Yule Heibel's Post Studio © 2003-2014

The Sunday Diigo Links Post (weekly)

• Mission/Vision | Shetroit.com

  Just learned about this site the other day. Given women’s historical role in civic leadership (at the municipal level, via committees and clubs), and how that role was been maligned as small and “boob-ish” when metropolitanism grew in strength and favor, initiatives like “Shetroit”‘s are important in getting women back in the game. This is especially the case now that new urbanism (also male-dominated) is trumpeting certain traditional values, which women pioneered and should own.
  QUOTE
  Shetroit’s mission is to help create an enriching space in which the women of Detroit can weave community. Shetroit’s vision is that by bringing women together to support each other in realizing their self-worth and recognizing their strengths, new heights of feminine leadership can emerge.

  As Shetroit grows, the site intends to encourage “using the Internet to get off the Internet” by nurturing connections that help build and encourage all facets of our individual life journeys that focus on self-esteem and the power of learning to love ourselves.
  UNQUOTE

  tags: women urbanism urban_renewal detroit shetroit cities city_smarts

• Magazine – The Perfected Self – The Atlantic

  Fascinating article in many respects, including in how Skinner’s work has been perceived.
  QUOTE
  In 1965, when Julie Vargas was a student in a graduate psychology class, her professor introduced the topic of B. F. Skinner, the Harvard psychologist who, in the late 1930s, had developed a theory of “operant conditioning.” After the professor explained the evidently distasteful, outmoded process that became more popularly known as behavior modification, Vargas’s classmates began discussing the common knowledge that Skinner had used the harsh techniques on his daughter, leaving her mentally disturbed and institutionalized. Vargas raised her hand and stated that Skinner in fact had had two daughters, and that both were living perfectly normal lives. “I didn’t see any need to embarrass them by mentioning that I was one of those daughters,” she says.
  UNQUOTE

  tags: atlantic_monthly selfdiscipline quantified_self obesity bf_skinner behavioralism apps loseit fitbit

• Can Trees Actually Deter Crime? – Neighborhoods – The Atlantic Cities

  QUOTE
  While low dense brush seems to increase it, tall broad canopies seem to decrease it. That nuanced conclusion harmonizes with another study published earlier this year, in which U.S.D.A. Forest Service researcher Geoffrey Donovan (who has also linked urban tree coverage to home prices) reports the same mixed tree-crime associations in Portland, Oregon.
  UNQUOTE

  tags: urban_forest urbanism crime atlantic_cities

• It’s Not Just Porn: Why Ultra-Orthodox Jews Fear the Internet – The Atlantic

  Another examination of whether/ how the internet is scattering our focus. And then there’s Eytan Kobre’s response to this question, “It’s also that you’re dressing the same way your 18th century ancestors did, which implies that you’re rejecting the modern world”:
  QUOTE
  There may be elements of truth to that. But the irony is that hipsters all dress a certain way, and the whole point is to dress entirely different from everyone else. Orthodox Jews actually have the courage to dress the same way as 500,000 of their brethren. They’re the ones who challenge people by asking, “Are you deep enough to look beyond my garb and relate to me as a thinking individual?” In contrast, the hipster buys into the most external of indicators: that which is immediately apparent to the eye.
  UNQUOTE

  tags: eytan_kobre atlantic_monthly internet socialcritique

• Longer Commute, Bigger Waistline – Commute – The Atlantic Cities

  D’oh. Big surprise – not.
  QUOTE
  The activity of driving to work should be better thought of as inactivity, and all that time sitting on your butt is slowly eating away at your cardiovascular health – and probably adding to your waistline.
  UNQUOTE

  tags: cars transportation health atlantic_cities

• Could planting trees be the next crime control strategy? | SmartPlanet

  Well, hear, hear.
  QUOTE
  “Ugliness is so grim,” urban beautification advocate Lady Bird Johnson once said. “A little beauty, something that is lovely, I think, can help create harmony which will lessen tensions.”
  UNQUOTE

  tags: urban_design urban_forest trees smartplanet

• Flavorwire » 25 Awesome and Unusual Bike Racks

  Some inspiring bike rack designs here – my favorite is the bike hanger from Seoul, Korea, and the giant comb in Roanoke, VA.

