Digital Millwright

"Capital Moves" Shows Why Labor Must Unite Globally to Counterbalance Multinational Capital

2011-04-03T23:39:00.000-07:00

Labor historian Jefferson Cowie follows RCA's radio and television manufacturing operations from Camden, New Jersey to Bloomington, Indiana to Memphis, Tennessee and finally to a maquiladora industrial park in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. RCA's quest for a cheap, docile and sexually stratified workforce fails to ensure its survival as an independent company, but vividly illustrates the flight of capital to havens of cheap labor and lax regulation. Cowie's work is at once scholarly, compassionate and balanced as it considers both the benefits and detriments of manufacturing as it waxes in one community but wanes in another. Over a decade old, this book's message rings truer than ever: If labor and its policymaking allies are to counterbalance multinational corporations, they must integrate their efforts worldwide.

DOs and DON'Ts for Technology Salespeople

2010-08-22T11:28:00.000-07:00

As an IT enterprise architect, I often meet with salespeople from among the best-known and most reputable technology companies, as well as from younger companies staffed with industry veterans. I am often flabbergasted by the mistakes they make as they try to sell complex solutions. But I also depend on these salespeople to help me make the right recommendations and build internal support for my efforts, so I often work with them to refine their approach. Here is a sampling of the advice I give:

If you are selling something, say so. I have gotten email from a company requesting my help in doing "research", when they were in fact trying to sell sophisticated software.
Do your homework. I have written extensive requests for information and proposals, and spent hours explaining what we needed, only to receive generic presentation and sales materials in return.
Don't rely exclusively on simple associations to construct your sales agenda. Salespeople have spent many hours preparing and presenting materials that are only tangentially related to my employer's situation, or that cite customers with vastly different circumstances.
Don't sell things that customers are not ready for. Recently, after briefing a sales team extensively, I was rewarded by an hour-long presentation on an advanced capability that my employer could not possibly use in the next several years. Some foundational IT-enabled business capabilities can take years to mature, due to the need to re-engineer business processes, develop organizational culture and capabilities, and perform complex integrations with critical older systems.
Don't assume that a close working relationship can easily be extended. I have seen salespeople casually introduce themselves and start selling complex solutions to people whose names they have just learned from their their regular contacts.
Don't try to undermine the IT-business partner relationship. I have seen salespeople directly confront business managers with specific proposals without the support of IT. IT organizations rely on close working relationships that pool technical and business expertise to make commitments that shape the organization for many years.
Get the team right. After extensive pre-meeting preparation, I have often spent hours meeting with pre-sales consultants who did not fully understand the problem at hand.
Keep your word. I have made detailed plans with salespeople for joint investigations or technology demonstrations that could have laid the groundwork for new business deals, only to have the plans fall through because the sales team did not do their agreed-upon part.

This advice may seem obvious, but I find that the few salespeople that follow these rules consistently stand out from the crowd and are a joy to work with.

Growing Up in an Experimental Village: Two Views of City Life

2010-07-31T23:08:00.000-07:00

The sleek glistening Concorde SST jet, its dropped needle nose angled like a pterodactyl's beak, slid through the cloudless blue sky, high above the Manhattan skyline. I saw this from the balcony of the top-floor apartment where I grew up in New York City's Rochdale Village just north of Kennedy Airport, which the SST was approaching.

My father selected the spacious apartment, with three bedrooms and wood parquet floors, mainly for the view. My family arrived in 1964 when I was two and Rochdale was still under construction. I grew up watching the Manhattan skyline about fifteen miles to the West. I saw the World Trade Center being built, with self-erecting cranes atop rising towers that glowed a fiery orange at sunrise. I marveled when the lights atop the Empire State Building were tinted for various occasions: red, white and blue for the fourth of July, orange for Halloween, blue and white in honor of the New York Mets. I had an unobstructed view of fall foliage, train movements, fires, storms, fireworks displays, and blackouts.

View Larger Map

Rochdale Village was established as a cooperative and named after the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers, a group of British skilled workers who, in 1844, banded together to form the first consumers' cooperative to sell items they could not otherwise afford. Rochdale Village was developed by the United Housing Foundation, a real estate investment trust with roots in the labor union movement. It received crucial support from urban planner and builder Robert Moses and New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, along with $86 million in financing from New York State agencies. Rochdale was experimental in that it was one of the first large urban developments -- twenty fourteen-story, three-section buildings holding nearly six thousand families -- intended to be racially integrated. It was also designed to retain the middle and working classes in New York City instead of losing them to the suburbs.

Rochdale was planned as a walkable and self-contained residential community, with two elementary schools, a middle school, two shopping centers, a medical center, a community center, generous parking, access to public transportation and even its own plant for generating electricity. It was laid out with broad green lawns, a network of walking paths and many playing fields and playgrounds.

The early years of Rochdale seemed to fulfill the its promise. Low housing costs, community amenities and the prospect of living in an integrated community attracted a diverse group of middle and working class people. A multiracial and multicultural community flourished with many racially mixed organizations. My mother taught in one of the elementary schools, and was well-loved in the community. During those early years, we had many friends and I could always find children to play with.

But Rochdale was not insulated from the crime and racial and class tensions rampant in New York City during the 1960's and 1970's. It was built on the site of the former Jamaica Racetrack in a historically African-American area with solid neighborhoods of private homes as well as low-income housing projects and pockets of extreme poverty. However, its initial racial composition was 80% Caucasian. As I grew up, I became less and less comfortable walking around. I got lots of sneers and taunts from many of the kids who used our parks, malls and schools but lived in the surrounding neighborhoods, or who had recently moved to Rochdale from tougher neighborhoods. By the time we moved out in 1981, all of our Caucasian friends and many of our African-American friends had fled Rochdale for the suburbs or other New York City neighborhoods.

I have not kept in touch with anyone in Rochdale Village, but the community website and demographic data suggest a thriving, overwhelmingly African-American community, and crime statistics show very significant reductions over the last twenty years.

I grew up with two views of city life: the skyline and the experimental community. I learned that cities are fascinating, complex and organic--always full of possibility but often beyond our control.

For this article, I referred to Rochdale Village and the rise and fall of integrated housing in New York City by historian and former resident Peter Eisenstadt, whose forthcoming book Rochdale Village: Robert Moses, 6,000 Families, and New York City's Great Experiment in Integrated Housingcan now be ordered in advance.

"Happiness at Work" Offers a Playbook for Personal Fulfillment.

2010-07-26T00:14:00.000-07:00

In The Fifth Discipline, which I reviewed on July 11, personal mastery is the first of five disciplines in which learning organizations must engage. The central fifth discipline is systems thinking, which in author Peter Senge's approach, integrates and aligns the disciplines of personal mastery, mental models, team learning and shared vision. "Happiness at Work: Be Resilient, Motivated, and Successful--No Matter What" by business scholar and teacher Srikumar S. Rao complements Senge's work on organizational development with a guide to personal mastery. The book contains thirty-five short chapters, each with a mixture of philosophical arguments, pragmatic advice, parables and exercises--all designed to shift the reader's personal perspective and consequent actions.

