Yule Heibel’s Post Studio © 2003-2009

The Sunday Diigo Links Post (weekly)

• His brave new world – The Globe and Mail

  Who knew that Bob Rennie (Vancouver’s “Condo King”) was amassing a huge art collection with a focus on “marginalization, oppression and resistance”? Very interesting article about a very interesting collector indeed. I would certainly love to visit his new museum.
  QUOTE
  “The Downtown Eastside is marginalized, and a lot of what I have is about marginalization, oppression and resistance,” Mr. Rennie said as he walked through construction chaos a few days before opening. Some workers were installing the complex pieces created by Palestinian artist Mona Hatoum, while others were putting in more pedestrian items like air vents and doorknobs.
  UNQUOTE

  tags: bob_rennie, vancouver, condo_king, art_museum, art_collection, real_estate

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

The Sunday Diigo Links Post (weekly)

• Carbon Neutral Now

  Nice article about Yale’s Kroon Hall and Victoria BC’s Dockside Green as true carbon-neutral projects (with Dockside Green a model for building entire neighborhoods as green/ carbon neutral).
  “Across the continent, at the southern tip of the mountainous and densely forested Vancouver Island, Dockside Green will soon become carbon neutral. A mix of town houses, mid-rise apartments, and commercial buildings being built on a brownfield at the edge of downtown Victoria, British Columbia, the large, multiphase urban development takes a comprehensive approach to carbon reduction, showing how much is possible at the neighborhood scale. “

  tags: green_strategies, green_buildings, dockside_green, victoria, metropolis_magazine, yale, kroon_hall

• DailyCandy’s Accidental Entrepreneur: An Interview with Dany Levy – Anthony Tjan – HarvardBusiness.org

  Excellent interview by Anthony Tjan with Dany Levy, founder of Daily Candy.

  tags: harvard_business, dailycandy, entrepreneurship, dany_levy

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

The Sunday Diigo Links Post (weekly)

What should be the Sunday Diigo Links Post just turned into a Monday Links Post.

It appears I’m still shaking a case of drift, unable to anchor myself even once a week to this place (my blog). At least I still read some things on the web, as the links (whether Sunday or Monday) indicate.

• Seth’s Blog: Creating sustainable competitive advantage

  One of the better definitions of “brand” that I’ve read in a while:
  “You can build a brand (shorthand for relationships, beliefs, trust, permission and word of mouth).”

  Love the last sentence, too:
  “The reason the internet is such a home to wow business models is that it’s easier to create a network here than any other time in history.”
  So true.

  tags: seth_godin, branding, competitiveness, marketing

• The Rise of the Mega-Region – WSJ.com

  “While there are 191 nations in the world, just 40 significant mega-regions power the global economy. Home to more than one-fifth of the world’s population, these 40 megas account for two-thirds of global economic output and more than 85% of all global innovation.”
  Interesting idea: that mega-regions are actually more significant as drivers than nation-states when discussing economic competitiveness.

  tags: richard_florida, mega_regions, cities, nation_states, economies

• chashama

  “chashama supports thriving cultural communities by transforming temporarily vacant properties into spaces where art can flourish. By recycling and repurposing buildings in transition, we invest in neighborhoods, foster local artists, and sustain a vast range of creativity and culture. “
  Really love this concept: work with property owners to let artists use currently empty/ unleased space as galleries.

  tags: chashama, arts, public_art, retail, real_estate

• Why we learn more from our successes than our failures

  “If you’ve ever felt doomed to repeat your mistakes, researchers at MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory may have explained why: Brain cells may only learn from experience when we do something right and not when we fail.”

The radical absence of successes in my life of late is undoubtedly contributing to my increasing sense of dullness and terminal stupidity, and is adding to the ocean of failure I’m drowning in.

tags: neuroscience

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

The Sunday Diigo Links Post (weekly)

• The City Is A Battlesuit For Surviving The Future – Future metro – io9

  QUOTE
  Adam Greenfield, a design director at Nokia, wrote one of the defining texts on the design and use of ubiquitous computing or ‘ubicomp’ called “Everyware” and is about to release a follow-up on urban environments and technology called “The city is here for you to use”. In a recent talk he framed a number of ways in which the access to data about your surroundings that Hill describes will change our attitude towards the city. He posits that we will move from a city we browser and wander to a ’searchable, query-able’ city that we can not only read, but write-to as a medium.

