Summer Reading 2013: The History of Downtown Phoenix and the Context of Urbanism post-WW2

The books (so far, there’ll be more):

• The Emerging Metropolis: Phoenix 1945-1973, William Collins (2005)
• Urban Theory and the Urban Experience: Encountering the City, Simon Parker (2004)
• Urban Policy Reconsidered: Dialogues on the Problems and Prospects of American Cities, Charles Euchner and Stephen McGovern (2003)
• Metropolitan Phoenix: Place Making and Community Building in the Desert, Patricia Gober (2006)
• Growth in Arizona: The Machine in the Garden, Morrison Institute at Arizona State University (1998)
• Desert Visions and the Making of Phoenix: 1860-2009, Philip VanderMeer (2010)
• Urban Theory: A Critical Assessment, John Rennie Short (2006)
• Images of America: Downtown Phoenix, J Seth Anderson, Suad Mahmuljin, and Jim McPherson (2011)
• Megapolitan: Arizona’s Sun Corridor, Morrison Institute (2008)

More will be added, I’m sure…

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“[This] last time I was in Phoenix, visiting after living a couple of months in Portland, I realized Phoenix does suburbia exceedingly well. But it offers almost no urban life. And what passes for urban life in Phoenix is really a slightly less suburban version of suburbia. This makes me wonder – instead of trying to swim against the tide of decades of infrastructure and decades of suburban culture and values, why not just embrace suburbia full force?” [from "Is Phoenix a City of Just a Big Suburb" / bloomingrock.com]

Part of me says that she’s right. Compared to other urban environments the size of Phoenix — Seattle, Minneapolis, and Portland are examples that quickly come to mind — we are far from urban. One wonders if we’ll ever become a truly urban city on the size and scale of these cities. Phoenix came of age during the era of the automobile being the main driver for design and development. It’s not an indictment of Phoenix per se; however, it’s a design reality that contemporary urbanists seem to ignore.

I commented on the piece and on Facebook that I don’t believe that Phoenix will become an urban environment on the scale of Seattle, Minneapolis, and Portland. But instead, I think we’ll move to embrace the twenty-minute city. (The twenty-minute city is defined as places to work, shop, play, and eat that are a twenty-minute public transportation trip, bicycle ride, or walk from one’s residence.) As one of those weird Phoenicians without a car, I have my own twenty-minute city. By migrating my belief system to this instead of wanting wholesale urbanism across central Phoenix, I’ve come to appreciate this city more. Of course, we have much to improve in the areas of sustainability, density, diversity, and promoting a desert urbanism.

But my thoughts and feelings on urban Phoenix aren’t the point of this piece. As was to be expected, the usual blind boosters of Phoenix were quick to denounce Taz’s comments as a disaffected former Phoenician who has quit trying to make Phoenix better by moving to Portland. (Their thoughts and words, not mine.) Some of the most cogent analyses of Phoenix and the issues facing Phoenix have come from former Phoenicians. In addition to Taz, the writings of Jon Talton quickly come to mind. His writing may be harsh at times; however, his writing is permeated with the reality that we in Phoenix need to heed. One also thinks of the book Bird on Fire: Lessons from the World’s Least Sustainable City by Dr Andrew Ross, the NYU professor of social analysis.

We Phoenicians are terrible at taking criticism. Terrible at it. Instead of debating and discussing ideas to make our part of the world better, we summarily dismiss ideas based on the people who have offered those ideas. As a native Phoenician, it was harsh to read through Bird on Fire. But it was the best-researched tome on Phoenix history that I have read ever…hands down. The scope of Dr Ross’s research as well as the people and organizations he interviewed were spot-on. And as for my friend Taz: because she no longer lives in Phoenix does not mean that her thoughts and ideas on urban living in Phoenix are now less valid.