Rao's basic premise is that we create our own reality, not in some magical sense, but through a continuous stream of thoughts and reactions that we incorporate into perpetual internal narratives. Like Senge, Rao asserts that we are captives of mental models of which we are unaware, and that there is much freedom to be gained by becoming conscious of our mental strictures. As the creators and managers of our own mental states, we can perceive new opportunities and gain new energy to pursue them. Also like Senge, Rao urges us to focus on what we share with those around us and to seek meaningful rather than competitive interactions. For both Senge and Rao, the value of a vision is the work it inspires us to do, not in whether the end state is realized. While not explicitly advocating systems thinking, Rao enjoins us to see ourselves as part of a greater whole, and look for opportunities to serve the common good rather than just our own direct interests.

There is, certainly, a fine line between systematically striving for personal fulfillment and self-interested, Machiavellian conduct. In a chapter entitled "Standing on Slippery Rocks", Rao instructs readers to progressively sharpen their consciousness of the impacts of their actions. Rao also asks us to trust that the world is a fundamentally benevolent place that is gradually making moral progress, even in the face of contemporary setbacks.

"Happiness at Work" is largely an artful repackaging of ideas from Zen Buddhism and elsewhere. Many of the ideas will be familiar to those exposed to the human potential movement. But understanding is not the same as disciplined practice, so the true value of the book arises from doing the exercises and applying the results. In return, Rao promises a changed life, replete with energy, anticipation, commitment, fulfillment and joy--although this life may not be what the reader has planned.

Can this work? I read the book cover-to-cover this weekend, and did abbreviated versions of a few of the exercises. Even though I have been exposed to much of the material before, I do feel clearer and more excited about what is ahead of me, and I think I am communicating more effectively about some difficult issues. I plan to go through the book again, and do all of the exercises. Stay tuned...

Is Waste Essential to Sustainability?

2010-07-17T01:37:00.000-07:00

Elephant ears in the fryer

Recently, I visited Portland's Oregon Zoo with my wife and daughter. Besides enjoying the animals, especially Samudra, the now not-so-small baby elephant, we made some purchases. First were two elephant ears for my wife and daughter: tasty, zoo-themed slabs of fried dough slathered with butter and sugar. At the end of our visit, we stopped in the gift shop, where my ten-year-old daughter got a stuffed animal. In the gift shop, a sign announced an upcoming renovation that would enhance the shop's sustainability, with new bamboo shelves and paints with low levels of volatile organic compounds (VOCs).

The sign got me thinking. Certainly, the zoo's activities embody sustainability: education about the precious diversity of life; breeding and sometimes even releasing endangered species; and contributing to the economic well-being of the Portland metropolitan area. But the concession stands and gift stores sell a lot of junk food that isn't good for us and souvenirs that we don't really need, like plastic toys, stuffed animals and T-shirts.

But everyone likes souvenirs, and they contribute to the economic viability of the zoo. So, are they a good thing? It seems that unnecessary consumption is an essential fundraising tool for even the worthiest of causes. Consider the charity auctions and galas that consume significant resources just to get people to come and donate. Why not just donate everything directly to the charity? But I imagine that just asking people to write a check doesn't work as well.

A few days after our trip to the zoo, I read an article in the Oregonian about the Genesis Biopod, a new "green burial" kit for the disposal of cremains in bodies of water. An entrepreneur has created a $750 kit centered around an open clay receptacle designed to serve as an aquatic habitat after holding a water-soluble bag of ashes. Advantages of this product include preventing the wind from dispersing ashes where they are not wanted, and the opportunity to record GPS coordinates as a virtual headstone at sea. Certainly, it is better for the environment than a conventional metal casket and embalming, but wouldn't a $5 water-soluble clay urn with a snug lid be even more sustainable?

So here is my question to you: Can we consume sustainably and support sustainable causes without wasteful incentives?

"The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization" Guides Leaders of all Stripes

2010-07-11T19:43:00.000-07:00

We expect organizations to be corrupt and dysfunctional, requiring watchdogs to keep them on track. We expect their leaders to be venal and short-sighted, on the verge of being uncovered by investigators. Peter Senge, however, in the 2006 revision of this 1990 management classic, provides a convincing and inspiring guide for building successful organizations that adapt to change while nurturing their members. Learning organizations see their members, operations and surroundings as a connected whole, and use each of their members to continually sense, interpret and adapt to change. A learning organization must continually engage in five disciplines:

Personal Mastery, in which individuals develop personal visions while seeing the world exactly as it is. They harness the resulting "creative tension" to focus their efforts on realizing these visions.
Mental Models, which are ways of consciously and unconsciously perceiving the world. All models are simplifications and therefore limiting. Many are useful, but often we are not conscious of the models we embrace and the limits they impose. Therefore we can achieve new levels of success by becoming conscious of these models and deliberately evolving them.
Team Learning, is the development of a collective intelligence and capability exceeding that of any individual. The foundation of team learning is dialog, or the free flow of meaning through a group, rather just discussion, in which ideas are tossed back and forth, often contentiously.
Shared Vision is woven together from notions of success across the organization. Collaborative development is required for a widespread and enthusiastic embrace of a vision, rather than the mere compliance that typically meets visions imposed by leaders.
Systems Thinking is a body of knowledge, methods and tools for understanding the interrelated forces that affect any situation and developing approaches for effecting change. This Fifth Discipline provides essential support and alignment to the other four. Practicing any of the disciplines without taking into account their impact on the others can lead to failure. For example, adopting a new shared vision is futile if contradictory mental models ingrained in the organization are not addressed.

The book is replete with theory, techniques and examples pertaining to all five disciplines. Senge, an experienced teacher, researcher and management consultant, relates many stories of work with leaders of all types. Central to the book are the twelve system archetypes, which are recurring patterns that occur in systems of all types. These archetypes are represented by causal loop diagrams, which consist of reinforcing and balancing feedback loops.

Causal loop diagram for
Growth and Underinvestment archetype

For example, the Growth and Underinvestment archetype (left) demonstrates that increases in sales and production typically reinforce each other, but growth can be inhibited by underinvestment in capacity. Leaders, when faced with the effects of balancing feedback, often push harder on the elements of the reinforcing relationships, rather than looking further to the underlying inhibitors and the related opportunities for leverage. In our example, the CEO might lean on the sales force to meet quota while failing to recognize that delivery backlogs are causing customers to defect.

The last chapters of the book are focused on the ultimate systems thinking target: a sustainable future for the planet. The diagrams in the book clearly show the difference between wasteful and sustainable processes. But here is where Senge's approach may meet its limits. Senge demonstrates how his approach can have a profound impact on business organizations, nonprofits and communities small enough to work together. But it is not clear how his approach could be used to, say, get developing nations to stop burning coal to fuel their growth. Or could we just look across Oregon's educational bureaucracy to respond to next year's 9% cuts in state funding with minimal impact on classroom instruction? Do we really need 197 districts and 20 education service districts? I suppose local vested interests are just another part of the system, but realistic opportunities for leverage seem hard to find.

Nevertheless, I recommend this book highly to anyone working for business success or social change. It is both enlightening and inspiring.

