I just got the most recent issue of Good magazine and am seriously impressed. They have consistently delivered on their promise of being “An entertaining magazine for people who give a damn” but this time they stepped things up quite a bit.
It’s called reinventing our wheels and has more than 10 different pieces on the state of our transportation system here in America and what we can do to fix it. The writing is inspired and the topic is more relevant than ever not to mention that they chose to get away from the “Obama is awesome” message that every other magazine in the country is writing about (not that they do not like him its just that they were smart enough to write about something else instead of more bla bla bla about how amazing he is).
So here is a little pat on the back to the folks over at Good Magazine who continue to put together something with a heart and soul. Keep it up!
But it would not be right to have such a glowing review without a jab right? OK so here is the deal – the full back page is a Ralph Lauren Rugby ad….Are you kidding guys? Does anyone still buy Ralph Lauren Rugby clothes? Do they even still sell those? I can not believe how some brands survive for so long. Some things were meant to last 6 months then go out of style…Rugby gear…Yeah its one of those things.
I just heard today that the Sacramento Magazine released its list of the top 100 Powerful people and that you can go onto their site and vote for your top 10. I was happy to see some very good people made it on the list. My top 10 looked like this.
(Update: I am adding Sena Christian, from the SN&R I didn’t put together that it was her on the list. Way to go Sena for making it! You deserve it.)
I know its a lot of people who are in my line of work but I only wanted to vote for people that I either knew personally or knew of their work on a higher level than just reading about them in the paper.
I just got the new Metropolis Magazine today and there is an article in there that is very cool. I have been hearing about Jamie Lerner for a while now and am very interested to learn more about all the innovative things he has put into action as Mayor or Curitiba, Brazil. Here is a link to the article, I am also going to post it here just in case they take it down or move it.
My favorite quote. “The car is like our mother in-law. We have a good relationship with her, but we cannot let her conduct our lives. In other words, if the only woman in your life is your mother in-law, then you have a problem.”
We are going to be showing a movie at our office about Curitiba and Jamie Lerner soon. Watch the blog here for more information on when we are going to be doing it.
Learning from Lerner
The former mayor of Curitiba, Brazil is carrying his message of sustainability to the world’s burgeoning cities. Lesson one: get rid of your car.
By David Sokol
Posted May 29, 2008
Next year marks the 35th anniversary of a simple but transformative idea in urban planning and transportation: Curitiba, Brazil launched a surface bus system that behaves like a subway. Better than, in some ways. Double-articulated vehicles carry large volumes of commuters, passengers prepay their fare in glazed boarding tubes, designated lanes keep traffic flowing smoothly, and one bus trails the next by one minutes’ distance. Curitiba’s transit system was established with little municipal investment and at a fraction of the cost of subterranean excavation, and today it carries some 2 million people per day.
Jaime Lerner was serving his first term as mayor of Curitiba when the city’s bus system began service, and the innovation catapulted the then-37-year-old architect and urban planner not only to two more terms as mayor and another two as governor of Parana State, but also to the forefront of contemporary urban planning and of the nascent sustainability movement. (Indeed, besides public transportation, Lerner implemented a recycling program in Curitiba that still enjoys an impressive participation rate.) Lerner has deftly juggled his design and political careers, and since 2003 he has run an eponymous architecture firm from Curitiba. I caught up with Lerner on a typical whirlwind day—between charming a group of Filipino researchers and making a presentation to a delegation from the United Nations—to clarify points he made at Tropical Green, a February 2006 conference sponsored by Metropolis, and to take his pulse on recent phenomena like boomtown China.
In many respects, the world has caught up to your common-sense approach to sustainability. What events inspired you to embrace those values so early on?
It was logic. We realized that sustainability is a whole discussion. Most people think that sustainability is just green buildings. That’s very important, but it’s not enough. Or that sustainability is new materials, new sources of energy, or recycling, but that’s enough, either. When you see that cities are responsible for 75 percent of all carbon emissions, then it’s in cities where we can find a more effective answer. It’s at the very conception of cities where we have to do this work.
What is a more ideal plan for battling climate change at an urban scale?
One step is to use your car less. Cities will have to provide an alternative public transit. The second is separating garbage, because you can save a lot of energy, even your own. The third is to live closer to work, or to work closer to home. And this is the key issue, because our cities have more and more separation.
Those steps don’t seem too difficult. What about the famous Curitiba bus system: That, too, sounds painless to realize. Has it been adopted widely?
At the moment there are 82 cities around the world. Some of them did it differently, but more or less, it’s Curitiba. I don’t try to prove which system is the best; I know it’s okay to have buses or subways or light rail, as long as the system is a good system. The key issue is to never compete in the same space. They have to be complementary.
