Links and Thoughts 14: 23 May 2014
Grimes – Oblivion
Good Morning.
I need a good tag for sociology and urban studies:
“This trend is particularly pronounced in the United States where innovative companies are spurning isolated corporate campuses in favor of collaborative, dense urban spaces, forming innovation districts in cities.” …
“These companies are urbanizing because they need to be close to talented workers who favor places that are walkable, bike-able and connected by transit, and because they want to be near other knowledge intensive firms”
Forget big suburban campuses, innovative corporations are moving downtown : Quartz
Does a bear post status updates in the woods?:
Why the Pope is on Twitter but not Facebook : Quartz
Tech, but also a candidate for the to-be-named Urban Studies tag:
“Living in the majority of civilization where Google Fiber isn’t available, we unfortunate souls have to pretend it doesn’t exist.”
Google Fiber is the best internet service – it’s not even a competition : Geek.com
ibid.:
“I’ve long argued that the real reason sprawl, or suburban development as we’ve been practicing it, is a problem isn’t because it’s ugly, environmentally damaging, racist, or some other form of evil. The more fundamental problem is that it’s a long term financial loser. The numbers just don’t add up over the long term when you take a lifecycle view of it.”
When Sprawl Hits the Wall : The Urbanophile
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Diary entry for 23 May:
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I read quite a bit on cities and livability, largely focusing on in-town living, sustainable density, and transit options — and that leaks into in the links I share and post.
We Don’t All Need Doctorates to solve these problems; in fact, the best solutions are intuitive and easy, because they work. [note: often the way we currently live does *not* reflect the best solutions, just inertia and failures of imagination.] We may not need graduate degrees, but I strongly feel that the choices we make need to be considered choices, not just thoughtlessly following ‘what we always do’ or letting one single economic aspect of a choice dictate our lives, and we could all use the flexibility to change our mind later and not let a single decision color or govern the rest of our lives, forever.
- I strongly believe in choice. You want to live in the suburbs and drive 60 miles round trip every day? OK.
- But I also believe in options. Many of us don’t have options, and that’s sad.
- I believe in collective action – on a local scale: that’s a PTA, a neighborhood association, a country club* — but even I believe even more strongly in regional transit, interstate cooperation, and federal infrastructure projects. If you think you can dictate how often your neighbor has to cut his grass but balk when services and projects that would benefit millions happens to offended nothing more than your prejudices, preconceptions, and uneducated opinion — without any appreciation of the rich, fatty irony — then that is where we disagree. “Not In My Back Yard” begins and *ends* in your actual back yard, and I’m sick of good ideas and progress being stopped by myopic assholes. [Additionally, it’s a shame ‘Not In My Back Yard’ doesn’t apply equally to fracking, coal ash, industrial discharges into our water supply, mountaintop removal, or exploding fertilizer plants. Call me partisan.]
* clarification: an association of assholes does not make the whole less asshole-ish, nor does it make anyone less of an asshole if they hide behind such fronts… but I still respect your choices. What I can’t stand, though, are folks who act like dictators on the local scale but aggrieved victims if anyone tries to treat them like they routinely treat others. The wording on that is intentional; I invite the religious among you to ponder why I might use such parallel language.
I have made choices myself (see: http://www.rocketbomber.com/2011/03/06/the-local) so I know about trade-offs: I thought living in-town has more benefits than acreage and square feet, and being *able* to walk (when I choose to) matters more than being required to drive.
But I had the choice. I had options.
And this is where city planning intersects with social action: Manhattan and San Francisco are fantastic places to live, but what happens when they become gated communities and theme parks for only the wealthiest among us?
I’ll stick with urban studies, though, and try to avoid the sociology where I can: telling people what is possible usually works better then telling them the whole world they live in is a façade and past the paper-thin walls they surround themselves in, there is a seething mass of humanity — and the innovation, technical progress, and political force is on our side of the paper screen, not theirs. Some of the privileged few know this already — which is why the spend so much money trying to shape public thought, and retrenching the institutions that support that wall. [The wall is thin but the approaches to the wall are mined, moated, fenced, and intentionally labyrinthine. Increasingly, the wall is guarded as well].
[that went dark quick…]
Anyway, since I live in a city, and cities are where more than half of us live, and cities are the engines that drive our economy — and since the Federal government is gridlocked and running on autopilot, while the state governments are partisan and running on stupid, Our Cities are increasingly the only government we have that works (when they work; the partisanship and stupidity often finds stuff that works to be the *absolute worst offense* against whatever god it is they worship, and so the rest of us have to suffer).
…and so: I read quite a bit on cities and livability, largely focusing on in-town living, sustainable density, and transit options — and that leaks into in the links I share and post. —M.
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Today’s Book Recommendation is Cities and the Wealth of Nations by Jane Jacobs. Jane Jacobs is better known for The Death and Life of Great American Cities — which is a classic book that describes the American City was, from 1870 to 1961, the year of its publication. Cities and the Wealth of Nations is a prescient book that tells us what our path can be. I have found it very instructive to return to Jacobs following the emergence of 21st century global trade, the success of Silicon Valley [the place; not the collection of companies], and the new cities we now live in. The reprint of this book is from 1985; none of these issues are new.
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