"Inventing Niagara" Tells Unique History of Cultural Icon

2010-07-05T14:21:00.000-07:00

My parents honeymooned at Niagara Falls in 1955. I visited once in the early 1980s. I've always thought of it as a natural attraction surrounded by lots of tourist traps in a region struggling with its post-industrial economic fate. Ginger Strand's "Inventing Niagara: Beauty, Power and Lies" gave me a comprehensive tour, including the seventeenth-century discovery of the falls by LaSalle and Hennepin, treaties and conflict with Native Americans, early landownership, tourist development, hydro-power development, massive industrial contamination, and contemporary economic renewal efforts.

Today, Niagara Falls, while still beautiful and popular, is at the beck and call of hydro-power operators. Half to three-quarters of the Niagara River is diverted for electrical power generation, but the falls have been rebuilt so that they still appear vigorous and full. They are actually turned up each morning during the peak tourist season and turned down each night to capture more water to generate electricity.

Strand's engaging narration is ultimately about our relationship with the natural world. We are attracted to great forces of nature, and ultimately seek to dominate them, whether by climbing mountains, hunting game, or building public works. On the other hand, we yearn for natural experiences, but even these are often manufactured. Frederick Law Olmsted, the famed designer of New York's Central Park and numerous other urban landscapes, advocated the rescue of the falls from post-Civil War tawdriness, leading to the appointment of his firm to design the first state park in the United States. But fundamentally, Olmsted was not an environmentalist, but saw natural beauty as a tool for educating and elevating the common man. Strand describes Central Park, built by 4,000 laborers on swampland, as the city's largest art object, rather than a recreation of Manhattan prior to Dutch settlement.

Certainly, parkland and urban tree canopies enrich our lives and are critical to making cities livable today, and I don't think Strand would argue this point. Rather, she advocates a middle ground between those who seek to minimize our impact on the land and those who see it as a "limitless resource for exploitation", urging us to consider "the natural world...as an equal partner in shaping the future of our planet".

This eclectic book offers something for everyone, including lovers of natural and human history, ecology, engineering and travel. Although she does not mention it in her book, Strand's holistic approach to her subject embodies the discipline of systems thinking that Peter Senge teaches in The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization. But more about that later...

"The Bowery Boys" New York History Podcast Illuminates and Entertains

2010-06-13T18:26:00.000-07:00

I have been a fan of New York history for a long time, and I recently discovered a podcast that I find somewhat addictive. "The Bowery Boys", no, not the infamous New York Gang nor a group of actors from the 1930s and 1940s, but two enthusiastic, quirky and friendly-sounding historians and commentators. So far, I have listened to their podcasts on Penn Station, some of the lesser-known islands surrounding Manhattan, and Robert Moses. Tom and Greg have a true gift for engaging their audiences. Their podcasts are holographic, in that each not only focuses on a particular topic, but tells the history of New York City, and often the United States, from a particular perspective. The podcasts are therefore highly complementary, and can be enjoyed in any order. For more information, see The Bowery Boys blog or subscribe using iTunes or other podcast aggregators.

1995 Account of CIA Mole Yields Historical and Organizational Insight

2010-04-04T12:07:00.000-07:00

Betrayal:: The Story of Aldrich Ames, an American Spy is a fifteen-year-old account of a generally incompetent, alcoholic and cynical CIA agent who, in the throes of an expensive divorce and remarriage, began passing highly classified information to the KGB, the Soviet Union's predominant state security and espionage organization. In 1985, the first year of his treason, he exposed about a dozen Soviet double agents, condemning them to imprisonment, interrogation and death. In few short years, his work led to the destruction of the entire network of Soviet CIA collaborators, each of whom had lost faith in the KGB or the Soviet system as a whole, and entrusted their lives to the CIA.

"Betrayal" is also a gripping recollection of the end of the Cold War, including the Iran-Contra affair, US support of the predecessors to the Taliban in Afghanistan, and the collapse of the Soviet Union. It also recounts the some of the intricate competition between the CIA and KGB. For example, in 1986 KGB worked to divert CIA attention from Ames by arranging the seduction and compromise of US Marine embassy guards Clayton Lonetree and Arnold Bracy in Moscow.

The most noteworthy part of the book is not the Cold War intrigue or Ames' perfidy, but rather the organizational inertia of the CIA, an elite organization with many highly-educated and well-connected employees. Despite the carnage of intelligence sources and Ames' almost constant irresponsible, suspicious and drunken behavior, it was 1991 before the CIA began looking for a mole in its ranks, and 1994 before the FBI arrested Ames and his wife. While the CIA is particularly burdened by the need for secrecy, most organizations and industries guard their internal affairs carefully. Without effective external controls, reviews and cross-pollination, any organization or industry can enter a moral and perceptual reality of its own making. Paul Krugman recently wrote that Wall Street requires adult supervision. So does any other human endeavor.

"Deep Dive" Provides a Whirlwind Tour and Toolkit for Business Strategists

2010-03-26T11:01:00.000-07:00

The book uses the pearl diver as a metaphor for the
strategist

Deep Dive: The Proven Method for Building Strategy, Focusing Your Resources, and Taking Smart Action is an engagingly written, well-organized and shamelessly self-promoting business strategy guide by consultant and speaker Rich Horwath. The book, which also references scholarly publications extensively, is a quick, inexpensive and worthwhile business read. It explains exactly what strategy is and how to develop and evaluate it. While it is directed primarily at senior business leaders, it is also valuable for entrepreneurs, department and team leaders, as well as anyone developing their own career strategy.

Horwath defines business strategy as "the intelligent allocation of limited resources through a unique system of activities to outperform the competition in serving customers." Competition occurs within industries, but also within organizations and between individuals. Even within well-established enterprises, departments and individuals compete for responsibilities, influence and resources.

The book is replete with lists of definitions accompanied by supporting examples and diagrams. For example, there are two "lenses" of strategy: Performing activities that are different from those of the competition, and performing similar activities in a different way. Doing the same thing in the same way, just better, does not yield competitive advantage. In fact, Horwath uses a biological metaphor to advance a "Principle of Competitive Exclusion", that no two functionally identical competitors can co-exist.

Horwath identifies three disciplines of strategic thinking:

Acumen: development of insights through careful research, analysis and thinking
Allocation: making the trade-offs necessary to focus limited resources
Action: executing strategy to achieve goals

The book is full of graphical and tabular tools for strategy development and evaluation. In fact, I purchased the book because it gave clear instructions for developing an activity system map, which is a high-level representation of business strategy.

While the book has an upbeat and engaging tone, it does not minimize the challenge of successful strategy development and implementation. Not only does it require a lot of disciplined and collaborative work, but it is fraught with pitfalls such as group-think, confirmation bias and the desire to justify sunk costs.

At the end of "Deep Dive", there is, not surprisingly, a mini-chapter on how Horwath stands ready to help further, but this does little to diminish the overall value of the book, which could serve as a prelude to deeper engagement for business leaders and other strategists.