  tags: flavorwire bicycles bike_racks design

• Why Successful Branding Still Happens Offline – Speakeasy – WSJ

  Fascinating, also in terms of what it means with regard to print advertising (and TV). Print could (would?) often be local – for example, Boulevard Magazine in Victoria).
  QUOTE
  Today’s consumer marketplace is highly social, but not because of particular platforms or technologies. The businesses that will be the most successful in the future are the ones that embrace a model that puts people– rather than technology – at the center of products, campaigns and market strategies. Those who achieve the greatest success will recognize that there are many ways to tap the power of today’s social consumer.
  UNQUOTE

  tags: branding wsj.com socialmedia advertising

• Rust Belt chic: Declining Midwest cities make a comeback – Salon.com

  Great article about smaller cities of the industrial era.
  QUOTE
  What struggling cities need are jobs, and not just jobs at coffee roasteries in abandoned railroad terminals that make for great style-section articles. “The only way [a turnaround] will really happen is by reintroducing meaningful, equitably compensated work into these cities,” says Catherine Tumber, author of “Small, Gritty and Green: The Promise of America’s Smaller Industrial Cities in a Low-Carbon World.” “This longing can be expressed aesthetically, but it can only be satisfied by restoring the workforce.”
  UNQUOTE

  tags: salon.com rust_belt detroit cleveland pittsburgh will_doig comeback

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

The Sunday Diigo Links Post (weekly)

I was so caught up with looking for a place to live yesterday that I forgot to post my weekly links. Here they are, on a Monday…

• Kids Who Get Driven Everywhere Don’t Know Where They’re Going – Commute – The Atlantic Cities

  No surprise, imo:
  QUOTE
  [Vehicular traffic] changes the way children see and experience the world by diminishing their connection to community and neighbors. A generation ago, urbanist researcher Donald Appleyard showed how heavy traffic in cities erodes human connections in neighborhoods, contributing to feelings of dissatisfaction and loneliness. Now his son, Bruce Appleyard, has been looking into how constantly being in and around cars affects children’s perception and understanding of their home territory.
  UNQUOTE

  tags: atlantic_cities children cars perception isolation

• Could Electric Truck Lanes Reduce L.A.’s Horrific Pollution? – Technology – The Atlantic Cities

  Totally makes sense:
  QUOTE
  The eHighway might seem laughable at the moment to all but the most fervent environmentalist, but just wait. Air pollution in Long Beach and Riverside costs these communities an estimated $18 million annually in asthma bills, docking residents on average an incredible 8 percent of their household income. And the toxic stew isn’t expected to waft away anytime soon. Here’s Siemens infrastructure chief Daryl Dulaney laying out the grim prognosis for the future in a press release:

  “When most people think of vehicle emissions, they assume cars do most of the damage, but it’s actually commercial trucks that are largely to blame,” says Dulaney. Freight transportation on U.S. roadways is expected to double by 2050, and by 2030, carbon dioxide emissions are forecasted to jump 30 percent due to freight transport alone.
  UNQUOTE

  tags: atlantic_cities trucks pollution catenary e_cars los_angeles

• William Gibson Worries Your City May Be ‘Cooked’ – Technology – The Atlantic Cities

  Fascinating interview with William Gibson. At one point he says, “I think we invent ideologies to cope with technologies.”
  And:
  QUOTE
  Gibson also bemoans cities that no longer enable young, artistic, and often not rich people from being able to move in and spur change. He cites both London and New York as places that used to allow this but which have gotten too expensive to be approachable by young creatives and are on their way to being “cooked.”

