It's an over-used phrase, but it's taken on fresh meaning for me over the past year or so. A running theme in my thoughts about the world is a frustration at how people often overlook others. We certainly overlook people from the past, people from the future, and people from other cultures and countries.
But it's much worse than that. People in our own cities are overlooked. In our own neighborhoods, buildings, and even apartments!
Is it human nature to ignore the thoughts, feelings, and emotions of everyone but ourselves? Are we so survival-of-the-fittest that we can't become compassionate, empathetic, and considerate of others?
My boyfriend said to me last night that everyone is a carrier of love. And I added, a creator. Everyone has a story, everyone has a life, everyone has those feelings that you experience throughout the course of any given day. Through mere existence, we add brightness to the world through our relationships with one another. Why act selfishly and minimize that amazing gift?
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Utilitarianism in public spaces
What is a public space (a street, a park, a sidewalk) if not utilitarian? Anything that takes from our pool of public money and creates something in the public realm must at least meet, as a minimum, the criteria for being utilitarian.
But, how are we defining utilitarian? In most cases, in the U.S., when we're talking about utilitarian streets we're talking about a street that lacks congestion and that moves motor traffic quickly and efficiently. There is certainly a place for these streets. By and large, highways/freeways/interstates and major regional roads should meet this criteria and actually, they necessitate little more. Even some urban thoroughfares are perfectly good streets, functioning just as they should, in this pure utilitarian manner.
However, when we get down to the local level, be it urban or suburban, streets require quite a lot more. To use an industry term, utilitarian streets in this setting are incomplete. Here, we need to broaden our definition of utilitarian in order to maintain a street's usefulness, functionality, vibrancy, and livability. In designing these local roads, planners must consider the needs of many other public space users:
Without these facilities in place, these local streets are incomplete and in that sense, not utilitarian. These streets can become perfectly useless through this biased focus. At its essence, a street is a public space, a space funded by all and meant for all to use and enjoy. They are the veins through which the lifeblood of a city or town flows, and should be perceived as such vital signs of life as our very own heartbeat.
What's the pulse of your city?
But, how are we defining utilitarian? In most cases, in the U.S., when we're talking about utilitarian streets we're talking about a street that lacks congestion and that moves motor traffic quickly and efficiently. There is certainly a place for these streets. By and large, highways/freeways/interstates and major regional roads should meet this criteria and actually, they necessitate little more. Even some urban thoroughfares are perfectly good streets, functioning just as they should, in this pure utilitarian manner.
However, when we get down to the local level, be it urban or suburban, streets require quite a lot more. To use an industry term, utilitarian streets in this setting are incomplete. Here, we need to broaden our definition of utilitarian in order to maintain a street's usefulness, functionality, vibrancy, and livability. In designing these local roads, planners must consider the needs of many other public space users:
- pedestrians
- cyclists
- shop owners
- tourists
- transit passengers
- taxis
- buses
- delivery trucks
- children/elderly
Without these facilities in place, these local streets are incomplete and in that sense, not utilitarian. These streets can become perfectly useless through this biased focus. At its essence, a street is a public space, a space funded by all and meant for all to use and enjoy. They are the veins through which the lifeblood of a city or town flows, and should be perceived as such vital signs of life as our very own heartbeat.
What's the pulse of your city?
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Thoughts of Utopia
As much time as I spend on my bike, it never really crossed my mind until this weekend what it might be like to live in a place where bicycles and other non-motorized vehicles were the only modes of transportation.
The idea excites me so much so that it's got me thinking I'd like to make this a big part of my life's work. Surely somewhere (Oregon?) somebody's advocating for the creation of a city like this.
Imagine how quiet it would be.
Imagine how much easier it would be to meet your neighbors. Not only because they will travel beside you in open air, but also because the chances are greater that you'll end up traveling beside someone who lives relatively close to you.
In some regards, this would be a lot like stepping back in time. But, not entirely. With all of the mobile technologies of today, it's easy to conduct business remotely. Do we all really need to make these commutes to work? Let's think about re-centralizing things, about downsizing and distilling. Let's think about the health of ourselves, our neighbors, our land.
I think it has to start somewhere like Burning Man. I guess in some regards it would be like a permanent Burning Man, only with its focus and purpose changed. Roads would be designed for bikes or other roll-able things. Businesses could remain unchanged; there would likely just be fewer of them. Companies could still HQ their offices there. Why not? What a pleasant lifestyle.