"The Ghost Map" Portrays a Triumph of Science over Stubborn Ignorance

2010-02-13T14:04:00.000-08:00

A variant of Dr. Snow's map, showing 1854 cholera cases in London
clustered around the Broad Street pump (click to enlarge)

Steven Johnson's 2006 book, selected for Portland's Everybody Reads 2010 program, is a gripping and rigorous work of historical nonfiction and interdisciplinary analysis. It shares many urban concepts with Jeb Brugmann's Welcome to the Urban Revolution and David Owen's Green Metropolis, but approaches them differently. "The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic--and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World"chronicles the 1854 cholera epidemic that struck London, a vast city overwhelmed by accumulations of human waste. City leaders and physicians, deeply convinced of the notion that miasmas, or foul smells, cause cholera despite clear evidence to the contrary, were ineffective and often counterproductive in combating the disease. "The Ghost Map" tells the story of physician John Snow and cleric Henry Whitehead, who traced the source of disease to a neighborhood pump contaminated by seepage from an adjacent cesspool.

Snow's careful research, informed by Whitehead's neighborhood expertise and investigations, linked the outbreak of disease with the use of the contaminated Broad Street pump in London's Soho district. Snow's map established this causation without knowledge of the underlying bacterial cause of cholera. Snow's work resulted in the removal of the Broad Street pump handle late in the course of the epidemic, which, even if it saved few lives immediately, was the first science-based intervention in a cholera epidemic.

Eventually, Snow's ideas were broadly accepted and London redesigned its sewer system to protect public health--albeit by reliably conveying raw sewage to outfalls downstream of the Thames River water intakes, where the tides swept them into the ocean.

Johnson argues, like Owen, that that the resource efficiency of urban concentrations is essential to our "City-Planet" as its population grows, and that cities must be kept safe to preserve the attractive power of their economic advantages. As Brugmann would, he sees the Snow-Whitehead collaboration as a triumph of urbanism, in which two men with diverse backgrounds combined forces in the midst of a great city. Johnson, however, identifies two major urban threats: Infectious disease and nuclear weapons. The author is optimistic about the ability of medical science to quickly and accurately analyze microbes, even those engineered by humans, and develop protective vaccines. However, the threat of a nuclear explosive remains daunting as nuclear proliferation continues and non-state actors become more sophisticated and globally capable.

Johnson touches on an even bigger problem: stubborn ignorance. He notes that the theory of evolution is at the core of our ability to combat infectious disease, and that failure to accept evolutionary theory is therefore a national security issue for the United States. Unfortunately, such ignorant stances are widespread and diverse in this country. Like the miasmatics of the late nineteenth century, we repeatedly resort to positions that fly in the face of facts and prudence. Most notably, ideologues inveigh against the "unequivocal" scientific evidence and imminent danger of climate change.
On the other hand, the miasmatics have long been discredited and everyone agrees about the role of microbes in infectious disease. Safe water supplies are standard in modern cities, although cholera outbreaks persist. "The Ghost Map" inspired me with a tale of how two thoughtful and persistent investigators without wealth or prominence were able to make a massive impact at the dawn of modern science, but made me wonder about the power of reason to triumph over superstition and ideology in today's world. The triumph seems inevitable, but, on the subject of climate change, will it be be fast enough to avert global tragedy?

"Welcome to the Urban Revolution" Navigates the Essentials of Successful Cities

2010-02-01T02:15:00.000-08:00

By 2050, 70% of the world’s people will reside in cities, and the world’s population will likely peak at over 9 billion. While people have been migrating to cities since the advent of agriculture the final phase of this migration will occur in the coming decades. During this final phase, the world is organizing into networks of increasingly interconnected cities that are challenging nation-states for world influence. By the middle of this century, Jeb Brugmann envisions an interconnected Global City, which he explains in "Welcome to the Urban Revolution: How Cities are Changing the World".

What makes cities successful and migration from rural to urban areas so inevitable? Brugmann identifies four urban advantages that attract migrants and drive prosperity: density, scale, association and extension. Urban enterprises that involve large numbers of people or goods in close proximity benefit from cities' density and scale. Similarly, urbanites migrants have the opportunity to associate with a greater volume and variety of people relative to their rural counterparts. The final urban advantage, extension, hinges on the superior urban communications and transportation infrastructure, along with familial and communal relationships that persist through diasporas.

City residents can combine the four urban advantages very powerfully through the organic or intentional practice of urbanism. The citysystems that result are tightly coupled value networks that nurture and exploit the economic, social and cultural assets of urban residents. Brugmann describes the migration of rural cattle herders to Dharavi, a suburb of Mumbai. Urban migrants and their descendants use their familial and communal connections to procure hides from the countryside. Dharavi leather industry workers produce high-quality goods in the dense, multipurpose neighborhoods in which they live and work, often in mixed use structures. Their finished leather goods find markets in the upscale stores of Mumbai, but are also distributed globally through Mumbai’s port facilities. While this example of urbanism is organic, or unplanned, Brugmann sees intentional urbanism as critical to sustainable urban futures, and his book serves as a primer to aspiring urbanists.

Citysystems are robust, durable and adaptable, since they are owned, nurtured and governed by their residents. But if the local establishment denies its communities

opportunities to build or nurture their own citysystems, they are likely to form powerful and persistent insurgencies that fully exploit the four urban advantages. Hamas in the Gaza Strip and the MS-13 gang that began in Los Angeles and spread to other US cities are examples of urban insurgencies that persist in the face of massive suppression efforts by powerful governments.

What are the alternatives to citysystem development? City model development creates suburban tract housing, upscale residential high-rises and condos, commercial office space, shopping malls, and the like that typically evoke or emulate some features of traditional cities. For example, in the mid-nineties, I spent a few weeks working in “Times Square”, a gleaming new multistory mall and office tower in Hong Kong. Nearer to Portland, the "Bridgeport Village" is an uncovered shopping mall of national chains sprinkled with a few public amenities like fountains and benches. While city model developers may adopt and vigorously market strategies like transit-oriented or mixed-use development, their primary purpose is to turn a profit. The scale and homogeneity required for attractive investments, however, typically precludes the dense and diverse urban settings required to fully exploit the urban advantages.

Another development form is master-planned cities, which typically manifest the vision of an autocrat or public-private partnership on a grand scale. The plans for these developments are typically blunt, standardized instruments sufficient to attract capital and secure permits, but insufficient to attract and interweave urbanisms that constitute sustainable local communities. The ultimate master planner was Robert Moses, whose bridges, highways and parks irrevocably shaped the New York Metropolitan area to the detriment of mass transit, racial and socioeconomic equity as well as some thriving, traditional communities.

While some master-planned developments do indeed work pretty well—I grew up in one called Rochdale Village that still appears to be thriving--they often represent a lost opportunity compared to the richness and vibrancy of the Strategic Cities that are Brugmann’s paragons of urban development. A strategic city, like Curitiba, Brazil; Chicago, Illinois or Barcelona, Spain, is one where public and private stakeholders have organized themselves into an urban regime that weaves together economic, social, cultural and infrastructural (e.g. mass transit) systems to produce sustainable advantage. These urban regimes are coalitions of government, business, and nonprofit organizations that transcend electoral cycles.

At the other end of the spectrum, Cities of Crisis like Mumbai and Detroit are whipsawed between conflicting urban strategies. In Mumbai, slum development by urban migrants and their allies is in direct conflict with city model slum clearance and redevelopment, resulting in a corrupt and often violent method governance of slum clearance and other municipal activities. In Detroit, incentives like tax breaks and federally funded highways, along with a globalizing auto industry, sucked industry and residents from the center city, some parts of which are reverting to prairie.