Phoenix will never become Portland (to which I say thank goodness!) but there are elements of Portland’s urbanism that we can adapt for Phoenix use. We’ll never be Seattle or Minneapolis, which is okay, but we can take the elements of their citizens’ strong civic engagement in their cities’ design and policy processes. We can take some of the advocacy that has made these urban areas the best and apply them to our city, county, and state policymakers and elected officials. Just because someone has left Phoenix (or is not from Phoenix) does not make their viewpoints less valid.

Let’s debate ideas, not people.

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I also do a lot of bicycle commuting. But unlike a lot of other Phoenicians, my bicycle commuting is done in conjunction with another method of transport, e.g. bicycling to a final destination after taking the train for the first part of the journey. (I’ll write more on that in a later post!)

The point that I’m trying to make here is that when I travel by my usual means, I’m cognizant of what technology I bring with me. My computing/commuting theory is this: Bring only as much technology as you need to do while you’re running errands and nothing more!

My main computer is my MacBook Pro. In addition to being a significant investment that I made, it’s got my entire digital life on it (photos, music, personal & professional documents, and some irreplaceable/invaluable information). Consequently, it rarely leaves the house. If my travels include bicycling, it will never travel with me. If I get into an accident while commuting, what would happen to that machine? Would it be ruined? I never want to find out so that’s why it rarely leaves my house.

To bring some element of computing power with me when I meet with community partners or clients, I have an iPad and wireless keyboard that I bring with me. It can do about 95% of the tasks that I require of a computer when I’m on the road: scribe notes or a document, send emails, preview pictures, and check my finances as well as my firm’s balance sheet. It’s small in form so it fits easily in my backpack or in my bicycle panniers. Also, because it’s designed as more of a mobile device, it’s more robust in its design. That being said, it has a form-fitting case as well as its own bag for additional protection.

There are times when I know that I’ll need to bring a computer with me which is why I recently purchased a refurbished Dell Latitude XT2. While I listed my reasons to purchase it on that post, I purchased it because it is a lightweight computer that I can throw in my backpack or bicycle panniers and not be overly devastated if it gets damaged or destroyed should the worst happen. If I am going to do some longer typing sessions, this is the device that I’ll bring with me. Or if there’s a time when I need a full computer with me, it comes with.

That’s how I commute. What tips do you have for commuting and to successfully balance your computing and commuting balance? Share them in the comments.

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On a day like today, Leonard Bernstein’s quote on replying to violence is extremely poignant:

We musicians, like everyone else, are numb with sorrow at this murder, and with rage at the senselessness of the crime. But this sorrow and rage will not inflame us to seek retribution; rather they will inflame our art. Our music will never again be quite the same. This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.

Peace.

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The post “nothing short of spectacular” appeared first on Thoughts from Edward Jensen.

There was definitely a learning curve to using the stylus but I think I’ve got it down. It was time-consuming getting CellWriter up and running but it’s now recognizing my handwriting with about 95% accuracy the first time.

I don’t do a lot of customization when it comes to Ubuntu because I find that it works quite well for me out of the box. I use Firefox and Thunderbird for web browsing and email management because they suit my needs the best. In fact, on my MacBook, it’s my email program of choice!

About the only additional software that I put on the machine is Dropbox, which is essential for storing and syncing files across diverse platforms. In addition to my XT2 and my MacBook, I’ve got an iPad, an iPhone, and a desktop workstation that runs Ubuntu Linux as well as Windows 7 in a virtual machine. Although Google Drive is nice to use for Windows and Mac, there is not a native Linux version…yet.

Here are some observations, concerns, and positive surprises that I’ve noticed with my machine:

Observations

• I think that I resolved the wireless issue that I described in my first post by forcing the BIOS to disable the cellular data/WWAN and Bluetooth antennas. Now, the switch on the sides only controls the wi-fi antenna.
• I am getting about 2.5 hours of battery life from the machine with wi-fi on and marginally more with it off. The battery indicator in Ubuntu shows the machine starting from about 80% battery life. The battery is called a battery slice and I can find replacement batteries from third-party manufacturers for inexpensive if I notice that battery capacity starts to diminish. (By comparison, my MacBook gets about 5 hours of life with wi-fi on.)
• I purchased — and ultimately returned — a 3M privacy filter for my machine. 3M’s online utility recommended what size of screen I should purchase, which I did. But upon installing it, the measurements were just off.

