David Simon on America as a Horror Show on Vimeo Must-watch. QUOTE David Simon, creator of the TV series ‘The Wire,’ talks with Bill about America’s capitalism crisis. It’s a reality check from a journalist who uses TV drama to report on America from the bottom up. “The horror show is we are going to […]
A Very Brief History of Why Americans Hate Their Commutes – Martin Wachs – The Atlantic Cities Zoning. QUOTE As mechanization of transit made it ever cheaper, safer, and cleaner, reformers and idealists seeking to overcome the “congestion evil” pushed for lower residential densities and deliberate suburbanization for more than a century. In 1909, at […]
Google dreams up free taxi rides to stores – SmartPlanet Wow… Interesting implications also (aside from data/ algorithms) for online v. “irl” shopping/ consumption/ commerce. QUOTE …would it be worth it for businesses to subsidize the trips of individual customers? That’s exactly what Google has invented, an algorithm that determines “the cost of transportation and […]
Gardiner Expressway at the crossroads: Hume | Toronto Star This article is about an expressway in Toronto, but Christopher Hume’s closing sentences apply to so many other places and situations: low expectations, self-perpetuating, lack of will to re-invest… QUOTE A reason was the low expectations Torontonians had for that part of town. It is viewed […]
Net Neutrality Quashing Will Mean New Pricing Schemes, Throttling, and Business Models | MIT Technology Review Susan Crawford gets it. QUOTE The theoretical downside is that the Internet devolves into a kind of “pay to play” system, with smaller companies tending to be squeezed out, and prices tending to rise overall. That is the dystopia […]
Project for Public Spaces | Toward Place Governance: What If We Reinvented Civic Infrastructure Around Placemaking? QUOTE Rather than just sustaining and delivering public goods, government can evolve from regulating “the tragedy of the commons” to fostering its triumph. In other words, government can be most efficient at delivering value when structured primarily to facilitate […]
Why the Tea Party Isn’t Going Anywhere – Theda Skocpol – The Atlantic Theda Skocpol on the Tea Party’s awful hold on US politics. QUOTE Here is the key point: Even though there is no one center of Tea Party authority—indeed, in some ways because there is no one organized center—the entire gaggle of grassroots […]
Tall is Good: How a Lack of Building Up is Keeping Our Cities Down Some excellent points in this article (see quote extract), but also so many contradictions/ so much wrong. E.g., there’s a trickle-down supposition (if you build more housing stock, prices will fall): in desirable urban centers, however, that doesn’t seem to happen […]
Author Charles Montgomery’s Happy City shows how urban planning can enhance health and spread joy | Georgia Straight Makes sense. QUOTE “What was surprising to us was that the building façades could have such a strong effect on happiness,” he says. “We were surprised to see that people were much happier on a jumbled-up old […]
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