  He states:

  The bottom-line is a city that responds to the behaviour of its users in something close to real-time, and in turn begins to shape that behaviour.

  Again, we’re not so far away from what Archigram were examining in the 60’s. Behaviour and information as the raw material to design cities with as much as steel, glass and concrete.
  UNQUOTE

  tags: cities, archigram, urbanism, science_fiction, ubiquity, ubicom, jjacobs

• Ego City: Cities Are Organized Like Human Brains – Annotated

  QUOTE
  Cities are organized like brains, and the evolution of cities mirrors the evolution of human and animal brains, according to a new study by researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
  UNQUOTE
  Comparing infrastructure to neural networks. Hm – legitimate, scientific, or overwrought metaphor? I can certainly see that “maintaining sufficient interconnectedness” is a problem for both brains and cities.

  tags: cities, neuroscience, evolution, urban_development

• How Long is Your City’s Tail? – O’Reilly Radar

  Excellent article by John Geraci on how/why “the long tail” analogy has to come alive in cities, and what it would mean.
  QUOTE
  Most cities right now are models of closed, rigid systems, systems that rely on a few, top-performing agents to get civic tasks done and keep quality of life high for residents. Most of these agents are departments of the city itself, though some are outsourced. Either way, cities rely on one agent per issue, no more. (…)
  …imagine instead a city that has totally open, unrestricted access to data (say, San Francisco or DC in 2011). What does it look like? It has all of the familiar city-run departments providing all of the services and assistance they’ve always provided – that’s not going away. Then it also has public services offered by the mega companies, the Google Traffic, IBM’s Smarter Cities, and so forth. Those are huge added value to these open cities – they’re used by a large percentage of residents and make life in those cities better. But THEN, it also has an insane long tail of services set up and run by anyone with an interest in doing so, just by hooking into city data, distributing it in a new way, improving on it, mashing it up, giving it back to the city, etc. These services each individually get used by a small minority of people, but collectively they get used by more than any other single source in the city.
  UNQUOTE
  It’s interesting to think about the differences between Canada and the US here. In the US, all government data is owned by the people – governments can’t keep it back. But in Canada, all government data is owned by the Crown. That means, Canadians have to first get someone in authority to grant them access to it and they have to get permission to use it. #fail #deadendfeudalism

  tags: john_geraci, cities, data, open_source, democracy, long_tail, o’reilly

• Storefront for Art and Architecture | Pike Loop, a Robot-Built Installation in NYC

  QUOTE
  Gramazio & Kohler’s work represents the cutting edge of innovation in the field of digital fabrication in architecture. For many years architects have relied on digital manufacturing processes such as CNC milling or 3D printing as a tool for formal research at model-scale. For the first time, Gramazio & Kohler’s work explores the potential of mobile digital fabrication techniques that can fabricate at 1:1 scale on site.
  UNQUOTE

  tags: robotbuilt, architecture, design

• Urban Planning Tools for Climate Change Mitigation

  QUOTE “Land use and urban form are key contributors to greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) through the physical arrangement of streets, building types, and land uses that influence vehicle use and energy consumption in buildings. City and regional officials now facing new emissions reduction requirements are increasingly turning to urban design as a key component of climate mitigation. But, this approach requires decision support tools that illustrate the GHG implications of land use and transportation options. While a wide spectrum of tools currently exists, few have the capacity to work simultaneously at both the regional and local scale, or to capture both building performance and transportation demand analysis.