In the middle of Brugmann’s urban scale are Great Opportunities Cities, which may have a variety of urban assets, but have not assembled the urban regime that advances a distinctly local urban strategy. Brugmann includes his native Toronto, as well as Los Angeles, Sydney, and Santiago, Chile in this category.

Where type of city is Portland, Oregon? The Rose City has leading-edge public transit, an ever-growing number of appealing neighborhoods with thriving retail centers, an urban growth boundary, an innovative regional government, along with industry clusters such as apparel, high-tech and food. However, city model and master-planned developments have damaged or destroyed many of its ethnic communities, and Portland’s urban regime has struggled and split over critical initiatives like adequately funding public services and attracting the industry necessary to fully employ its residents. For those like me who aspire to help turn Portland from a Great Opportunity City to a Strategic City, this book provides crucial insight and practical guidance.

International Payment Card Processing Provides a Model for Aviation Security

2010-01-01T13:29:00.000-08:00

Like many other bloggers, I have been contemplating the Christmas Day "crotch bomber" attack on Northwest Flight 253. President Obama, among others, has cited the failure of government agencies to properly share information. I'd like to propose a Global Transportation Safety System (GTSS) based on our international systems for processing credit and debit card payments.

These systems allow any cardholder to pay any merchant with an account at an acquiring institution. The acquirer then uses a payment network to contact the issuing institution, which automatically decides whether to authorize the transaction. Periodically, the merchant sends a batch of authorized transactions to the acquirer, which sends the batch through the credit card organization (e.g. MasterCard, Visa) to the issuer. Once the issuer pays the acquirer, the acquirer reimburses the merchant, less fees. In the background, sophisticated computer software detects suspicious activity. At the core of this system is the notion of transaction processing, which reliably completes and durably records each successful transaction, and cleans up any partial transactions resulting from system failures or user errors.

GTSS would enable authorized airline and government personnel to electronically share standardized information about suspicious individuals and events with their national coordinating agency. Each national agency would automatically use GTSS to automatically determine whether that individual could fly there. GTSS would use a standard risk assessment method that individual nations could customize, and would direct ambiguous results to an analyst who would promptly resolve them. GTSS would insert each determination in a national flight risk database, which officials would check before issuing passports, visas, tickets or boarding passes for travel to or through that nation. GTSS would authorize or decline each of these actions via additional transactions. Therefore, if additional information surfaced about a passenger after an authorization transaction, GTSS would automatically re-evaluate the risk and alert authorities. In addition, airline software would automatically send GTSS information about events such as a cash payment for an expensive ticket or a passenger check-in without luggage for a long flight.

GTSS would depend on reliable identification of all passengers. Participating governments would be required to issue biometric passports compliant with international standards. Wealthier countries and airlines would motivate and help their poorer counterparts to issue robust credentials and participate in GTSS. Individuals flying or connecting from non-participating countries, airports or airlines would be subject to additional security checks.

Certainly, there are other practices that governments and airlines could adopt on higher-risk flights, such as the vaunted security procedures of the Israeli airline El Al. Also, mistakes would still occur with GTSS, but they could be corrected quickly and reliably. The cooperative, real-time nature of GTSS would foster consistent and efficient security, while preserving national sovereignty, much as our card payment processing systems enable the ubiquity, speed, and issuer control of payment card transactions.

Robots Are Gradually Taking Over Many Human Tasks

2009-12-28T01:55:00.000-08:00

In the previous post, the "Prometeus" video imagines the future of the Internet as an all-encompassing repository of information and experiences. But will virtual reality completely supplant the physical world? I don't think so. Computers and networks need power, cooling, physical security and ongoing management. Besides, we'll still be around, with our physical needs and desires. On the other hand, as Internet media absorb and generate more and more of our information, robots are taking over many physical tasks. But what is a robot, anyway? Here are the relevant wiktionary definitions:

A mechanical or virtual, artificial agent
An electro-mechanical system, which, by its appearance or movements, conveys a sense that it has intent or agency of its own
A machine which is anthropomorphic or zoomorphic in shape or scope of function

As William Saletan writes in his New York Times book review of Michael Belfiore's "The Department of Mad Scientists: How DARPA Is Remaking Our World, from the Internet to Artificial Limbs", the US Defense Advanced Research Products Agency (DARPA) is driving the creation of robots with human capabilities In 2004-2007, DARPA sponsored a series of three Grand Challenge races for driverless trucks, resulting in the substantially improved performance in the second and third races, surpassing human performance in areas such as reaction time.

Robots are not only emulating our bodies, but are beginning to heal and complete them. DARPA is currently working on a surgical robot that could help wounded soldiers survive until they can reach a hospital, while some amputees are using experimental prosthetic limbs controlled by the signals of surgically re-routed nerves

Accelerating developments in artificial intelligence, upon which robotics depends for cognitive capabilities, have caused some to consider the singularity, which is the technological creation of superhuman intelligence. The annual RoboCup robotic soccer seeks to transcend human capabilities with the following goal:

By mid-21st century, a team of fully autonomous humanoid robot soccer players shall win the soccer game, complying with the official rule of the FIFA, against the winner of the most recent World Cup

The video shows selections from the 2009 RoboCup competition. The humanoid finals at the end remind me of my days as an assistant Microsoccer coach when my daughter was in kindergarten. Enjoy!

Where We're Headed

2009-12-26T22:43:00.000-08:00

I have been blogging for about five months now, and my typical end-of-year vacation has given me some time to think about where this blog is headed. I've decided to focus on helping readers understand and exploit economic, social, environmental and technological developments for the sake of their careers, organizations and communities.

The "Urban Age" is upon us, with more than half of us, since 2008, living in cities or towns (first video). By 2050 nearly 70% of the world's 9 billion people will live in urban areas. Nearly all growth from now until then will occur in poorer countries. By 2050, 90% of the world's 1.2 billion youth (aged 15 to 24) will live in developing countries, and over 80% will live in Africa or Asia. Even these statistics presume increased adoption of family planning in developing countries.

Nine billion of us will have to face the effects of climate change. It is very likely that increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere resulting largely from human activity will contribute to increased average temperatures and rising sea levels. These conditions could displace hundreds of millions of people from their homes and are leading to conflicts as ethnic, religious, and political divisions are exacerbated by contention for agricultural land and water.

On the other hand, computing and communications technologies and the media that exploit them may be able to provide some relief. For those with access, the Internet of the future will enable virtual experiences, as well as information sharing and recombination (mashups) that we can barely imagine today (second video). Increasingly, we are exchanging information remotely in order to operate global value networks that reduce risk and increase efficiency. Even warfighting is becoming virtual, with drone pilots at a US base flying missions in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Even as many undeveloped and developing nations remain entangled in political instability, corruption and ethnic hostilities, the growth of emerging markets is causing significant power shifts. Indeed, while the US begins to reinvest in its rail network, IBM earlier this year located its Global Rail Innovation Center in Beijing, where the Chinese plan a nationwide rail investment that dwarfs its US counterpart.

Digital Millwright will continue to cover urbanism, infrastructure and sustainability, but will focus within these topics on the strategic and technological insights that will help readers navigate the rough waters ahead.