Concerns

• The machine runs warm. Using an infrared thermometer, I’ve gotten temperature readings in excess of 115º F, which definitely precludes lap operation. It’s warm – but tolerable – wn I use it in tablet mode in my arm. I haven’t done any extended writing sessions with it yet, though.
• The XT2 uses a smaller-than-standard 1.8-inch hard disk drive instead of a 2.5-inch notebook hard drive. A search on Newegg shows that only 1.8-inch drives these days are SSDs, which might be interesting for speed and power consumption but nevertheless expensive!

Positive Surprises

• Getting the machine set up was much easier than I anticipated.
• The speaker, despite being a monaural speaker on the left-hand side of the machine, is surprisingly good! I don’t keep music on there but I have Spotify‘s Linux preview edition on there and it works well.

More thoughts and observations will be shared when I think or observe them!

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You’re invited to a community meeting for residents of and advocates for Downtown Phoenix on Tuesday, April 9 to discuss “The Downtown We Want.” The gathering will include a panel discussion, moderated question and answer period, results of a downtown-specific survey, and reception with complimentary refreshments.

The discussion will be led by Dr. Lattie Coor, president and CEO of the Center for the Future of Arizona and president emeritus of Arizona State University. The Center released The Arizona We Want 2.0 on January 24, 2013 to revisit the eight citizen goals identified in the Gallup Arizona Poll, describe the changes that have occurred since the original report was released three years ago, and identify a set of recommended “next steps” that much be taken to achieve the Arizona we want as described by citizens.

TAKE THE SURVEYS IN ADVANCE
We encourage downtown residents and advocates to complete two online surveys in advance of the meeting: the original Gallup Arizona Poll and the 2012 Arizona Civic Health Index. By registering and completing the surveys using the special Group Code “voices,” you will immediately see how similar or different your responses are from those of your fellow Phoenicians and Arizonans. In addition, a special report will be released at the meeting detailing the survey responses of all individuals and organizations participating in “The Downtown We Want.”

• The Gallup Arizona Poll takes 15-20 minutes to complete and is designed to capture a clear picture of what Arizonans want on a variety of issues: Education, Job Creation, Environment & Water, Infrastructure, Health Care, Young Talent, Civic Engagement and Community Involvement.
• The Arizona Civic Health Index takes about 5 minutes to complete and is the nation’s leading gauge of how well Americans connect to one another and to their communities. Since 2010, the National Conference on Citizenship has partnered with the Center for the Future of Arizona to publish the civic health report on an annual basis.

To begin the survey, visit http://www.thearizonawewant.org/registration/. Remember to enter the Group Code “voices” in the space provided.

ATTEND “THE DOWNTOWN WE WANT” COMMUNITY MEETING
Other organizations and their constituencies invited to take the surveys and participate in the community meeting include Artlink (representing the local arts community), Downtown Devil (representing students attending downtown colleges and universities), Downtown Phoenix Partnership, Downtown Voices Coalition, Phoenix Community Alliance, and Phoenix Historic Neighborhoods Coalition (representing historic neighborhoods and districts surrounding downtown). Separate Group Codes will be available for each group and included in the report provided at the meeting.

• Date: Tuesday, April 9, 2013
• Time: 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.
• Place: Third Street Theater, Phoenix Center for the Arts, 1202 N. 3rd St., Phoenix, AZ 85004

RSVP via Eventbrite: http://downtownwewant.eventbrite.com/
Visit the PHXUDW webpage: http://www.phxudw.com/tuesday–4913

The post Tonight: The Downtown Phoenix We Want appeared first on Thoughts from Edward Jensen.

