Boing Boing has a little post about a traffic engineer famed for his work in Drachten, The Netherlands, in which he successfully pushed to have all traffic signals and signage removed from the center of the city. This idea has been copied elsewhere, and in some places the philosophy has been extended to also integrating pedestrian space with the automobile carriageway, creating what is referred to as a shared space or naked street. The result is an alleged decrease in travel times and better safety, because drivers are forced to pay attention.

I find the concept interesting, but perhaps much less practical in a large city. On a certain level, however, it can be seen as mainly a scheme to reduce both car usage and travel speeds, which it does well. This is a laudable goal, but one which seems to go against everything current North American planning stands for (that is, accommodating as many cars as possible, as quickly as possible, while ignoring pedestrians and cyclists).

New Urbanists have been singing the tune of slower cars for years, and haven’t made any noticeable headway. The fundamental nature of American cities, and the attitudes of those who inhabit them, would need to change before this became even remotely possible on this side of the ocean on any kind of scale.

Word Clock

Fun clock screensaver that simply changes text highlights to denote time. Not at all practical, but fun.

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Boy or Girl Paradox

in a random two-child family, one of the children is a boy. What is the probability that the other one is a girl?

It’s very unintuitive, but it’s 2/3. Very neat.

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Bruno Taylor’s Public Play Spaces

71% of adults used to play on the streets when they were young. 21% of children do so now. Are we designing children and play out of the public realm?

This project is a study into different ways of bringing play back into public space. It focuses on ways of incorporating incidental play in the public realm by not so much as having separate play equipment that dictates the users but by using existing furniture and architectural elements that indicate playful behaviour for all.

Note: This is the first post in what might become a regular series of posts from guest writers. Our first writer is Montréal-based Sylvan Lanken, who has been deeply concerned with environmental and social issues for as long as I can remember. His pieces, as currently planned, will center around information culled from the Canadian Census.

The table below was constructed using data from the 2001 Census of Canada. I chose to include the largest city in each of the ten provinces, and arranged these cities in alphabetical order. In each category, I highlighted the “best” and “worst” values, according to my own views on the environment and society. The exception to this was in the last column, the percentage of commuters traveling by car as passengers. While a higher value is arguably better than a lower one, the fact remains that these commuters are traveling by car as opposed to more sustainable methods.

Commuting Methods in Ten Canadian Cities

Source: 2001 Census of Canada

Statistics used are for the cities proper, as opposed to those for greater metropolitan areas

Inadequate public transit is a chronic problem in Canada, and there’s no single reason why this is the case. A lack of transportation planning and vision at all levels of government, unchecked suburban growth, and an entrenched car culture, among other factors, are to blame. Even so, I was surprised to find that, except for Montréal and Toronto, less than a fifth of commuters in these cities use public transit. And, alarmingly, more than half of all commuters drive to and from their place of work in all cities except Montréal.

NYC Bike Rack Design Competition

A jury including David Byrne is judging a competition to come up with a design for bike racks for New York City. The finalists are up and the winner is going to be announced in October.

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Smart Cookie

A cookie designed with a small indent for removing it from the package without breaking it. Pretty dang smart.

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Trading Places – The Demographic Inversion of the American City

This article from The New Republic examines what they call Demographic Inversion, a process allegedly occurring in some American Cities where affluent middle-classers from the suburbs are moving back into downtown urban environments, while poor inner-city minority populations are moving outside the city. I don’t think Houston is going to turn into Paris anytime soon, but the author cites Chicago as a prime example of a city where the process is already underway. I can definitely see signs of it here in my home of Montréal, where small urban condos are getting ever pricier, and formerly-working class inner-city neighborhoods are gentrifying like lightning.

Abandoned Pools

Walking Turcot Yards has a great link to a photo series of unused pools.

In the Thirties London’s outdoor lidos were at the peak of their popularity.

Gradually tastes have changed, resulting in a drop in attendances,

leaving the pools uneconomical to run.

Many fell into decay and many were demolished.

Only a handful of pools remain today as a symbol of a bygone era.