New York's Manhattan Bridge Shown Bending Under the Weight of Subway Trains

2009-12-23T00:42:00.000-08:00

The Manhattan Bridge, which turns 100 on December 31, flexes under the weight of a subway train in a time-lapse video taken in July of this year. Interestingly, the bridge underwent an 18-year series of repairs ending in 2004, because the subway trains, which use two pairs of tracks on the outside of the lower level of the bridge, made the the structure tilt and sway. This problem worsened as successive generations of trains got longer and heavier. The diagram shows

a cross-section of the Manhattan Bridge, which also has pedestrian and bicycle paths as well as seven lanes of roadway on two levels. Enjoy!

Vessel Tracking Website Beckons Armchair Seafarers

2009-12-13T12:01:00.000-08:00

Let's face it: I'm a transportation geek--if you haven't noticed already! On my regular walk downtown to work, during inclement weather or when I am running late, I sometimes take the MAX light rail one stop within Portland's Fareless Square. Earlier this week, I first noticed Tri-Met's Rail System Map, and managed to miss my stop while studying it!

My interest does not wane at the water's edge. I have long been fascinated with the newspaper port calendar that describes the local movements and moorings of ships, ocean-going tugs, and barges. Local editor and writer Brian Doyle, eloquently explained our common interest in an Oregonian essay earlier this year. But like most paper publications, port calendars now have online, real-time competitors. Vessel-tracking websites display information transmitted by Automatic Identification System (AIS) radio transponders. AIS is a short-range, coastal tracking system in which all passenger ships and all but the smallest cargo vessels must participate per international convention. There are a number of websites that provide AIS-based geographical information systems (GIS), most of which charge for their most interesting services.
My favorite vessel-tracking site is Marine Traffic.com, a cooperative venture that provides its services for free! On its Live Ships Map page, you can select any covered maritime region or port, or any ship within range, and track current and recent ship positions.

Upon spotting a ship moored at a particular port facility, such as a bulk or container terminal, I often wonder what the ship is doing there. For that purpose, the Columbia River Pilots website is useful. Putting this all together, I can figure out where the ship is registered (possibly under a flag of convenience), what it is carrying, and, if it is underway, or soon to be, its next destination. For instance, here is a photo I took of the MV Privlaka, a grain carrier under Croatian registry, in port on November 28 loading grain at an export elevator jointly operated by the Cargill and Louis Dreyfus Corporations. The Privlaka is likely at sea now, since there there is no AIS data available on MarineTraffic.com.

"The New World of Wireless": Mobile Communication Everywhere, All the Time

2009-12-09T00:17:00.000-08:00

What will the world be like when almost everyone -- and everything -- can interact over a wireless web? The New World of Wireless: How to Compete in the 4G Revolution by Scott Snyder helps business planners ask the right questions and choose the right answers. Snyder portrays a world in which all of us and many of our possessions join a "Digital Swarm" of people and devices that interact continuously and richly.

For example (mine, not from the book), a manufacturing equipment sales director, might, through her wireless device, learn of a new opportunity to call on a major prospect, and choose her most conveniently located account executive for this purpose. The account executive, while sitting on a park bench between scheduled customer visits, could use his location- and context-aware device to quickly arrange transportation, lodging, and sales engineering support, as well as a venue for product demonstration. At the same time, the sales director could quickly gather all available experts for an preparatory video conference with the account executive. After the video conference, the account executive could not only communicate with his wife and children to inform them of his change in plans, but could also make sure the equipment at the demonstration venue was in good working order, ask his rental car back at his hotel to map out a drive to the prospect's office in a nearby city, and make sure that there is enough fuel for the trip.

It's certainly easy to imagine the possibilities of ubiquitous 4G wireless. But it's much harder to figure out which ones to bet your business on. Snyder, a systems engineering Ph.D. who heads a management consultancy focused on scenario planning, uses this technique and others. Snyder also uses environmental scanning and trend scouting; formal innovation methods such as disruptive innovation and innovation networks; as well as strategic options generation. The book helps readers understand the Digital Swarm and its potential business impacts, innovate based on its opportunities and evolve their organizations to compete within a new social and technological reality.

The book begins by tracing the history of the first three generations of wireless technology and the emerging fourth, which Snyder predicts will transform communications as a whole by shifting control control from service providers to users. For example, "Smart Mobs" will share information about each other--such as where they are driving and the traffic conditions they are experiencing--for mutual benefit. One key to this shift will be cognitive radios, which will take into account the user's location, preferences and current activity to choose among available wireless networks. An early example of this trend (again, mine) is T-Mobile's HotSpot @Home offering, which switches between GSM wireless networks and pre-configured WiFi networks, such as those common in homes and public areas.

Snyder explores two broad scenarios. In "Nature Aligns", widely adopted standards and trust create an ecosystem of interconnected, accessible and affordable networks and services. In "Killer Bees", a dearth of shared standards and trust create a fragmented, slower-growing marketplace that constrains consumer choice, convenience and protection. Each scenario has different implications for technology development, market growth, market-altering "killer" applications, and even the world economy, which prospers under Nature Aligns and falters under Killer Bees.

Each scenario affects differently the relative market power of various wireless industry sectors, and has different implications for various geographical regions and industries. Snyder guides the reader through the creation of core strategies that will work under either scenario, and contingent strategies that will succeed only under one or the other. He also presents a "WiQ" survey that assesses organizational need to adapt to the future of wireless versus readiness for that future. WiQ measures need by potential wireless disruption to markets and business operations, the extent of wireless business opportunities, and employee demand for doing business wirelessly. WiQ measures readiness, however, by current personal and business use of wireless technology, as well as the extent to which decisionmaking authority is decentralized. Participants cannot fully realize the value of spontaneous, rich peer-to-peer deliberations if they are inhibited from quickly acting on them.

Snyder explains how to monitor and adapt to early signals that could illuminate the future of wireless. For each of fourteen variables, such as network trust, technology breakthroughs, wireless social networks, cognitive devices, and health/environmental concerns, he identifies both signals and their sources among experts, organizations and media.

Snyder identifies several "Killer Swarm Apps" as examples of potential wireless applications. One is "Context-Aware Retailing", which intelligently merges online information such as pricing and reviews with location-based information on nearby retail bricks-and-mortar stores. Such applications could even react to a customer's location within one of those stores by displaying product details or promotions.

The future of wireless will also change how organizations operate. Collaboration and decisionmaking will become more decentralized and peer-to-peer due to the nature of wireless communications. However, organizations will also able to analyze and correlate both physical locations and wireless interactions of individuals. Snyder contends that members of Generation Z (people born since the mid-1990's) are willing to share information about themselves if they are convinced that there is an overall benefit, so this type of mining will be acceptable if done in a way that respects privacy.

While "The New World of Wireless" aims to assist business leaders and planners in preparing for the future of wireless technology, it also exemplifies strategic thinking about technology in general. The book is therefore of potential value to anyone in strategic planning, information technology or technical product research and development.

"The Box" and "The Colombo Bay" Offer Complementary Perspectives on Containerized Shipping

2009-11-28T21:43:00.000-08:00

Among the many life-changing twentieth-century inventions, one of the simplest is often overlooked: the shipment of freight in metal containers with standard dimensions and attachment mechanisms. Before trucking entrepreneur Malcom McLean conceived of containerized shipping, it had certainly been tried in different forms. McLean's innovation, however, was an intermodal system of ships, trains and trucks, all of which could handle containers that remained intact for their entire journey. In 1955, McLean sold his trucking company and used the proceeds to purchase a steamship line and a terminal company in order to establish the first containerized shipping service. On April 26, 1956, a converted World War II tanker sailed from Newark, NJ for Houston carrying 58 containers along with its standard liquid cargo.