Some time ago, I worked on a list of what I called the “Axioms of the Internet.” Since I’m reorganizing my file library, I’m sure it’s somewhere. The first of my Axioms was this: There is no such thing as Internet privacy. Yep, Internet privacy joins the list of oxymorons: jumbo shrimp, military intelligence, a just war, or a genuine imitation.

A link was shared by a connection of mine on the site (who’s also a friend and colleague of mine) about the latest Facebook scam: those pages that share current Internet memes, random questions, or a post that tugs at one’s hartstrings. It all seems benign and harmless, right? Don’t bet on it. (George Takei’s page, however, is an exception.)

Some excerpts:

“Anyone else getting sick of these daft posts?” my “friend” Chardon asked. This was on Facebook a while back. That’s why I put “friend” in quotation marks. She was talking about an annoying trend: posts showing up on Facebook news feeds, saying something like, “Name a city without an ‘R’ in it. It’s harder than it looks!”

It’s not hard, of course. Ouagadougou, Vilnius, Montevideo all leap to mind. And Budge Budge in India. I’m sure there are others.

…

It gets especially creepy when the post is less benign and strikes an emotional chord: “‘Like’ if you hate cancer.” “‘Like’ if you hate bullying.” “If I get enough ‘likes,’ my dad will quit drugs.”

…

It’s called “like farming.” A Facebook page is created, with an appeal for readers to like, comment or share. The creators, who are working together to build these pages, share it among themselves. They all have big networks, so the pages instantly get into thousands of other people’s news feeds. When those people respond with a “like” or a share, then it reaches their friends. Suddenly, the thing has spread faster than a high school rumour.

…

Annoying, but harmless, you might think. Unless you’re Terri Johnson. She’s a mother of five in the U.S., who was surprised to find a picture of her daughter Katie on a viral Facebook post. Someone had taken a picture of Katie from Terri’s Facebook account and renamed her in a post that read, “This is my sister Mallory. She has Down syndrome and doesn’t think she’s beautiful. Please like this photo so I can show her later that she truly is beautiful.”

By the time Terri was alerted to this, 3.5 million sympathetic, well-meaning people’s emotional buttons had been pushed, all so they would push the “like” button. Imagine your privacy being violated and your family innocently embroiled in a cold-hearted lie to make a buck. You might feel even more sick and angry than the Johnsons. [from here]

So what happens? I’ll reiterate what I said above: Internet privacy is fundamentally impossible to achieve. Once you’ve posted something for someone to see, it’s possible that many more people will see that post.

What’s the easiest way to defeat privacy settings? What if one of your Facebook connections copied-and-pasted your personal and private post to their feed so more people could see it? What if news of something that you posted was told, face-to-face, to colleagues of yours where you work? Or there’s an easy way to defeat Facebook’s privacy settings for images: if one knows the URL of the photo, then that’s enough to view that picture.

To test this out, I posted a picture to Facebook and set its privacy settings so that only I could see it. I copied the URL of the picture and went into a different browser that was not logged in to Facebook. I pasted the URL of the image and, behold, I could load that image up. I gave the browser the URL and the image came back to me as though there were no security settings whatsoever. You can take part in my experiment: here’s my post and here’s the image (the scene is a rainy day). You’ll see that you can’t see the post (even if you’re logged in to Facebook AND even if you’re connected with me on Facebook!) but you can see the image. Facebook puts no protection on its files: the privacy settings you set when you make a post are merely an illusion.

How can we lessen our chances of getting hit by this? If you’ve read my writing, you can probably figure out what I’m going to say. Take charge of your online presence! Limit your Facebook connections to people you know and know well. Only post content to Facebook (and to social media, period!) that you would be comfortable being shared with the public.

Maybe I’ll get those Axioms of the Internet online soon…

The post A Facebook cautionary tale appeared first on Thoughts from Edward Jensen.

The Sky Harbor Airport’s PHX SkyTrain opens tomorrow, after some hiccups and delays. It will make traveling between light rail, the east economy parking garages, and Terminal 4 easier. (The remaining terminals as well as the rental car center will be linked in 2015 and 2020, respectively.)