Without ranking them, then, what cities have embraced this bus concept particularly well?
They’re not all done, but they include Seoul, Bogotá, Mexico City, the Los Angeles orange line, and many Chinese cities. Even cities that have complete subways, like London and Paris, are also thinking of having a good surface system.
We cannot be dependent on the car. I’ve repeated this saying many times, but I feel it is very appropriate: The car is like our mother in-law. We have a good relationship with her, but we cannot let her conduct our lives. In other words, if the only woman in your life is your mother in-law, then you have a problem.
You mentioned the conception of cities, and now is a time when those births are taking place around the globe. What is your perspective of the new cities coming up throughout the Middle East, India, Korea, and China?
Why are European cities better than most American cities? Because they have mixed uses and mixed incomes. These cities are more human, more diverse. Most of the new cities in Asia and the Middle East are building ghettos for very rich people and ghettos for very poor people. This is not a good coexistence; it’s really terrible, in fact. Some people living in cities are so crazy about their safety and protection that they can barely leave the house without thinking criminals are after them. They are the real prisoners.
You have speaking engagements in the U.S. frequently—such as the Sarasota Design Conference, which is coming up on June 6.
When I go to a city, I try to give testimony about what we did in Curitiba, to show that it’s possible.
Do you tailor your message to the peculiarities of American audiences?
No, everyone understands. Even in Oklahoma City there are people who understand the message. People are starting to understand cities’ quality of life, about why we have to have a mix of uses and good public transport. Of course the message has different meanings in different cities, but the basic idea is that we don’t need to do what we’ve been doing. There has to be a change.
At Tropical Green, you mentioned that you are performing “fast acupuncture” on cities all over the world.
In many cities there are a few focal points that can effect a really great change, points that are not part of the whole planning process, but that can give a new energy to the city. It’s like acupuncture. Planning takes time, but sometimes you have to offer ideas that accomplish it immediately.
Can you give some examples of this?
Where do you live?
In New York.
One great acupuncture in New York is that some places have been transformed by cultural decisions, like Chelsea, Soho, or Williamsburg. They are not related to a global plan, but they will help the whole process of city planning and energize it.
In Paris, I.M. Pei’s Louvre pyramids are a wonderful example of acupuncture. With one gesture he provided the solution to a 300-year-old problem about entering and organizing the museum. So that’s what I like to do recently: go to some place, work with people for a week, propose one or two ideas, and if they like, they can make it happen.
Would you say it’s important for there to be architects and urban planners in elected positions in order to foster experimentation within cities?
Not necessarily. The most important element is having good decision-making and a good equation of co-responsibility. And any mayor, architect or not, has to be open to new ideas. I work with governments and private initiatives—as long as they are interested in improving the quality of their city, then I’m there.
Would you say that Curitiba has problems today that you could not have foreseen 35 years ago?
Every city has new problems every moment, and every mayor has a new challenge. The good thing about Curitiba is that the people are used to innovation and demand it from every mayor.
I read this article today in this months Urban Land magazine, and was blown away by how well Julian Darley articulates the way cities need to change to meet the demands we are beginning to face globally.
I am reprinting it here because I do not know how long the link will be active. I know it is a bit long but trust me its worth ten minutes of your time.
Q&A with Julian Darley
By Charles Lockwood
Post Carbon Institute has focused its efforts on helping local governments, communities, and individuals prepare for—and adapt to—the postcarbon world. Why should we plan for a postcarbon world?
We shouldn’t be burning hydrocarbons for several reasons. First, a well-known critical issue is the global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions from carbon fuels. Second, the sources of fuel that we are burning are limited, temporary, and unsustainable.
I’ve been sitting on this article from Good Magazine for awhile and just found it at the bottom of a stack of papers on my desk. Derrik Ashong articulates something that I’ve been musing on for a while now and I imagine many of you have as well: a knowing sense of change in the air coupled with the difficulty in defining it. I like his description:
It’s the unbridled optimism of we who see our time has come. The “Change Agents” coming soon to a theater near you, with a look and vibe that defies definition.
What Signifies the Turning Point?
Some look for big events to mark a big shift–a million people walking to DC in protest of racism, a man walking on the moon, sleek skyscrapers rising, sweeping policy changes… I’m inclined to think differently. Grandiose events may be a birthplace but they started with a conception: a woman refusing to get off the bus, an idealistic President saying something crazy like “we’re going to walk on the moon,” a small group of people asking hard questions about the best use of a plot of land, a gathering of people giving up a Friday night to watch a documentary together.