The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger by economist Marc Levinson explains the economic and social effects of containerized shipping over the fifty years between its inception and the book's publication in 2006. The elimination of the labor-intensive transfer of cargo between trucks and freight cars, transit sheds, loading docks and ships drastically reduced the cost and complexity of shipping along with transit times, unexpected delays, and cargo theft. This, along with other factors such as tariff reduction, enabled the migration of manufacturing activities to where they could be performed most cheaply. Modern supply chains often involve multiple trips by container between suppliers of raw materials, component manufacturers, final assemblers and distributors or massive retail chains.

Containerization has also changed the nature of port cities. When breakbulk shipping predominated, the docks bustled with human activity, since large crews of longshoremen were required to unload ships. Longshoremen's unions became powerful, often negotiating contracts with inefficient and inflexible work rules. Organized crime often permeated the docks. In addition, ports were filled with seamen, who waited weeks or months while their ships were unloaded and reloaded. Many businesses and organizations served the needs of these longshoremen, seamen and their families, contributing to vibrant port communities.

Today's major container ports, however, are massive, highly optimized and automated distribution centers. As soon as a ship docks, massive gantry cranes unload containers onto trailer chassis. The containers are quickly hitched to road tractors or placed on single or double-stack freight trains and sent off to their destination. The ships spend only a day or two in port. Even if some of the crew manages a quick shore leave, there won't be much of a crowd in port. The world's largest container vessel, the Emma Maersk, launched in 2006, has a crew of only 13!

Instead of bustling communities, today's major container ports are analogous to Internet Exchange Points. The predominant activity around them is the constant switching and routing of freight "packets" in containers. The optimal locations for shipping and receiving facilities are those that have high-capacity, reliable, low-latency container port "connectivity" via road or rail to a major container port.

The Colombo Bay covers the 2001 trip by Richard Pollak on a container ship of the same name. Pollak, a self-described "landlubber" gets the urge to go to sea in his early sixties. A shipping executive friend, arranges a five-week passage from Singapore to New York via Thailand, Singapore, Sri Lanka, the Suez Canal and Malta. Pollak begins his trip just after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. This book is a leisurely and thoughtful travelogue, with shipboard events and personalities intermingled with brief background on containerized shipping along with many of the issues facing the global merchant marine. Pollak discusses the loneliness and historical mistreatment of seamen which continues to this day, especially on registered under laissez-faire flags of convenience. He also discusses the continued relevance of the writings of Herman Melville and Joseph Conrad; piracy; human smuggling in shipping containers; as well as the technical, financial and political challenges of ensuring that millions of containers are not used to deliver explosive or radioactive payloads.

Pollak's journey, though, is safe, convivial and uneventful, and his story suggests that the merchant marine is still attractive to some. Some time after his journey, the author and his wife travel to England to visit Peter Davies, the Colombo Bay's captain for most of Pollak's five-week voyage. Davies had been encouraged to retire by his former employer as a cost-cutting measure. Unhappy in retirement, Davies has just been hired, at age 58, by a German firm to captain another container ship, and happily anticipates his next voyage.

Are "Small-Town Values" Different Than Those of Big Cities?

2009-11-15T17:43:00.000-08:00

In "Meet John Thune" New York Times David Brooks introduces Senator John Thune (R-South Dakota) as a potential 2012 presidential candidate who espouses "small-town values". By using this term without defining it, Brooks assumes his readers know what it means. But what exactly are small-town values? I have searched for a definition on the Internet, but only found a variety of commentary. From my personal exposure to popular culture, I associate small-town values with hard work, honesty, self-reliance whenever possible, mutual aid to others in the community, patriotism and a desire to honor the community's heritage and provide for its future. The most moving depictions of small-town culture that I have found are Kent Haruf's Plainsong and Eventide, an exquisite two-novel sequence that paints a vivid picture of small-town life in the fictional eastern Colorado plains town of Holt. These novels credibly depict small-town residents who triumph over negative small-town values such as xenophobia and social stratification.But do American small towns have a special claim to these values that cities do not? There is no evidence for this point of view. Great charitable works and nobile acts by individuals can be found everywhere. When I visited New York City six years ago with my then seven-year old son Ian, we boarded the Newark Airport Airtrain to connect with NJ Transit for our ride into the city. Ian, who had been queasy the whole trip, began to throw up as the AirTrain approached our transfer point. A stranger standing across from us immediately took out his handkerchief and started cleaning Ian up When I thanked him profusely, he replied in a hearty New York dialect that he had five of his own children and knew what it took to care for them. During our entire trip, whenever we looked at a map inside a subway car, people asked us where we were going and offered directions.

People like Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, who have dealt with countless people from all over this country, assert that there is no distinction between the values of small towns and big cities. Furthermore, Newmark asserts that those who promote "small-town values" are "con-men" attempting to drive a wedge between people for personal gain. On the other hand, David Brooks describes Thune's perspective as follows:

He says his prairie background has given him a preference for small companies and local government. When he criticizes the Democrats, it is for mixing big government with big business: the bailouts of Wall Street, the subsidies to the big auto and energy corporations. His populism is not angry. He doesn’t rail against the malefactors of wealth. But it’s there, a celebration of the small and local over the big and urban.

Implicit in this dichotomy is the notion that the "small and local" can exist independently of the "big and urban". Prairie-state conservatives like Thune decry the power of the federal government, ignoring the fact that it enabled prairie settlements to thrive by exterminating or removing the first Americans, building the railroads, the interstate highways and massive irrigation projects, promoting rural electrification and supporting the price of farm commodities. Indeed, the "big and urban" giveth and taketh away. The "free trade" championed by the right and center has hollowed out many a small town by driving manufacturing to places where costs are lower and regulations less onerous.

What do you think? Is there a valid distinction between small-town and big city values?

San Franciscan Praises Portland's Green Streets

2009-11-15T11:28:00.000-08:00

Matthew Roth profiles Portland, Oregon's atreet designs that combine stormwater treatment with safety and convenience for cyclists and pedestrians on sf.streetsblog.org, Like many cities with older sewer systems, Portland is subject to combined sewer overflow (CSO), in which precipitation combines with sewage to overwhelm the sewage treatment system, resulting in unsanitary discharges into the Willamette River and the Columbia Slough. Portland is addressing this problem through a twenty-year program to construct tunnels and pipes which will transport stormwater to wastewater treatment facilities, eliminating the vast majority of CSO volume. Interested readers can follow Rosie the Tunnel-Boring Machine on Twitter!

In addition to these massive investments, Portland places swales, planters and rain gardens on streets to absorb and filter stormwater before it reaches storm sewers.

For bicyclists, Portland provides bike lanes and bike boxes, which help prevent collisions, particularly between cyclists going straight and motorists turning right. Portland's first bike track on SW Broadway gives cyclists an entire car-width lane that is separated from the motorized traffic by a line of parked cars. For pedestrians, there are sidewalks and bulbouts, which extend curbs to calm traffic and improve visibility for both pedestrians and drivers.

