sense that cities are a priority in the current administration, and perhaps not a priority with many of the candidates running ... [With] the lack of investment in our own country and the lack of investment in our cities, in essence we are losing the hearts and minds of the American people." -- Rochester, NY Mayor Bob Duffy

"We shouldn't take for granted that the infrastructure that we built 100 or 75 years ago can withstand the climate shifts, or the economic shifts, can withstand the pressure on that infrastructure forever ... Clearly, we need an urban agenda. We need an agenda the speaks to the issues of where people are congregating for most of their lives, working, living, and learning." -- Atlanta, GA Mayor Shirley Franklin

"Mayors have to be pragmatic, it's part of the job ... Ultimately, I think that's what any presidential agenda has to get to, is the point where we start solving problems instead of just throwing money at them."
-- Denver, CO Mayor John Hickenlooper




Links:
Campaign in the City: Mayors on the Issues (The Nation)

Drum Major Institute for Public Policy

US Conference of Mayors

WEEKEND READING: November 16-November 30, 2007 (Guest Post by Colin Kloecker)

Fair warning: this installation of Weekend Reading is kind of one huge shameless plug for a project I'm involved with called Solutions Twin Cities.

The project was born out of what I think is a very common frustration in our hyper connected online world: we have so much access to great work being done all around the world that it is easy to loose sight of the great work happening right in our own backyards. Being junkies of great websites like WorldChanging, TED Talks, Inhabitat, and others – we were constantly inundated with inspiring projects, but living smack in the middle portion of the United States, we hardly ever had a personal connection to them. This made us sad.

So after one too many alcohol induced pity fests, we decided to do something about that. We set out to find our very own world-changing neighbors and figure out how to celebrate their work while connecting them to other people yearning for a more personal connection to their sources of inspiration. The event we created takes inspiration itself from the Pecha Kucha model: short presentations (each under 7 minutes) comprised of both visual and spoken input. We put together each show with an eye towards conveying the full spectrum of projects happening in the Twin Cities and as you'll see below, it's all about diversity. We throw in live music, good food, and cheap drinks and… well, people show up, over 300 at our last event.

So this is the meat and potatoes of this weeks WR. I'd like to introduce you to some of my neighbors:

ITEM ONE: Ramy Selim just opened Minneapolis' first one stop eco-shop, Sunny Day Earth Solutions. More then just selling eco-friendly home products, Ramy is the guy to go to if you want the dirt on photovoltaic panels, solar water heaters, straw-bale construction, and bio-diesel auto conversions. See video here.

ITEM TWO: Chuck Olson and The Uptake are enabling citizen journalists nation-wide to better cover the stories that are meaningful to them. Their next project? Putting 100 citizen journalists with video cameras on the streets of downtown St. Paul for 2008's RNC Convention.

ITEM THREE: Chris Wegscheid and Corrie Zoll started RoofBloom with the simple goal of bringing green roofs to the Twin Cities en mass. Rather then encouraging consumption of any particular commercial green roof system, they empower individuals with the knowledge and materials needed to install green roofs themselves. See their presentation here.

ITEM FOUR: Stephanie and Kelly Kinnunen sold all of their possessions and invested their lives in the creation of NEED Magazine. With smart design and beautiful photography, NEED Magazine showcases the work of humanitarian organizations around the world and provides readers with the information needed to get involved and make a difference. They also just got hugged by Bill Clinton. See their presentation here.

ITEM FIVE: Jennifer and Jessica own the Smitten Kitten, a feminist sex toy boutique in Minneapolis. They also started the Coalition Against Toxic Toys (click to find out why they heart Arnold Schwarzenegger), because if we really care about what we put into our bodies, why should sex toys, a notoriously dirty industry, be any different?

ITEM SIX: Arlene Birt is a young graphic designer whose Background Stories project might just revolutionize the way socially and environmentally conscious companies package and market their products.

ITEM SEVEN: Christian Trifilio & Jacqui Belleau work for the industrial design firm Worrell, Inc. A connection made through NEED Magazaine led them to FilmAid International and a very cool collaborative project designing a mobile movie theater for refugees. This project was a 100% volunteer effort. See their presentation here.

ITEM EIGHT: Cathy Ten Broeke is the Coordinator to End Homelessness in Hennepin County and the city of Minneapolis. She is spearheading a fresh, solutions based movement to end homelessness in the county within the next 10 years. See her presentation here.

So who are your neighbors? When was the last time you were inspired by somebody face to face, did you get to meet them? Solutions Twin Cities is looking for partners to help spread the event to other cities around the world. Please don’t hesitate to email us if you’re interested. And please check out our website for more on Solutions Twin Cites and to watch more videos from our first event last May.

Thanks for reading, and Happy Friday!

WEEKEND READING: November 10-November 16, 2007 (Guest Post by Colin Kloecker)

Hi, I'm Colin and I usually cover the intersection of humanitarian issues, sustainability, and the built environment over at Blog Like You Give A Damn. But this month you'll find me here, curating Where's Weekend Reading segment. Five Items of interest for you this week.

ITEM ONE: I've been saying it for years: Skyways suck the vitality out of our city streets, "we should tear them all down". Living in Minneapolis/St. Paul I often get blank or bewildered stares when I tell people this (which I probably do far too often), but I feel my argument has been bolstered now that top urban designers Jan Gehl and Gil Penalosa have come out and expressed a similar sentiment.

ITEM TWO: Time-travel ALL the way back to September 29th, 2007 when nearly 100 teams from 70 different cities around the world participated in "Snap-Shot-City" and photographed a day in the life of their urban environs. Billed as an "urban photographic treasure hunt", the resulting photos are a wonderful celebration of city life. The CityDwellers team from London gets credit for the photo this week.

ITEM THREE: Is Jean Nouvel designing the most exciting Skyscraper to hit New York City since the early 20th century? This blogger thinks so. Straight out of a Hugh Ferris painting, 53W53rd is a thing of beauty. NYT article here.

ITEM FOUR: The Dharavi district (an urban mega-slum with over 1 million inhabitants) of Mumbai, India is getting "rehabilitated". So how much space will current inhabitants get out of the deal? Each of the 57,000 families are allotted a meager 225 square feet, no more and no less. Social Design Practice Blog has more, including an interesting memo from Matias Echanove suggesting that the city use Tokyo's revitalization after WWII as an alternative development model - see airoots for more on that. (Thanks Matias!)

ITEM FIVE: 250 Million Urban Planners! Planetizen reports that the $200 XO-1 laptop (the first model designed for the One Laptop Per Child program) will come packaged with Will Wright's 1989 classic planning game Sim City. OLPC plans on getting the laptop into the hands of 250 million poor children around the world by 2012. Want one too? You only have 11 more days.

Until next week, Happy Friday!

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)