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Boing Boing TV Covers Long Now Clock

The Long Now Foundation is trying to build a clock which will run without human intervention for 10,000 years. It’s a marvelous and amazing piece of engineering. When visiting the Long Now in San Francisco, I tried to take photos of the prototypes of the various pieces, but low light left me with some grainy unusable photos. Thankfully, Boing Boing TV has a great piece about the various components of the clock, which I can attest were absolutely stunning.

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Reaction Ferry

A reaction ferry is a motor-less barge that is anchored to the shore by a rope or cable, and uses only the current of the river to move back and forth.They aren’t much in use anymore, but they exist in a few places.

I’m back from my trip to California. The Bay Area was fantastic, but I’m too worn-out to write much of anything. Here are some photos.

Clarion is a small, one-block long alley in the Mission. Practically every surface in the alley is covered in some sort of art. Here are some photos I took:

This escalator was a nice piece, but I thought what was most amazing was the inscribed date – 1993. In 15 years it had hardly been touched. Either the taggers backed-off out of respect, or the artist has been good about passing by and touching it up.

This one is hard to read; It says: “I’m not hiding my love anymore.”

As a follow-up to last week’s post of a Kunstler-esque critique on ridiculous suburban buildings. Here’s a doozy – a motel with a facade of a quaint little small town called Jacuzzi Adventure Suites, also in North Conway, New Hampshire. The image of urbanism has been turned into a cheap sideshow on the side of a very non-urban highway.

All of the supposed amenities of urban life are represented, a bakery, a stable, a barber shop, and even a train station. The reality, on the inside, are bizarre theme rooms like Motorcycle Madness, which caters to the many bikers who come to the state to ride sans helmet, or The Cave, complete with “Bats and Panthers”. It’s such a strange mish-mash I don’t even know where to begin.

The Gruen Transfer is the glassy-eyed, all-encompassing state of pure shopping consumers get in when they walk through the doors of a shopping mall or large department store. (( It’s also the name of an Australian TV show about advertising, in which people from the advertising industry analyze advertisements. It’s interesting, but I do find this akin to career criminals forming the jury on a criminal court case. Maybe this is a little hyperbolic, but some media studies or communications scholars would have been nice. They do get some points for having full episodes on their site for download )) Douglas Rushkoff, in an article for PBS, describes it as:

a psycho-physical response to the overwhelming sensory data in a self-contained consumer environment . . .named for the gentleman who invented the shopping mall, where this mental paralysis is most commonly observed.

I’m going to try channeling James Howard Kunstler, an urban planning and architecture critic who is generally known for his strong anti-suburban rants. He argues that much of this space is soulless and not really worth caring about, and I generally have to agree with him.

Here’s a page from what Kunstler would possibly refer to as “the tragic comedy of suburbia”. In a misguided attempt to inject some classical urban charm into the North Conway, New Hampshire location of Lowe’s, someone thought is would be a good idea to build-in a pretty hilarious row of fake second-story windows on their otherwise completely suburban box-store.

Multiple stories and mixed-uses are one of the most important principles of classical urban design. The stacking keeps the population density high enough to allow for varied street life, public transportation, and general walkability. The mixed-uses ensure that there are almost always people in the immediate area – either working, living, or shopping, which keep things interesting and makes sure there are usually eyes on the street, which is good for community and security.

This, though, does none of those things. It’s a sad attempt to channel the quaintness of a small-town America which barely even exists anymore.

World Changing on Worldwide Energy Policies

A report on renewable energy. Not for everyone, but has some information on Germany’s renewable energy program, one of the most extensive in the world:

Germany generates 14% of its energy needs–a total of 31,000 MW–from renewable energy. This share has increased 1 percent each year for the past decade.

In Germany the typical consumer pays $1.97 USD/month (1.25 Euros/month) to invest in the renewable energy infrastructure.

Just goes to show how renewable energy doesn’t have to be as expensive as some people think.

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Martha Cooper’s Vintage Hip Hop, Graffiti, and B-Boy Photos

The Current has a piece on the great photography work done by Martha in the 70’s and 80’s, before Hip Hop had gone mainstream.

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OE Cake Physics Engine Toy

It’s a simple drawing/physics program that lets you build whatever you want from the ingredients they give you (springs, elastics, water, gas, fire, etc. Shown at left is a kettle boiling water and turning a small windmill.

If you’re anything like me you will be able to spend hours at this.