  “Once a city is completely cooked, it’s more like Paris, where the city’s business is not to change,” says Gibson. “But it’s not a place that actually welcomes innovation.”
  UNQUOTE

  tags: atlantic_cities william_gibson interview

• The New Design Needs of the Information Economy – Housing – The Atlantic Cities

  Interesting – inner city renewal, courtesy of big tech companies?
  QUOTE
  Google’s decision to locate its Pittsburgh operations in the inner city is but one way America’s ever-expanding knowledge economy is changing the real estate sector, something it is expected to continue doing. Not only are high-tech companies looking for unusual spaces that are reflective of their corporate culture, but firms in the knowledge sector are also reviving inner-city neighborhoods, spearheading the drive for sustainability, and even changing the way some new buildings are designed.
  UNQUOTE

  tags: pittsburgh google urban_renewal atlantic_cities

• Is Traffic Making Us Lonely? – Commute – The Atlantic Cities

  “Appleyard published his compelling research in 1981 in a book called Livable Streets. Sadly, he died the next year — struck by a speeding car in Athens, Greece — and perhaps that is why he is not better known, even among urbanists. But his findings, which have recently been replicated in the United Kingdom, should be part of any discussion about the erosion of social ties in modern society.

  Appleyard did his research in San Francisco in 1969, looking at three categories of streets: light traffic (2,000 vehicles per day), medium traffic (8,000 vehicles), and heavy traffic (16,000). What he found was that residents of lightly trafficked streets had two more neighborhood friends and twice as many acquaintances as those on the heavily trafficked streets.

  Residents who were interviewed by Appleyard also talked about what they saw as their home territory. On the heavily trafficked street, respondents indicated that their apartment, or perhaps their building, qualified as “home.” On the light-traffic streets, people often saw the whole block as home. They also included much more detail when asked to draw pictures of their streets.”

  tags: atlantic_cities donald_appleyard traffic cars automobile socialtheory urbanism

• Fables of Wealth – NYTimes.com

  More like this, please (I say this as an ethical atheist, btw). William Deresiewicz nails it:
  QUOTE
  There are ethical corporations, yes, and ethical businesspeople, but ethics in capitalism is purely optional, purely extrinsic. To expect morality in the market is to commit a category error. Capitalist values are antithetical to Christian ones. (How the loudest Christians in our public life can also be the most bellicose proponents of an unbridled free market is a matter for their own consciences.) Capitalist values are also antithetical to democratic ones. Like Christian ethics, the principles of republican government require us to consider the interests of others. Capitalism, which entails the single-minded pursuit of profit, would have us believe that it’s every man for himself.
  UNQUOTE

  tags: nyt william_deresiewicz capitalism economy ethics morality

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

The Sunday Diigo Links Post (weekly)

• You Don’t Need This “Recovery” – Umair Haque – Harvard Business Review

  Call to arms (sort of) from Umair Haque:
  QUOTE
  If we face an imperative, perhaps it’s one as timeless and worn as bedrock: not merely to employ our selves to make the most, but to make the most of our tiny selves. Perhaps it’s this imperative that is the bedrock of the human world, the only firmament solid enough to support the foundations of meaningful lives. And to this imperative, there are no easy answers — just hard questions. The questions we’ve been uncomfortably failing to ask for a long, long while.
  UNQUOTE

  tags: umair_haque harvard_business economy eudaimonia recovery

• At the 20th Congress for the New Urbanism, a Movement Feels its Age – Design – The Atlantic Cities

  The Congress for New Urbanism (CNU) has become gosple of sorts, but there’s still lots to do:
  QUOTE
  “If the first phase of CNU has culminated in a broader culture acceptance of urbanism as a force for good, the second phase will be defined by successfully pushing for policy and design reform that actually allows urbanism to get built,” says CNU president John Norquist, a former mayor of Milwaukee.

  Big foundations like Rockefeller, Ford, and Kresge are supporting transit and see urbanism as the setting for advancing social justice. Others see great public health benefits. A big focus is to get at the anti-urban policies and standards and rules at the federal, state and local level, Norquist says.

