Project on Regional and Industrial Economics – U of MN Humphrey Institute

A listing of recently published and working papers by Ann Markusen, director of the Institute’s Project on Regional and Industrial Economics at the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs (U of Minnesota). Her Areas of Expertise are:
Arts, culture and economic development; regional economics and planning; industrial organization; economic development, local, state, regional; industrial and occupational planning; economic impact of high technology, military spending.

Her current research “focuses on occupational approaches to regional development and on artists and cultural activity as regional economic stimulants.”

Of special interest: http://www.hhh.umn.edu/projects/prie/aei… (”The Arts Economy Initiative at the University’s Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs is midstream in a ten-year project on artists, their livelihoods, and their contributions, along with arts organizations and cultural industries, to regional and local economies.”)

See also Markusen’s bio page: http://www.hhh.umn.edu/people/amarkusen/…

tags: references, ann_markusen, urbanism, arts, culture, creative_cities, resources, urban_development

Doc Searls Weblog · Beyond Social Media

Thought-provoking post by Doc Searls: social media is “a crock.” What’s ignored in all the social media hype is the infrastructure that underwrites the private real estate of Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc. The other problem with social media is that “as a concept (if not as a practice) it subordinates the personal.”

“Personal and social go hand-in-hand, but the latter builds on the former.”

“Markets are built on the individuals we call customers. They’re where the ideas, the conversations, the intentions (to buy, to converse, to relate) and the money all start. Each of us, as individuals, are the natural points of integration of our own data — and of origination about what gets done with it. ”

tags: doc_searls, socialmedia, infrastructure, internet

CoolTown Studios: “19 urban development types for creatives”

So, “…what would be the 19 urban development types for the creatives that fuel the knowledge economy? Here’s one look at it, based on a list initially produced by renowned urbanist Andres Duany:”
A. Primarily Commercial Mixed-Use Buildings
1. Pedestrian-Only Town Center Retail Entertainment Grouping;
2. Standard Town Center Retail Entertainment Grouping
3. Neighborhood Center Retail Entertainment Grouping
4. Triple Mixed-Use Flat
5. Triple Mixed-Use Mid-Rise
B. Primarily Residential Mixed-Use Buildings
6. Mixed-Use Loft Apartment Mid-Rise
7. Mixed-Use Loft Apartment Flat
8. Mixed-Use Mini-Condo Mid-Rise
9. Loft Apartment House
10. Live-Work Units
C. Exclusively Residential Buildings
11. Loft Apartment House
12. Courtyard Apartments
13. Townhouses with an Ancillary Building
14. Green-fronting Townhouses
15. Paseo Housing Grouping
16. The Inn
D. Exclusively Commercial Buildings
17. Loft Office Mid-Rise
18. Avenue Office Grouping
19. Urban Villa

tags: cooltown_studios, urban_development, urbanism, new_urbanism, andres_duany, chris_leinberger

Find the 15-Minute Competitive Advantage – Rosabeth Moss Kanter – HarvardBusiness.org

When I read this pithy article by Rosabeth Moss Kanter, I found useful parallels between an evolutionary take on economics and innovation, and what she describes as the 15-minute advantage. That is, if you’re too far ahead of the curve, you may make an evolutionary (or innovative) leap, but it won’t “take” – it will be like a leap from one peak to another, without successful landing. Instead, you need those increments that allow successful leaps.

The Woody Allen backdrop story is such a great lead-in – makes her underlying idea very graspable, too. Moss Kanter lists 8 characteristics of innovation, some of which are straight out of our understanding of successful evolution:
1. Tria-able; 2. Divisible; 3. Reversible; 4. Tangible; 5. Fits prior investments; 6. Familiar; 7. Congruent with future direction; 8. Positive publicity value.

tags: economics, innovation, competitiveness, harvard_business, rosabeth_moss_kanter, evolution

“Streams of Content, Limited Attention: The Flow of Information through Social Media”

A “rough unedited crib” of danah boyd’s Nov.2009 talk at Web2.0 Expo in NYC, which analyzes how information is delivered and consumed “in flow.” boyd notes,
QUOTE
For the longest time, we have focused on sites of information as a destination, of accessing information as a process, of producing information as a task. What happens when all of this changes? While things are certainly clunky at best, this is the promise land of the technologies we’re creating. This is all happening because of how our information society is changing.
UNQUOTE
She also some critical things to say about curating and/ or aggregating content:
QUOTE
We need technological innovations. For example, tools that allow people to more easily contextualize relevant content regardless of where they are and what they are doing and tools that allow people to slice and dice content so as to not reach information overload. This is not simply about aggregating or curating content to create personalized destination sites. Frankly, I don’t think this will work. Instead, the tools that consumers need are those that allow them to get into flow, that allow them to live inside information structures wherever they are, whatever they’re doing. The tools that allow them to easily grab what they need and stay peripherally aware without feeling overwhelmed.
UNQUOTE
That bit gave me pause. If I’m thinking of local context, I have no idea at this point what those tools might look like. Something to think about…

Finally, one of the most interesting angles she discusses comes at the very end of the paper, in her discussion of how business models have changed/ must change:
QUOTE
…we need to rethink our business plans. I doubt this cultural shift will be paid for by better advertising models. Advertising is based on capturing attention, typically by interrupting the broadcast message or by being inserted into the content itself. Trying to reach information flow is not about being interrupted. Advertising does work when it’s part of the flow itself. Ads are great w

tags: danah_boyd, web2.0, talks, presentations, information, socialtheory

Joho the Blog » OMG. I disagree with Umberto Eco!

David Weinberger discusses Umberto Eco’s interview (in Der Spiegel) wherein Eco argues that “The list is the origin of culture,” a statement which Weinberger sets out to refute. In particular, I appreciated his view that lists are one-dimensional and therefore can’t be all that Eco ascribes to them. I left a comment about pattern recognition (which neither Eco in the interview nor Weinberger in his analysis mention).

tags: david_weinberger, umberto_eco, taxonomy, comments, lists, pattern_recognition

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

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

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