  This report reviews existing tools by scope, scale, methodology, and policy support, and presents four case studies illustrating how existing tools at various stages of development have been used. ” UNQUOTE

  tags: mitigation, urbanplanning, urban_development, lincoln_institute

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

The Sunday Diigo Links Post (weekly)

• Hans Rosling: Let my dataset change your mindset | Video on TED.com

  An amazing presentation by Hans Rosling about world health & economic data, his site  gapminder.org), the “bottom billion,” and …well, blowing cliches about health and wealth out of the water. Also see Rosling’s 10 answers to 10 questions video: tags: ted_conference, data, video, statistics, hans_rosling, demographics, gapminder

• TED and Reddit’s 10 questions to Hans Rosling – Gapminder.org

  Hans Rosling answers 10 questions posed to him after his TED Talk. Almost as good as the TED Talk that inspired the questions, this too is a must-see presentation.

  tags: gapminder, hans_rosling, ted_conference, video

• Video – The Coming Currency Revolution – WSJ.com

  Fascinating video about some of the alternative currencies already out there, building peer-to-peer finance and personal (and virtual) currencies. Scarcity, attention, money… Good stuff. Note: Saltspring Island has had its own currency for years – take it to the next level with virtual component?

  tags: wsj.com, currency, economics, virtual_currency, ven, peer-to-peer-finance, p2p, video

• “Fact and Friction” Interview with Jay Rosen in Volume » Page not found

  Great interview with Jay Rosen (conducted by Jeffey Inaba and Talene Montgomery) that delves into (and knits together) the “pro” (professional) and “am” (amateur, blogger) divide. Rosen advocates for Pro-Am journalism. And what is “the public”?

  “How do journalists decide how to tell stories? What are their responsibilities when reporting a story? And to what extent do they write in the public’s interest?”

  The questions revolve around whether journalists represent or create the public.

  tags: jay_rosen, jeffrey_inaba, journalism, volume_magazine, citizen_journalism, politics, talene_montgomery

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

The Sunday Diigo Links Post (weekly)

• David Byrne’s Perfect City – WSJ.com

  I love David Byrne’s music, but in this essay for the Wall Street Journal I think he somewhat over-reaches himself. Why? The essay is muddled. He includes too many contradictory pronouncements. For example, that big and dense is good, but that you need the “village” thing for safety & security; or that LA isn’t dense (I believe it is, actually); or that lack of density creates narcissistic attention-getting ploys; or that “human scale” needs to be achieved through some process of “compromise” (left undefined), and so on. Furthermore, his closing sentence really confuses me: “My perfect city isn’t fixed, it doesn’t actually exist, and I like it that way.” He likes that it doesn’t exist? What does that mean?

  tags: wsj.com, david_byrne, cities, urbanism, jjacobs

• See Span | Monday Mag

  Added a comment to Monday Magazine’s article on Victoria’s Johnson Street Bridge debacle.

  tags: johnson_street_bridge, victoria, blue_bridge, infrastructure, municipal_funding, municipal_politics, comments

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

The Sunday Diigo Links Post (weekly)

• Forget Curbing Suburban Sprawl (MIT Technology Review)

  I have some questions about the source of this report/ research, which claims that density (including examples such as Vancouver’s eco-density) “would yield insignificant CO2 reductions.”
  QUOTE
  Even if 75 percent of all new and replacement housing in America were built at twice the density of current new developments, and those living in the newly constructed housing drove 25 percent less as a result, CO2 emissions from personal travel would decline nationwide by only 8 to 11 percent by 2050, according to the study. If just 25 percent of housing units were developed at such densities and residents drove only 12 percent less as a result, CO2 emissions would be reduced by less than 2 percent by 2050.
  UNQUOTE

  I guess the problem is with defining real density as a mere “twice the density of current new developments”: if you consider that new developments include suburban greenfield spreads on 1/4 to 1/2 acre for each SFH, then doubling that density really doesn’t amount to much.