I need to look further into this.
The idea excites me so much so that it's got me thinking I'd like to make this a big part of my life's work. Surely somewhere (Oregon?) somebody's advocating for the creation of a city like this.
Imagine how quiet it would be.
Imagine how much easier it would be to meet your neighbors. Not only because they will travel beside you in open air, but also because the chances are greater that you'll end up traveling beside someone who lives relatively close to you.
In some regards, this would be a lot like stepping back in time. But, not entirely. With all of the mobile technologies of today, it's easy to conduct business remotely. Do we all really need to make these commutes to work? Let's think about re-centralizing things, about downsizing and distilling. Let's think about the health of ourselves, our neighbors, our land.
I think it has to start somewhere like Burning Man. I guess in some regards it would be like a permanent Burning Man, only with its focus and purpose changed. Roads would be designed for bikes or other roll-able things. Businesses could remain unchanged; there would likely just be fewer of them. Companies could still HQ their offices there. Why not? What a pleasant lifestyle.
I need to look further into this.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Things that Make Me Go, "Hmm..."
The other day I created a document in Google Docs entitled "Things that make me go 'Hmm...'". Today, I decided to make a blog out of it, but to focus it on ideas and thoughts that come to me during the work day.
Today's topic: data cleaning. The world we live in is increasingly run by data. The internet is becoming the global government, steering us all towards certain behaviors whether we realize it or not. We're attached to the damn web more than we're not, and the internet itself is becoming more and more integrated into other technologies creating an even larger web which is beginning to encompass all of life.
If amino acids are the building blocks of life, data are the building blocks of the internet. Companies collect data on customers, other companies exist solely to analyze that data, and others still create hardware to store it all. We live in a research-rich world which, you'd think, would have collected enough data by now to accurately model the real, living, breathing world around us. But it does not.
I got a little carried away with that. My original point in writing was that we, as a people, as beings who have taken it upon themselves to design and craft the world around us, need to become better, more accurate, more diligent when storing information.
At the two jobs I've held so far, I have been (and the company has been) continually discouraged by the general disconnect between data and the world it is supposed to represent and also between multiple sources of the same data. So much money (read: "time and effort") is spent on cleaning this data in order to make it useful for analyzing and actually making progress in any one of the millions of fields dirty data now affects.
The disconnect creates the need for manual operation rather than automation. In this data world, millions and millions of people are employed the world over in these menial jobs. The dot com industry (which is beginning to encompass all industries as well as creating new ones) employs domestic workers for some of this work, but also has a major hand in outsourcing it to places like India where it is cheaper.
The point of all this is, our increasing dependence on data and our reliance on those who collect it has led us to a position where we're (a) forcing people into boring jobs and (b) thwarting our own success at innovation as a human race. If life is about the pursuit of happiness, it doesn't look like we're heading in the right direction.
Today's topic: data cleaning. The world we live in is increasingly run by data. The internet is becoming the global government, steering us all towards certain behaviors whether we realize it or not. We're attached to the damn web more than we're not, and the internet itself is becoming more and more integrated into other technologies creating an even larger web which is beginning to encompass all of life.
If amino acids are the building blocks of life, data are the building blocks of the internet. Companies collect data on customers, other companies exist solely to analyze that data, and others still create hardware to store it all. We live in a research-rich world which, you'd think, would have collected enough data by now to accurately model the real, living, breathing world around us. But it does not.
I got a little carried away with that. My original point in writing was that we, as a people, as beings who have taken it upon themselves to design and craft the world around us, need to become better, more accurate, more diligent when storing information.
At the two jobs I've held so far, I have been (and the company has been) continually discouraged by the general disconnect between data and the world it is supposed to represent and also between multiple sources of the same data. So much money (read: "time and effort") is spent on cleaning this data in order to make it useful for analyzing and actually making progress in any one of the millions of fields dirty data now affects.
The disconnect creates the need for manual operation rather than automation. In this data world, millions and millions of people are employed the world over in these menial jobs. The dot com industry (which is beginning to encompass all industries as well as creating new ones) employs domestic workers for some of this work, but also has a major hand in outsourcing it to places like India where it is cheaper.
The point of all this is, our increasing dependence on data and our reliance on those who collect it has led us to a position where we're (a) forcing people into boring jobs and (b) thwarting our own success at innovation as a human race. If life is about the pursuit of happiness, it doesn't look like we're heading in the right direction.
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