Books, cities, history and innovation

I’m just re-reading Pete Hamill’s incredible novel Forever.  It follows the life of a man who comes to New York in the 1700′s.  A magic spell is put on him and he is granted eternal life – as long as he never leaves the island of Manhattan.  The book takes the main character Cormac through the origins of New York all the way up to the September 11th attacks.  A fascinating read and a terrific way to learn about a great city’s history.

This got me thinking about another terrific book that I think I’ll re-read: Erik Larson’s Devil in the White City.

This is a work of non-fiction that reads like fiction.  It tells the story of Daniel Burnham – the planning and architecture legend – during the run-up to the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.  This had a tremendous impact on planning in North America through the birth of the City Beautiful movement.  The book also tells a parallel story happening at the same time – that of Dr. Henry Holmes.  At the same time that Burnham was building the World’s Fair, Holmes was murdering scores of individuals who were coming to Chicago for the big event.  A crazy, creepy, incredible story.  Yet another way to delve into a key moment in city-building.

Which got me thinking about something else….

I’ve been to both these cities several times.  In my view, New York and Chicago are two of the most interesting and exciting places I have ever been in the world.  The sheer size, history and complexity of these places make them fascinating places to be and to study.  They also happen to be two of the most innovative modern-day urban labs we have.  Whether the High Line, converting part of Times Square into a pedestrian plaza or the PlaNYC initiative, New York is innovating in a number of important ways.  Chicago has also established itself as a leader in many areas through their work on projects such as green roofs or the Chicago Climate Action Plan.

This got me thinking about something else…..

If cities with this size, complexity and history can initiate change and reinvent themselves, why not other places?  In theory, it should be easier in places that are smaller, less complex or newer.  It’s not (ever) that simple, though.  What can we learn from these places and apply it to the communities that we work in?

That is a lot more to think about.  To be continued….

 

January 16, 2012

Find the hidden wisdom

I was thinking recently about where to find information/knowledge/wisdom.  Often times, we expect information to jump out in front of us – the top link on a Google search for example.  Often times, though, I think we need to look for information in more subtle places.  A couple of examples come to mind:

During the Bow to Bluff project, we installed a series of Sounding Boards – places where community members could share their ideas for improving the Bow to Bluff corridor in that space.  Through this method of engagement, we received nearly 1,000 ideas in a month.  Pretty astounding.  There was no shortage of great ideas and information to be found on the notes themselves, but it occurred to me that there was another layer of information that the boards provided over time.  As the days turned into weeks, the boards were used/abused in different ways.  As you can see from the images below, the first Sounding Board (with the orange post-it notes) was in a more secluded, hidden location.  Over time, moving from the first picture during installation to the second picture during the end of its tenure, this was the most tagged and abused board.  Conversely, the Sounding Board that was most in the open (with yellow post-it notes) was left at the end with only one tag on it – a stencil saying “Do what you love.”  The last picture isn’t great – it’s what the board looked like after 3 straight days of rain, but you can see what I’m talking about.  Note to self: build an awning over your Sounding Boards next time.

The hidden information? How these boards were treated provided insights into the overall visibility and safety of the spaces in which they were placed.

The second example comes from a recent snowstorm we had here in Calgary (the crazy-warm weather has subsequently melted all of the snow).  The morning after the big snowfall, I had to walk up 29th Street NW to the Foothills hospital.  Already, people had chosen many ways of navigating the hill, as you can see in the image below.

The hidden information? How people choose to move through and around the space.  This is what designers call desire lines.  Winter cities can really benefit from the traces of evidence provided by snow.  For example, I am currently working with a local permaculture consultant to design a food forest in my front yard.  The snow provides us with great insights into how the local neighbourhood rabbits move through my yard, allowing us to refine the permaculture design so that the food we plant ends up mostly in my belly, not the rabbit’s.

So the next time you’re searching for some information or insights or wisdom, take a minute and see if you can’t find insights that are less obvious, but perhaps more meaningful.

 

January 9, 2012

Iron Sketch: A Case of Collaboration

Last night I participated in a terrific event as part of the Bow to Bluff initiative.  Iron Sketch was an event that featured 3 designers – Mark Crisp of O2 Planning + Design, Marc Boutin of the Marc Boutin Architectural Collaborative and Dale Taylor of Eleven Eleven Archiecture – as part of a collaborative design event.

The premise was fairly simple: unveil a mystery site in the Bow to Bluff corridor, get the designers to work with 3 audience members for a period of 40 minutes and present the ideas to the audience (I think there were about 50 or 60 people in attendance).

The energy was great, there were lots of great conversations happening all night, citizens were able to see a little of what is “under the hood” of some of these professions and huge number of ideas were produced in a short amount of time in a fun atmosphere.  A great model for future events.  Serious issues and serious professions don’t always have to be so serious.

Marc Boutin and his team present their idea to the crowd.

 

October 7, 2011

The experiment begins

Yesterday marked the launch of engagement for the Bow to Bluff initiative.  Partnering with O2 Planning + Design, we are providing engagement and design support for this citizen-centred initiative.  As part of the process, we posted Sounding Boards in the Bow to Bluff corridor – the area along the CTrain line in Calgary’s community of Hillhurst-Sunnyside.  These are boards where local residents and commuters alike can provide their thoughts on a simple question: “How can we make this space better?”

It’s all part of the overall approach to engagement during this phase of the process – provide as many entry points into the conversation as possible. These Sounding Boards allow folks to provide their thoughts without having to schedule their day around when some of our engagement events are open.  In the first 24 hours, we’re getting lots of good stuff.  Stay tuned for updates on what wisdom people share……

October 3, 2011

Old books, new perspective.