  If that sounds like nitty-gritty implementation, and a little bit nerdy, too, CNU has always had a mix of rock-star designers and those among the 1,500 architects, designers, planners, elected officials, developers and others expected for the conference, who like nothing better than a lengthy debate on the merits of different varieties of shade trees.

  Still, as unglamorous as it is, re-writing the owner’s manual for urbanism makes sense. It’s what another architectural movement – the Congress International Architecture Moderne (CIAM), after which CNU is modeled – did. Leaders like Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius wasted little time embedding modernism in codes and academic curricula.
  UNQUOTE

  tags: atlantic_cities anthony_flint cnu new_urbanism

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

The Sunday Diigo Links Post (weekly)

• A Stock Exchange for Your Personal Data – Technology Review

  Interesting.
  QUOTE
  …since the pricing options he [Bernardo Huberman] outlines gauge how a person values privacy and risk, they address at least two big obstacles to making such a market function.

  The first: how to put a realistic dollar value on any given bit of personal data so that people will find it worthwhile to sell and buyers won’t be spending prohibitively huge sums.

  And second: how to sell “unbiased data” so buyers can use small samples of people to infer information about larger populations. An example of this problem can be found in Huberman’s own work: thinner people were more likely to share their weight for a low sum than those who were heavyset. So a pharmaceutical company developing a weight-loss drug wouldn’t get the best data if it purchased only the cheapest data.
  UNQUOTE

  tags: mit_techreview data

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

First Day of the Cross-Country Roadtrip

Packing the car was at times a panic-filled struggle.

No, wait. Thinking about packing the car was a panic-filled struggle. Once we actually started, we just plain freaked out for a while because it looked like so. very. much.

We made a couple of purchases (both necessities and one or two “nice-to-haves”) during our five-months-long stay in Portland. And, because up until about the middle of March it wasn’t clear to us that we wouldn’t actually settle there, buying a few bulky things seemed harmless.

Of course each additional cubic inch turned into a potential assassin when it came time to load the vehicle. But we did it.

Finally, just after noon we set out.

Can I just say that Oregon is beautiful?

Our route took us slightly south and around Mount Hood, along US-26. We passed through the Mt. Hood National Forest, we glimpsed amazing valleys and shuddered at the close-up view of snow-capped mountains just behind pine forest armies. We stopped at view points with drops of several hundred feet, drove curvy highways up to elevations of 4,000+ feet, and drove curvy highways about half-way down again till we were in the Oregon high desert. We marveled at buttes barely held together by titanic geological pressure and stray grasses.

Self-Realization Tycoons and Railway Workers

We didn’t drive far, only to Madras, where it’s as spring-warm as one might imagine Chennai’s to be. Madras isn’t too far from the ranch where Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh set up his commune Rajneeshpuram in the early 1980s. Bhagwan must have made serious money in the self-realization business, for out in that Oregon desert, he personally owned a fleet of forty Rolls-Royces (and a couple of airplanes, too). Sadly, we didn’t discover any orange traces of his legacy on our drive to the motel, which, it turns out, we were sharing with a small army of hardened railway workers.

At around 5:30pm, they started arriving at the motel, brought there by the trucks that would take them away again the next morning: sun-burnt, grimy, squinting, and clearly worn out from their long day’s work. It was a mixed crew: a few of European descent, a number of Hispanics, a couple of African Americans, and several Native Americans. They’re replacing the steel on the railway, and I guess they travel as they work – hence the motel stay.

I talked to one worker, who looked Native American. He told me that some of the gangs work on replacing the ties, but that his crew does the steel.

“Tough job,” I said. “I guess you don’t need to go to a gym to work out, do you?”

“No,” he laughed. Then he added, “And I guess I’m not going to get diabetes, either,” which I took to mean that diabetes is a serious problem for his community.

Score one for a car-centric “culture” built around junk food (even if you are a railway worker), and zero for Bhagwan’s vision of super enlightened self-realization.

Maybe, when (or if) I get around to posting about Day Two, I’ll have a few more choice words about the often miserable culture we’ve built in contrast to the endlessly astonishing beauty of the land.