Category: Up To Speed

Links to keep you up to speed on what’s happening in Cincinnati and what we can learn from other cities.

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Can the Internet of Things improve the way we run our cities?

Can the Internet of Things improve the way we run our cities?.

The ‘Internet of Things’ is basically a new wave of technology that is enhancing the capabilities and performance of everyday devices through the incorporation of Internet technology. So far the Internet of Things has primarily focused on household products like thermostats, but what might this wave of technology be able to do for our urban environments? More from Clean Technica:

An “internet of things” approach streamlines a service that, traditionally, almost required waste of energy and time: service routes can be created on the fly to maximize efficient use of these resources. If  you think that sounds like a brilliant way to manage public trash and recycling collection much better, you’re not alone: the company won the People’s Choice Award for top Smart City Application at the 2014/15 Internet of Things (#IoT) Awards. And the units are doing much more than managing trash:

Think of each waste and recycling unit as a self-contained power plant to which applications and appliances that measure foot traffic, air quality, radiation levels and more are easily attached. Its connectivity can be expanded to offer free Wi-Fi to residents. Think urban development, public safety, and broad communication for the public. Some of these ‘ideas’ are already in the works with pilot programs underway.

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New Yorkers skeptical of proposed ferry network, but could it work here?

New Yorkers skeptical of proposed ferry network, but could it work here?.

Almost exactly six years ago, UrbanCincy proposed a comprehensive water taxi network for Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky. Right now, New York City is looking at expanding and developing a comprehensive, city-wide ferry network. The idea has been proposed there before, but it is being met with skepticism due to a perceived inability to provide the much greater amounts of capacity that are needed there. More from Second Avenue Sagas:

Let’s stop to acknowledge that ferry service can be useful. It’s a complementary element of a robust transit network that can bridge awkward gaps…That said, no matter how many times politicians leap to embrace ferries, the same problems remain. It is, flat out, not a substitute for subway service and, because of the scale of ridership figures and planned routing, won’t help alleviate subway congestion. If it takes a few cars off the road, so much the better, but the mayor should be looking at high capacity solutions to the city’s mobility problems.

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Are Aaron Betsky and his architecture contemporaries ‘out of touch’ with society?

Are Aaron Betsky and his architecture contemporaries ‘out of touch’ with society?.

As we all know by now, most architecture today is pure shit. Well, a recent piece by the architecture critiques at The New York Times that says contemporary architects are largely out of touch with society didn’t sit well with architecture power broker Aaron Betsky.

In a response piece to Betsky’s commentary on the matter, Forbes published a piece from Justin Shubow, President of the National Civic Art Society and author of The Gehry Towers over Eisenhower, panning the former outspoken director of  the Cincinnati Art Museum.

Betsky rained down on Bingler and Pedersen with ridicule and scorn: Their piece was “so pointless and riddled with clichés as to beggar comprehension.” He summarized their position: “we have three of the standard criticisms of buildings designed by architects: first, they are ugly according to what the piece’s authors perceive as some sort of widely-held community standard (or at least according to some 88-year old ladies); second, they are built without consultation; third they don’t work.”

Yet Betsky then admitted, “All those critiques might be true.” They are irrelevant, he claims, since architecture must be about experimentation and the shock of the new. (Why this should be the case he does not say.) And sometimes designers must stretch technology to the breaking (or leaking) point: “The fact that buildings look strange to some people, and that roofs sometimes leak, is part and parcel of the research and development aspect of the design discipline.” Ever brave, he is willing to let others suffer for his art.

At no point did Betsky consider the actual human beings, the unwilling guinea pigs who live in the houses. He implicitly says of the poor residents: Do their roofs leak? Let them buy buckets. And as for sickness-inducing mold, there’s Obamacare for that. Betsky also does not consider what a leaky roof means to people whose prior homes were destroyed by water. The architects, having completed their noble experiments, effectively say like the arrogant King Louis XV of France: “Après moi, le deluge” [After me, the flood]. No wonder architects have an image problem.

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Prefabricated tiny living spaces are on their way to America’s biggest city

Prefabricated tiny living spaces are on their way to America’s biggest city.

While the concept of living in micro-apartments is not new to many cities around the world, it is a fairly novel concept in North America where large dwelling units have traditionally dominated the marketplace. That, however, is changing and we are excited to be covering the emergence tiny living in Cincinnati. Meanwhile, New York City will soon celebrate the arrival of its first prefabricated “microunits” that will make up the city’s first tower of such apartment units. More from The Atlantic:

For another, this will be the city’s first “microunit” building. In 2013, its design won a city-sponsored “micro-housing” competition devoted to compact housing for single occupants. (Forty-six percent of Manhattan households are made up of one adult.) The architects, Eric Bunge and Mimi Hoang, hope that large windows, high ceilings, and floor plans featuring multipurpose living areas—fold-up furniture sold separately—will make the apartments feel more spacious than their 255 to 360 square feet.

Bunge says that drafting a modular, microunit building is, in terms of complexity and precision, something like designing a car. The little boxes flirt with minimum-habitable-space laws as well as mandates regarding disability access, so there is absolutely no room for error. “If we were to … change drywall from half an inch to five-eighths,” he says, running his fingers across some plaster, “we’re screwed.”

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What if we calculated level of service for pedestrians?

What if we calculated level of service for pedestrians?.

Level of Service. Chances are, unless you’re in a field related to transportation planning or engineering, or are a total geek, you probably have not heard of this term before. LOS, however, has come to define how we design and build or roadways. Almost by its structure, LOS favors cars over the function or safety of any other mode of transportation. So what would happen if we took the same approach for other modes, like walking? More from Urban Kchoze:

The point of a traffic engineer in most studies is to keep level of service as low as possible to avoid delays for drivers, helping them drive faster and have to wait less for other traffic. Now then, some of you may ask “well, what about pedestrians and cyclists? How is level of service measured for them?” Well, the answer to that is that the default method says: F#!% ’em.

So let’s suppose that we calculate a level of service for pedestrians based on the same basis as for vehicles. Pedestrians can stop and accelerate to regular walking speed almost instantaneously and so we don’t have to calculate delay caused by lower than desired speeds during acceleration and deceleration. So delay is limited essentially only to the wait time before they can go ahead and cross (supposing car drivers respect pedestrian priority).

…crosswalks with medians and stop signs should be preferred to traffic lights for areas with a focus on pedestrians. It also means that the habit of channeling all the traffic on a few wide arterials, forcing each intersection to have multiple turn lanes and many through lanes, is absolutely terrible for pedestrians. A street grid with densely packed streets would do a better job of responding to all users, as it would dilute traffic on many streets, all these streets could be narrow, with 3 or 4 lanes only (1 per direction plus a shared left-turn lane or 2 per direction). Ideally, I believe there should not be any width of pavement greater than 12 meters (40 feet) in a city, any pavement wider than that should be broken in two with a median wide enough to use as a pedestrian refuge.