All in all, Portland has much to be proud of in its efforts to make streets safe, accessible and sustainable. What do you think? What else could Portland be doing to improve its streets?

Portland Competes with SunBelt for Net Newcomers While Employment Stagnates

2009-11-04T06:38:00.000-08:00

An analysis by Joel Kotkin on newgeography.com cites Portland-Vancouver-Beaverton, Oregon as 4th of the 29 largest US metro areas in 2006-2008 at 8.2 per thousand total population. This ranking places Portland in the midst of cities known for their rapid growth, such as Phoenix, San Antonio, Dallas, Denver and Houston.

The 2000-2008 version of these figures put the area 8th at 6.2 per thousand. Metro area employment, however, shrunk by 0.2% in a similar period, Q3 2000-Q3 2009. Figures are from the US Census and Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) . Image © BrokenSphere / Wikimedia Common s.

Also according to the BLS, the Portland metro area's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 10.9% in September, 2009. What do you think can or should be done about this imbalance of newcomers and job creation?

Visualizing Cloud Computing

2009-11-02T23:55:00.000-08:00

Cloud computing serves customers that need not be familiar with the technology underlying the services.

Cloud computing provides virtualized and highly scalable services. Virtualization is a form of simulation. For example, a cloud service could provide a highly scalable simulated computer, or virtual machine with a processing capacity that increased or decreased as needed. The actual computing could use varying portions of one or more computers behind the scenes. By facilitating the sharing of equipment, utilities and skilled technical support, cloud services can be more cost-efficient than dedicated hardware, and can be designed to be more reliable at lower cost than comparable dedicated environments.

Cloud computing takes several often overlapping forms:

Infrastructure-as-a-service provides basic computing building blocks, like virtual machines, firewalls, and storage
Platform-as-a-service provides infrastructure plus additional software such as databases and web servers that facilitate efficient delivery of other services, such as websites
Software-as-a-service provides platforms with software that is immediately useful without programming, like the blogging software I am using right now
Communications-as-a-service can provide everything from email and chat to voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VOIP), well as integrated multi-modal unified communications (UC).

For a great visualization of cloud computing, see Life in the Cloud on the blog of Mozy, a cloud-based data backup service. For more information, see the Wikipedia article Everything as a Service.

Cloud services often add value to widely-used infrastructure like public transit. For example, Portland's regional transit agency TriMet makes its real-time schedule and route data available free-of-charge. Software developers have used these cloud services to create a variety of PC and mobile applications .

Think about all the government services we receive. How could cloud services be used to further enhance infrastructure in Portland?

Internet Users Can Screen Out Unwanted Facts

2009-11-02T01:04:00.000-08:00

In 2008, the Internet overtook newspapers as a source for national and international news, and continued to gain on television. According to the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 70% of adults surveyed December 3-7, 2008 said that television was one of their main sources, 40% said it was the Internet, and 35% said it was newspapers. For individuals under 30, however, an identical percentage, 59%, said the Internet was a main source for national and international news (multiple responses were allowed). This was a dramatic reversal from 2007, when twice as many young people, 68% versus 34%, reported relying on television than on the Internet.

But what sort of news are people getting? Internet hyperlinks enable both readers and writers to be selective about what they read and reference. This flexibility encourages like-minded readers to filter the people and content they interact with online, which fosters viewpoints that are extreme or unsupported by the facts. As Elizabeth Kolbert of the New Yorker reports in her review of Cass Sunstein's “On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can Be Done”, multiple studies show that political blogs are much more likely to link to like-minded content, and studies show that interaction with like-minded individuals leads to more extreme viewpoints.

As a consequence, Internet users can find content and community to support almost point of view, regardless of whether it is supported by scientific consensus or corroborated reality. Kolbert also contends that a portion of the political right has given itself the freedom to depart from reason. For one of my favorite examples, see WorldNetDaily,

Do you seek out diverse perspectives when you surf the 'Net? What can be done to encourage Internet users to do so? Post a comment or vote in the poll to the upper right (Facebook readers click on View Original Post below to visit my blog DigitalMillwright.com).

"Green Metropolis" Provides Reality Check on Planetary Sustainability

2009-10-28T17:56:00.000-07:00

Aren't cars that get better gas mileage or run on electricity good for our planet? What could be better than a glittering new corporate campus designed and built from the ground up with the latest environmental certifications, with half of the formerly pastoral site left as permanent open space? David Owen's Green Metropolis: Why Living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less are the Keys to Sustainability eviscerates conventional wisdom by demonstrating that many "sustainable" technologies and practices have the effect of accelerating consumption of natural resources by reducing costs, removing obstructions to consumption, allowing us to spread out further and, of course, making us feel better about what we are doing.

For example, automotive technology that gives us more miles to the gallon is the economic equivalent of reduced gas prices, making it easier to drive more. Additional highway lanes that reduce congestion make it easier for us to commute longer distances from employment centers in return for bigger houses and yards. Too large an open space in the middle of a walkable area can drive people into their cars. Even the extension of a commuter rail line to the periphery of a metropolitan area can lure families from the city center to a lifestyle much richer in resource consumption.

Owen's answer is density. The Green Metropolis is none other than New York City, of which the borough of Manhattan is the epicenter of the sustainable lifestyle. In New York, much of what appears unnatural or unpleasant is actually good for the earth. The congested streets and expensive parking make cars less popular. Outrageously expensive housing and land makes people do without a lot of stuff fashioned from petrochemicals, and makes thirsty private lawns a rarity. Population density makes delivery of virtually all services more efficient, including food distribution; heating, ventilation and air conditioning; transportation, health care, education and the like.

American cities of the nineteenth century and earlier were sources of pollution and communicable illness, as are many cities in developing countries today. But New York, like all modern cities, has made substantial progress in sanitation and environmental stewardship. So a hundred-year-old New York City skyscraper is much more resource-efficient than a new suburban tract development or corporate campus.

This is a difficult message to deliver. Most families dream of a house of their own, with private space for their children to play. Even the author moved with his wife from the city to semi-rural northwest Connecticut after seven years of marriage, spreading out into a house, multiple cars, and a garage filled with unused goods past their prime.

So what is to be done? Owen advocates steps that would make dense living more attractive, such as better schools, public safety and public transportation in our cities, and the judicious application of resource-efficient technologies. For example, highly efficient mini-cars may be part of the solution in rural areas where people are already spread out, but they shouldn't be advanced as an alternative to urban mass transportation. Alternative energy technologies such as wind and solar only make (unsubsidized) sense in certain parts of our country, so a national scheme that includes substantial investment in transmission facilities makes a great deal of sense as well.

Owens casts excessive resource consumption as a market failure requiring government leadership, citing historical examples like the Easter Island civilization. Certainly, if developed countries like the US cannot provide convincing leadership, climate change and resource scarcity will be exacerbated by the giant economies of rapidly developing nations, most notably China and Russia. The book ends on a sobering note, with a vignette that demonstrates the difficulty of changing American culture.

Owen delivers his message with color, wit, and personal honesty, making for an engaging read. But what do you think? What is the best way to get world society to live more efficiently?