My wife and I were recently cleaning out some pre-renovation clutter, including our stockpile of books.  A few insights into this process:

Apparently, my wife and I read a lot.  We pulled out nine full boxes of books, ranging from South African history to Russian fiction to Dr. Seuss (I’m sure that was mine).

One of the (re)discoveries was my Master’s thesis from 2002, entitled Community Design in the Information Age.  I was surprised how relevant most of it was (if I do say so myself), given the light-speed changes that have occurred in information and communication technologies since I completed this work.  Going through the thesis and the old books at the same time was interesting as one of the concepts I discussed in Community Design was the de-materialization of certain elements of our lives.  As digital media became/becomes an increasing part of our lives, the actual physical artifacts decrease.  A perfect example are books themselves.  I now own a Kindle reader, which is as thin as a magazine, yet could hold every one of the books I just removed and have room for another thousand to spare.  That’s a lot of trees that (potentially) don’t need to be cut down in the future.  Following up on this idea, I found an interesting blog post on EPublishers Weekly about ebooks and sustainability for the publishing industry.

Another concept I discussed in my thesis was the idea of synchronous and asynchronous communication.  At the time I wrote Community Design, if you needed to talk to someone right now, you would call them.  If a response could wait, you would use email.  Since 2002, however, iPhones and Blackberries have meant that email has morphed into an assumed nearly-synchronous way of communicating.  This morphing of email is what led TED curator Chris Andersen to recently create an Email Charter.  Not sure if it will be picked up, but he made some great points in a recent interview on CBC Radio’s Q.

All in all, a surprisingly interesting journey looking in the rear view mirror and reflecting on what has changed in a few short years.  Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to haul a few hundred pounds of books to the used bookstore.

 

July 28, 2011

Listen up (and why it matters)!

“We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.”

-  Epictetus, Greek philosopher

The old Greek was right.  In the age of the always-connected, social media universe, however, this seems to be tougher than ever.  There are so many options to share our thoughts or our opinions (like this blog post, which I will share via Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn) that we often lose the importance of listening.

Nowhere is this more important to think about than how to create opportunities for engagement and dialogue.

Effectively done, engagement can have the benefit of social learning, appreciation for and understanding of differing viewpoints and relationship building.  It’s not just about getting your specific opinion on a specific issue.  It can and should be bigger than that.

In this recent blog post, Alberta Party candidate Sue Huff does a really nice job outlining her party’s “Big Listen” campaign and in doing so, articulates the wisdom behind listening.  Epictetus would be impressed, I’m sure.

 

 

July 20, 2011

Seven and a half minutes well spent

As someone who is trying to continually improve the way I communicate sustainability, engagement and city-building, I was blown away by this TEDx Toronto talk by Dave Meslin.

At a high level, this talk demonstrates that a lot of information can be powerfully articulated in a short period of time.  At a detailed level, the content of Dave’s talk is full of “aha!” moments.  He does a phenomenal job of talking about how a great deal of the engagement/apathy discussion relates to the conditions that are created for people to become involved (or not).  This squarely relates to the idea of “choice architecture,” which I discussed in yesterday’s blog post.

I showed this talk at a course I teach at the University of Alberta, and a couple of planners were so impressed by the points made in this talk that they fully intended to take the concepts of simplicity and approachability into how their municipality communicates and engages with their citizens.  Great stuff.

Here are seven and a half minutes well spent.  Enjoy.

-John, June 17, 2011

 

 

June 17, 2011

Get on that train (a story of being “nudged”)

 

I have been thinking a lot lately about “choice architecture” – an important concept in the book Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein.  According to Thaler and Sunstein, “ a choice architect has the responsibility for organizing the context in which people make decisions.”  It’s a really helpful frame to think about how we make decisions in our lives and our professions.

An example of this came to me recently in Chicago – home to the book’s authors coincidentally.  A friend and I were downtown and trying to get to the White Sox baseball game when the skies opened up and it started to downpour.  We decided to head to a local watering hole to wait and see if the weather improved, which it eventually did.  Approaching game time, we asked the bartender if it would be quicker to take the train or a cab, he responded immediately. “The train….it’s way faster.”  The decisions of a number of choice architects in how Chicago has been built over the past decades created an environment that influenced on our decision to take the train to the game.  For most cities in North America, the choice architects would have likely led to us taking a cab.

How are the decisions in your job or your family nudging the decisions of others?  To find out more about how to create positive “nudges,” you can check out Thaler and Sunstein’s blog.

- John, June 16, 2011

 

June 16, 2011

Hockey, beer and collective action

 

At a recent workshop for the Alberta Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Toolkit project, we were discussing the simultaneous difficulty and importance of collective action.  One of the difficulties of collective action is that it’s difficult to measure.  Here’s a great example of what it could look like if you’re able to track this.

The graphic below is an example of what collective action can look like.  This was released by Epcor, showing water usage in Edmonton last February.  The green line shows water use on Saturday, February 27th – a normal day.  The blue line shows water use on Sunday, February 28th – the day of the Olympic gold medal men’s hockey game.  The annotations indicate milestones in the game.  Wow.  Just a slight difference between the two days.

What I love about this is that it clearly demonstrates that if a bunch of individuals act together (whether consciously or not), it can have a tremendous impact.  Now, if we could just find some data on the beer consumption that day…

June 15, 2011

Back in the air

Just a quick entry. A great demonstration of how connected our world is today. Here’s a video showing the planes getting back in the air after the volcano-induced shutdown of European airspace.

Airspace Rebooted from ItoWorld on Vimeo.

April 26, 2010
© 2011 Intelligent Futures