• Kids Who Get Driven Everywhere Don’t Know Where They’re Going – Commute – The Atlantic Cities

  No surprise, imo:
  QUOTE
  [Vehicular traffic] changes the way children see and experience the world by diminishing their connection to community and neighbors. A generation ago, urbanist researcher Donald Appleyard showed how heavy traffic in cities erodes human connections in neighborhoods, contributing to feelings of dissatisfaction and loneliness. Now his son, Bruce Appleyard, has been looking into how constantly being in and around cars affects children’s perception and understanding of their home territory.
  UNQUOTE

  tags: atlantic_cities children cars perception isolation

• Could Electric Truck Lanes Reduce L.A.’s Horrific Pollution? – Technology – The Atlantic Cities

  Totally makes sense:
  QUOTE
  The eHighway might seem laughable at the moment to all but the most fervent environmentalist, but just wait. Air pollution in Long Beach and Riverside costs these communities an estimated $18 million annually in asthma bills, docking residents on average an incredible 8 percent of their household income. And the toxic stew isn’t expected to waft away anytime soon. Here’s Siemens infrastructure chief Daryl Dulaney laying out the grim prognosis for the future in a press release:

  “When most people think of vehicle emissions, they assume cars do most of the damage, but it’s actually commercial trucks that are largely to blame,” says Dulaney. Freight transportation on U.S. roadways is expected to double by 2050, and by 2030, carbon dioxide emissions are forecasted to jump 30 percent due to freight transport alone.
  UNQUOTE

  tags: atlantic_cities trucks pollution catenary e_cars los_angeles

• William Gibson Worries Your City May Be ‘Cooked’ – Technology – The Atlantic Cities

  Fascinating interview with William Gibson. At one point he says, “I think we invent ideologies to cope with technologies.”
  And:
  QUOTE
  Gibson also bemoans cities that no longer enable young, artistic, and often not rich people from being able to move in and spur change. He cites both London and New York as places that used to allow this but which have gotten too expensive to be approachable by young creatives and are on their way to being “cooked.”

  “Once a city is completely cooked, it’s more like Paris, where the city’s business is not to change,” says Gibson. “But it’s not a place that actually welcomes innovation.”
  UNQUOTE

  tags: atlantic_cities william_gibson interview

• The New Design Needs of the Information Economy – Housing – The Atlantic Cities

  Interesting – inner city renewal, courtesy of big tech companies?
  QUOTE
  Google’s decision to locate its Pittsburgh operations in the inner city is but one way America’s ever-expanding knowledge economy is changing the real estate sector, something it is expected to continue doing. Not only are high-tech companies looking for unusual spaces that are reflective of their corporate culture, but firms in the knowledge sector are also reviving inner-city neighborhoods, spearheading the drive for sustainability, and even changing the way some new buildings are designed.
  UNQUOTE

  tags: pittsburgh google urban_renewal atlantic_cities

• Is Traffic Making Us Lonely? – Commute – The Atlantic Cities

  “Appleyard published his compelling research in 1981 in a book called Livable Streets. Sadly, he died the next year — struck by a speeding car in Athens, Greece — and perhaps that is why he is not better known, even among urbanists. But his findings, which have recently been replicated in the United Kingdom, should be part of any discussion about the erosion of social ties in modern society.

  Appleyard did his research in San Francisco in 1969, looking at three categories of streets: light traffic (2,000 vehicles per day), medium traffic (8,000 vehicles), and heavy traffic (16,000). What he found was that residents of lightly trafficked streets had two more neighborhood friends and twice as many acquaintances as those on the heavily trafficked streets.

  Residents who were interviewed by Appleyard also talked about what they saw as their home territory. On the heavily trafficked street, respondents indicated that their apartment, or perhaps their building, qualified as “home.” On the light-traffic streets, people often saw the whole block as home. They also included much more detail when asked to draw pictures of their streets.”

  tags: atlantic_cities donald_appleyard traffic cars automobile socialtheory urbanism

• Fables of Wealth – NYTimes.com

  More like this, please (I say this as an ethical atheist, btw). William Deresiewicz nails it:
  QUOTE
  There are ethical corporations, yes, and ethical businesspeople, but ethics in capitalism is purely optional, purely extrinsic. To expect morality in the market is to commit a category error. Capitalist values are antithetical to Christian ones. (How the loudest Christians in our public life can also be the most bellicose proponents of an unbridled free market is a matter for their own consciences.) Capitalist values are also antithetical to democratic ones. Like Christian ethics, the principles of republican government require us to consider the interests of others. Capitalism, which entails the single-minded pursuit of profit, would have us believe that it’s every man for himself.
  UNQUOTE

  tags: nyt william_deresiewicz capitalism economy ethics morality

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

No, wait. Thinking about packing the car was a panic-filled struggle. Once we actually started, we just plain freaked out for a while because it looked like so. very. much.

We made a couple of purchases (both necessities and one or two “nice-to-haves”) during our five-months-long stay in Portland. And, because up until about the middle of March it wasn’t clear to us that we wouldn’t actually settle there, buying a few bulky things seemed harmless.

Of course each additional cubic inch turned into a potential assassin when it came time to load the vehicle. But we did it.

Finally, just after noon we set out.

Can I just say that Oregon is beautiful?

Our route took us slightly south and around Mount Hood, along US-26. We passed through the Mt. Hood National Forest, we glimpsed amazing valleys and shuddered at the close-up view of snow-capped mountains just behind pine forest armies. We stopped at view points with drops of several hundred feet, drove curvy highways up to elevations of 4,000+ feet, and drove curvy highways about half-way down again till we were in the Oregon high desert. We marveled at buttes barely held together by titanic geological pressure and stray grasses.

Self-Realization Tycoons and Railway Workers

We didn’t drive far, only to Madras, where it’s as spring-warm as one might imagine Chennai’s to be. Madras isn’t too far from the ranch where Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh set up his commune Rajneeshpuram in the early 1980s. Bhagwan must have made serious money in the self-realization business, for out in that Oregon desert, he personally owned a fleet of forty Rolls-Royces (and a couple of airplanes, too). Sadly, we didn’t discover any orange traces of his legacy on our drive to the motel, which, it turns out, we were sharing with a small army of hardened railway workers.

At around 5:30pm, they started arriving at the motel, brought there by the trucks that would take them away again the next morning: sun-burnt, grimy, squinting, and clearly worn out from their long day’s work. It was a mixed crew: a few of European descent, a number of Hispanics, a couple of African Americans, and several Native Americans. They’re replacing the steel on the railway, and I guess they travel as they work – hence the motel stay.

I talked to one worker, who looked Native American. He told me that some of the gangs work on replacing the ties, but that his crew does the steel.

“Tough job,” I said. “I guess you don’t need to go to a gym to work out, do you?”

“No,” he laughed. Then he added, “And I guess I’m not going to get diabetes, either,” which I took to mean that diabetes is a serious problem for his community.

Score one for a car-centric “culture” built around junk food (even if you are a railway worker), and zero for Bhagwan’s vision of super enlightened self-realization.

Maybe, when (or if) I get around to posting about Day Two, I’ll have a few more choice words about the often miserable culture we’ve built in contrast to the endlessly astonishing beauty of the land.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.