  Further down, the report just makes the case for building more fuel-efficient cars – so maybe that’s where the report’s agenda originates.

  tags: mit_techreview, sprawl, urbanplanning, phil_mckenna, density, national_academy_of_sciences

• AIArchitect This Week | Pushing the Limits: Contemporary Parisian Architecture in Historic Contexts

  Hillis’s article looks at how historical and contemporary architecture is “blended” in a “historically centric city such as Paris.” Focus on Les Halles; new Ministry of Culture building; Le Fouquet Hotel on Avenue George V; etc.

  tags: architecture, heritage, paris, wendy_hillis

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

The treachery of tethers…

Ceci n’est pas un vacance – that could be my personal variant on Magritte’s This is not a pipe.

I’m in Vancouver, and it’s supposed to be a break from my island exile, but digital tethers ensure that I’m plugged into all the usual concerns.

Earlier today I wrote a blog post for Johnson Street Bridge dot ORG, called Heritage value, once more. It’s about how the City of Victoria is ignoring an important heritage assessment, which states that the bridge has “significant heritage value.”

And as usual, there are plenty of other digital tethers to ensure the hiatus isn’t a complete break. But it’s still fun.

Vancouver is a riot, and I do love it. But it’s a funny town – it talks a big green game, for example. And a lot of it is green – but holy cow, is the oh-not-so-green car culture ever alive and well here. I mean in particular a car culture driven (sorry, bad pun) by young men (very young men), who – through lucky breaks (ahem) or inheritance – possess cars that are worth a small fortune (say, $80,000), and who enjoy nothing more than to parade their vehicles through downtown, parking them in front of brightly-lit shops so that those of us out for an evening stroll can admire the buff metal and languid embodiment of all that privilege.

There’s also an unbridled aggression (again, mostly coming from younger male drivers, especially if they’re driving costly cars) against the tightness of the core city: its density and its traffic congestion. Lots of aggressive driving, which is pretty comical to watch, especially if you’re familiar with driving mores in truly densely populated areas. Naturally, the young men are frustrated at every pinch point (i.e. corner, traffic light, pedestrian crossing – you name it).

Car culture in Vancouver shows how much the city is still inbetween – but what a glorious inbetween it is. It’s beautiful, fresh, energetic.

Tonight, I ambled through Holt Renfrew (we don’t have a Holt Renfrew in Victoria, sadly). The Vancouver store is quite beautiful – sort of like an Apple store for clothes: white on white decor, with jewel-colored objects of desire in stark but seductive contrast. Very tasty.

I found myself drawn to one mannequin, dressed all in Fendi. I admired the tattered scarf tied around its neck, but did a double-take when I saw the price tag for the shabby-chic piece of cloth (nearly $300). The mannequin wore a woven jacket that I thought looked really sharp; I walked to the rack where 2 or 3 of the same jacket hung. The price? $3,550.

I considered licking the jacket’s lapel or sleeve, because an object basically so utilitarian (and a not especially couture one, to boot), yet so expensive, struck me as some kind of fetish. I thought, I bet there’s some kind of primitive impulse that would justify ingesting or incorporating this absurdly magical object that’s capable of commanding such a high price …but then my reason got the better of me, and I held my tongue. Literally.

But it made me wonder whether I should get out my sewing machine and run something up. Three thousand five hundred and fifty dollars is an awful lot of money for a simple little …coat.

But so is $80,000 for a car that merely travels on the same roads as everyone else.

The Sunday Diigo Links Post (weekly)

• Seattle Channel Video Player: POPOS (Privately Owned Public Open Space)

  QUOTE:
  Seattle’s Privately Owned Public Open Spaces: A Walking Tour
  8/26/2009: Councilmember Nick Licata defines POPOS: Privately Owned Public Open Space. Under Seattle city zoning laws, building developers can engage in zoning tradeoffs that may allow them to build bigger or higher, if they provide a specified amount of space for public use. Landscape architect Guy Michaelson, representing Seattle Architecture Foundation, leads a walking tour highlighting POPOS buildings, historic landmarks, public art and other public amenities. For more information on POPOS and monthly tours offered by SAE, visit:seattle.gov/council/issues/public_space.htm, seattlearchitecture.org
  UNQUOTE

  tags: seattle, urban_amenities, urbanplanning, urban_parks, architecture

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.