PhillyMatters
Saturday, December 12th, 2009 | Essay, Planning | No Comments
This post is not just about Philadelphia, but it is a little sentimental. This post is really about place, and what makes a place. I’ve recently returned home to Philadelphia to visit my family and celebrate my mother’s birthday, giving rise to a number of thoughts on what makes a place.
I realized immediately that I wanted to put my thoughts into words when I walked up to the gate at DIA and saw the word “Philadelphia”. Just the word gives me comfort; I like the way it’s spelled, the way it sounds, and all the memories it conjures. This is when I realized that place is more than a location. Place is all the experiences, smells, tastes, sights, and sounds. Place is love lost and love found, lessons learned, laughter and tears. Place is a movie and blanket on a cold day in your downtown apartment; place is a kiss on Walnut Street; place is children’s laughter on an early fall day in Rittenhouse Square.
I will carry with me forever the taste of a real Philly Cheesesteak, memories of disinterested customer service, the way people say “Fuladelfia,” the rabid sports fans (more rabid than most places on this planet, save soccer fans in Europe), and the hot, humid days of summer that make you want to shower three times a day.
Philadelphia, whether on the periphery or in the center, was part of my life for 24 years. Arguably, it still is part of my life. As I’ve realized, you can take the boy out of Philly, but you can’t take the Philly out of the boy. My new home, Denver, is not any less important, just newer. After a week of travel for work, coming back to Denver is comfort. The skyline and mountains are imagery that will be imprinted with me whenever I decide to take the next journey. And the friends I’ve found there have built new memories that will make this place yet another so hard to leave but exciting to return.
Planners often boil place down to the basics, forgetting the intangibles that make a place. It is a tough balance though. Tearing down grandma’s house may open up the building of new memories for 100 new people, but tearing down a memory is an awful struggle we see play out over and over at planning meetings and in courts all the time. Planners look at streets, setbacks, uses, and transit. These are all possibly dry topics, but a good planner connects these to the very real interactions we have in a place. Planning is about building the infrastructure of memories and experience. It is an exciting prospect, but one that planners miss in the process of planning.
Transit gaining traction?
Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009 | Cities, Planning, Transit, Trends | No Comments
The NYTimes, this weekend reported on better than expected ridership on the Phoenix light rail. The Times points out that the 33,000 average daily riders come primarily from weekend riders looking to get out to the bars and restaurants. This comes as little surprise to me, as many light rail systems, including the one in Denver, far surpassed initial estimates of ridership. This story has played out over and over again in cities like Minneapolis, Houston, and Charlotte. The Overhead has more on these underestimates.
Sense and the City
Sunday, August 2nd, 2009 | Cities, Technology, Trends | No Comments
I’ve lately been excited by the concept of the senseable city (a term I’m borrowing from MIT). Being able to measure and visualize the intangible rhythms and pulses of a city can be incredibly powerful. As mobile devices are becoming more pervasive, and embeddable sensors cheaper, we have richer amounts of data at our disposal. Now, I know this could feed all your worst nightmares about Big Brother, and as with any technology, in the wrong hands, it could be used for nefarious purposes. However, this isn’t about a centrally controlled system of CCTV’s; this is about large amounts of raw anonymous data aggregated in ways where the whole tells us much more than any one part. Raw anonymous data doesn’t sound sexy, but Current City makes it look sexy:
SMS during New Years Eve from realtime city on Vimeo.
This is My City: Finding the Soul of the City
Thursday, July 16th, 2009 | Cities, Media | No Comments
Just recently stumbled upon a gem of online video for people who love discovering cities. Called “This is My City,” the hosts, Thomas Beug and Tim Kafalas, find a stranger to take them on a real heart and soul tour of the town. They skip the tour buses and the traps and go where the locals go, giving a much more authentic picture of the place. Filmed in HD and presented uncensored, this is one of the more interesting travel shows I’ve seen. I hope they continue to film episodes and I’d really love for this to get picked up, and hopefully it will maintain its authentic hook.
Cities XL: Next Generation City Simulation
Thursday, June 18th, 2009 | Planning, Technology, Trends | No Comments
Growing up, my first computer game was SimCity (the original). Ever since then, I’ve become fascinated with cities and, more importantly, the spaces between our real cities and the virtual communities we create online. I eventually ended up in the field of urban planning (unfortunately, it is not appropriate to release monsters on your city) and devote much of my mental and professional energy to imagining new ways to engage people around sustainability and planning.
Am I a Socialist?
Wednesday, May 27th, 2009 | Essay, Trends | No Comments
I’ve long held that I believe in the markets of ideas and the power of people to make decisions given the right access to information and tools. It’s what motivates my work at PlaceMatters. My reading list includes books like Wikinomics
Planes, Trains and Automobiles
Tuesday, May 19th, 2009 | Planning, Transit | 4 Comments
For the past two weeks, I’ve been traveling a lot for business and pleasure and I realized that I’ve utilized a healthy mix of transportation options: light rail in Minneapolis, planes between Denver and Minneapolis and Philadelphia, commuter rail in Philadelphia, automobiles in the suburbs of Philadelphia, and good old fashioned walking. What has been great about this trip, is that I’ve used each of these methods as part of a transportation system–a network of options. This seems like an obvious observation, but what troubles me is that too many discussions on transportation seem to separate out the various modes (cars, trains, planes and bike/ped) into warring camps.
“Maybe I come on too strong…”
Monday, March 23rd, 2009 | Environment, Funny | No Comments
My friend Alex over at SanFrooklyn posted this and I had to share here as well. You can thank the Germans for this one. Enjoy.
Carshare arrives in Denver
Thursday, March 19th, 2009 | Environment, Transit | No Comments
So it’s official! Denver now houses two cars in the Capital Hill neighborhood that are part of the non-profit car sharing network eGo. Karen Worminghouse has worked tirelessly to get the organization up and running and I am very excited about it! As a car-less member of Denver, I will generally stick to public transit and alternative means for most of my trips. But for the occasion out to Target or some other far-flung place, I look forward to the convenience of automobile travel without the hassle of ownership (insurance, parking, maintenance, etc). › Continue reading
Google Transit arrives on the iPhone
Monday, November 24th, 2008 | Technology | 1 Comment
I knew it would eventually come, but I didn’t realize how excited I would be to hold transit directions in the palm of my hand! Much of the inconvenience of riding transit is the lack of information. Google and Apple have just broken through the first barrier of inconvenience by bringing pervasive information to transit riders (which is my only means of getting around Denver). In case you haven’t heard, Apple just released version 2.2 of it’s iPhone operating system including updates to the Maps application, enabling transit and walking directions (as well as street view). › Continue reading
Twitter Updates
- Ron Sims, deputy sec of HUD, gave an inspiring speech at #NPSG. Let's get sustainability right! >>
- At #NPSG conference in Seattle. Heartened by the possibility of a sustainable future and more green jobs. >>
- PlaceMatters will be in Albany starting wednesday for some high level public participation. >>
- #geodesign Finished a lightning round presentation at the GeoDesign Summit. Went well. Now off to the idea lab. >>
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