Come see the spectacular public art at each of the new SkyTrain stations! A tour begins at 12:15pm from the 44th St SkyTrain station. (Unlike the image above, the tours are tomorrow and not in 100 years!)

Pictures will follow.

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I bought the machine from Dell Financial Services’ Direct Sales unit for cheap. With shipping and a one-year warranty, I only spent about $500. By comparison, when the machine was shipped new in 2010, the street retail price started just under $2,000! It was a good purchase for me because as I’m starting to run more and more errands for my consulting, sometimes schlepping around an iPad alone just doesn’t cut it. There are times when it’s important to have a full computer. As I do a lot of commuting by bicycle and public transportation, I also don’t want my MacBook Pro to suffer the wear and tear of my commute…or worse, get damaged or destroyed if I were to get in an accident. The XT2 was a small purchase that, although I’d be sad to destroy or damage this machine, I can afford to purchase a replacement should I need to.

Enough philosophy: let’s get to running Ubuntu on this machine. The machine came shipped with Windows Vista but that was the first thing to go. I replaced it with Ubuntu 12.04.2, codenamed Precise Pangolin within minutes of turning it on for the first time just to make sure that it worked well. I read through several online guides about how to make this machine work and although the steps seemed daunting, I found that they were largely unnecessary and not needed. In simple terms, my steps were this:

1. Ensure that the system OS is up to date with the latest standard Ubuntu kernel
2. Update the system’s BIOS to the latest version (at this writing, it’s version A12)
3. Check the system BIOS to see what wireless cards are enabled or disabled
4. Install the Magick Rotation utility
5. Have a lot of fun!

If you’re interested in my steps that I took in greater detail, I’ll go through them. Do note that most all of this is done from the terminal so your typing accuracy has to be spot on. Your results, although they should be like mine, may vary: please make a backup of your data before embarking on this journey (and don’t blame me if anything bad happens!).

Step 1: Update the Ubuntu operating system

It’s my first step when I receive a new machine. I’ll assume you’ve installed Ubuntu and that you’ve got it online. You’ll need to enable the Broadcom wireless driver from the restricted repository but the OS should do that first thing without any user intervention. You can use the update-manager GUI to update the machine or, from the command line:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

Enter your password if necessary and after that’s finished, restart the machine and continue to Step 2.

Step 2: Update the system BIOS to the latest version

For this step, you’ll need to ensure that your XT2 is plugged in to wall electricity. In addition to installing the BIOS updater as well as the new version of the BIOS, we’ll also install one piece of software for later on (see step 5). Once you’re back in to your machine, from the command line:

sudo apt-get install smbios-utils cellwriter
sudo getSystemId

If the SystemID tag returns 0×0252 (which it should for an XT2), then continue on with my instructions. If not, then follow these instructions. If you need to go to the external link, when you’ve updated your system BIOS, come back here and continue with Step 3.

Please note that due to word wrapping, the third line (the wget operation) ran onto two lines. That entire command is one line in the terminal. You might want to right click on this link (the bios.hdr file), select “Copy Link Location” (or whatever your browser says), and paste that address in after you’ve typed wget.

cd ~
sudo modprobe dell_rbu
wget http://linux.dell.com/repo/firmware/bios-hdrs/system_bios_ven_0x1028_dev_0x0252_version_a12/bios.hdr
sudo dellBiosUpdate -u -f bios.hdr

If there are no errors, then restart the machine:

sudo reboot

Your machine will reboot and install the A12 BIOS version. DO NOT UNPLUG OR TOUCH YOUR MACHINE DURING THIS TIME! It’s a completely automated process that will run on its own. If any problems occur, then you’ve got yourself a fancy paperweight. Let’s avoid that, okay?