Biology teaches us that conception begins with a simple exchange, a timely merging,…
I don’t know about you but I’ve been pondering where all this (the unbridled optimism of we who see our time has come) will lead 9 months from now, 2 years from now, 5 years from now, 100 years from now.
You’re the Signifier
You “Change Agents” are the reason we’re doing what we are…and it will be because of you that this city begins the arduous process of redefining itself…its not going to come from slogans or good intentions or finger-pointing or even the most promising green-tech breakthrough, it will be because people like you in your individual spheres of influence are making a difference, challenging the status quo, asking probing questions, being willing to be challenged, getting together with others and DOING SOMETHING about it.
Wired did a funny thing this month; which shouldn’t surprise me really because I think they do some funny things quite often, in their own little techno/pop culture view of reality. This one really got me though.
They put a picture of Martha Stewart on their cover. It’s a classic Martha shot: head tilted to one side, the signature blouse, the Colgate teeth, the ageless golden coif… and next to her is a Wii Cake. Yeah, a cake that looks like a Wii.
Classic.
How to:.. Surprise Your Readers
Its Wired’s “How To” issue. At the bottom of their list of topics like, “rule the blogosphere”, “keep batteries charged”, and “get fired properly”, they have “bake a Wii cake.” Scattered on the cover are other tongue-in-cheek references: the issue is dubbed at the bottom, “piece of cake.” At the top, the sub-title “Martha geeks out.” Clearly they’re having some fun with this particular cultural oxymoron. Martha’s probably the last person we’d expect on the cover of a Wired magazine… well, maybe not the last person (considering her sizable branding power)… nominations, anyone?
So, on one hand, while I know both Wired and Martha are cashing in on the Grand Dame of Domesticity… I do appreciate the element of surprise and Wired’s ability to not take itself too seriously.
And maybe it’s the context, but even Martha seems to not be taking herself seriously. Her signature grin almost looks a tad “heh-heh-ish”, like “I know none of you are expecting me to be here, but here I am.” She even says “crap” in her interview (which got her some points from commenter’s).
Granted, my cynical side is arguing against this, saying “prison taught her the financial benefit of the unexpected; she’s just capitalizing on it… and Wired too.” This part of me would probably side with the anti-Martha TreeHugger readers offended by even the slightest Martha endorsement (which this isn’t).
But… aww… that’s just no fun. Its comedy!… and, what with Climate Change and “The War” and AIDS and the fact that Sacramento is spraying pesticide all over our city (and my organic garden) for some lousy mosquito’s, I’m grateful for a visual joke, a witty double-take every once in awhile, even if I know it’s a sales gimmick, contrived to stir up some talk.
These days, Humor and Surprise, anywhere you encounter it, is a breath of fresh air. It’s the same reason why certain YouTube videos like this one (“that’s why they call it business socks”) flit across the globe faster than Superman spinning back time to save Louis Lane from the earthquake. Sometimes you have to go over-the-top to shake things up, to stay out of ruts, to save the planet from the Lex Luthors of the world.
Where’s The Surprise in Development
In our own industry, the elements of surprise and humor are so rare they’re almost non-existent. I think its rather sad, myself, because they are fundamentally human experiences: it’s one of the subtle reasons why development has seemed so distant and removed from the populace— nobody can relate to it.
This is some of what we’re trying to change: Surprise! Development can be Humane. Surprise! Developers can be real people; not a suit and tie with an ego the size of… well… a skyscraper. Surprise! Developers can blog openly and invite others into a dialogue about their work. Surprise! Developers can drive a funny-looking electric car with hand-writing all over it (and think it’s really fun).
I also think the concept of eco-urban is somewhat of a surprise for a lot of people: for so long, cities themselves were viewed (correctly in many cases) as unsafe, unclean, and unattractive (largely thanks to the automobile…). So much so that I sometimes get looks of confusion from people when I talk about the ecological and sociological benefits of building in the urban core of a city. Surprise! Cities are actually the greenest technology we have available. Surprise! Cities will be safer, cleaner places to live in the future. Surprise! Cities built right have a richer quality of life and a greater sense of community, a more established sense of place.
Over the next six months, we’re hoping to do some surprising things… sssshhh, don’t tell… break a few more (breakable) rules and have some fun.
Now we just need Wired to find us… “How to:… redefine an industry.”
I’ve been enjoying a new magazine that came out a few months ago. The concept for the project in their own words is:
“Good is for those that give a damn. Its an entertaining magazine about things that matter.”
The perspective is refreshing and the writing inspired. Overall it fits well with our eco-urban perspective and makes you think. What more could you ask for!
Sactown Magazine’s second edition is out today. If you’ve got access, check out page 46. Thanks again for everyone who came out… the car will be on the streets soon, so be watching for an “unveiling” announcement…