Step 3: Check system BIOS for wireless cards configuration

This might be a superfluous step; however, I was working on my XT2 and I noticed that the wireless card stopped working and didn’t respond to the wireless switch. I rebooted the machine and checked the BIOS configuration to see what cards were installed in my machine and what cards were controlled by the wireless switch on the side as well as the Fn + F9 key combination.  Here are some screen captures that I captured on my phone — sorry for the quality:

I noticed that the wireless switch controlled a WWAN card (for cellular data, which wasn’t installed on my XT2) instead of the WLAN (aka wi-fi) card. I disabled the Bluetooth radio because I determined that I didn’t need Bluetooth on my machine so I disabled that. I also disabled any references to a WWAN card, also ensuring that the switch and the Fn + F9 key combination controlled the WLAN radio only and no other radios.

I’ll do some more testing to see what’s happening with this new BIOS configuration.

Step 4: Install the Magick Rotation utility

This is a two-step process because in addition to installing the utility, you need to install a special driver to the kernel.

First, you’ll need to download v1.6.2 of the Magick Rotation utility. It’s what I use on my machine and I’ve gotten the best results from it. To do that, go here and download magick-rotation-1.6.2.tar.bz2. In Nautilus (the file browser…feel free to use whatever you normally use), go to your Downloads folder and right-click on the icon for the magick-rotation-1.6.2.tar.bz2 file you downloaded. Click on Extract Here and a new folder will appear in your Downloads folder with the Magick Rotation folder.

The next series of instructions installs the appropriate drivers to the system so the computer can determine if the notebook monitor is in notebook mode or in tablet mode. In the terminal/console of your choosing, run the following commands:

cd ~/Downloads/magick-rotation-1.6.2/MagickExtras
sudo cp -a dell-wmi-20120302-A09 /usr/src/
sudo dkms add -m dell-wmi -v 20120302-A09
sudo dkms build -m dell-wmi -v 20120302-A09
sudo dkms install -m dell-wmi -v 20120302-A09

Restart your machine, either by sudo reboot or by clicking on the gear icon, selecting Shut Down, and then selecting Restart.

Once the machine has restarted and you’ve logged back in, open the magick-rotation-1.6.2 folder in the file manager of your choice. (It should still be in your Downloads folder, right?)

Double-click on the MAGICK-INSTALL file. You’ll be given this warning,

click on Run. A box asking you to enter your password will appear: enter that. Once you’ve authenticated, then a box with something similar to this will appear.

Click “OK”. The installer will run: it took me about a minute. Once the installer has installed the software, reboot again.

Step 5: Have a lot of fun!

This is the fun step because now you can start having fun with the machine and the tablet functions!  You’ll need to launch the Magick Rotation utility: it’s the green icon that’s in your toolbar:

Right-click on that icon and click on Setup. The options are easy to understand and you shouldn’t need to tinker with the advanced options. Be sure to click Save before you click on Close. Also, be sure to left-click on the icon to turn off touch support. This is stylus-writing insurance: it only accepts writing from the stylus and not from other pressure on the display, like your wrist!

Next, flip the lid around. To do that, turn the lid clockwise 180 degrees and the close the lid on top of the keyboard. If all has gone to plan, your screen will rotate to the position you’ve told it to (left, right, or inverted). Take the stylus and start writing. There is a utility that was installed back in step 2 called CellWriter. If you had a Palm Pilot when they were hip, you most likely remember its writing input system, Graffiti. This is a modified system that gives you the option to train the system how you write your letters. For more information in CellWriter, I commend the manual to you by the developers.

If you want to transform your XT2′s screen into a piece of paper, then I recommend the Xournal app. To install that, you can click here or run this command in the terminal:

sudo install xournal

This application has the nice feature that allows you to annotate PDF files. Xournal also works better if you’ve set the screen to rotate to either the right or left when the lid is in tablet mode.

That’s about it for getting your XT2 to work as a tablet in Ubuntu 12.04, aka Precise Pangolin. I hope you had success and a lot of fun in getting this to work for you! And let me know how this worked for you and what other touch-enhanced applications are out there to use. Also, I’ve only had the machine now for a couple days but I’ll share my thoughts after I’ve come up with a few!

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