Guerrillas in the City (no not those Gorillas)

Apologies for the long time between posts.  I have been busy as usual.  None the less I do hope to update more often and will be starting slowly with one or two posts a week and work forward from there.  Here is a great Friday article I came across earlier this week.

This comes from the folks at CityFabric (check out their cool city map based shirts!!!)

Image from newraleigh.com

These are simple way-finding signs placed in a couple neighborhoods in Raleigh North Carolina (a somewhat unlikely place you might think)

The effort was picked up by the Atlantic Cities and by the BBC but I have yet to see it come up on my blog feed (which is quite surprising!)

The BBC link has a video attached which is a nice combination with the print articles on this effort.

Read the newraleigh.com article here (or click the picture)

The Facebook page for this effort is here

This is exactly what we need in many communities; simple, stylish, and cheap.  It gets the point across and gives folks quick information in a way that they can understand.  (the little QR code links to a Google map with walking directions to whatever destination is mentioned on the sign)

No this is not a good long term solution but it was clearly enough to get the attention of the city and international media to such an extent that the city is now looking at making and expanding these signs (albeit in a more code compliant way).

There are quite a lot of people that want to help make their city or town better.  However, I feel that many local governments are stuck in a format of engagement that does not bring many people on-board with a program or truly allow good discussion.  Cities and communities need to work harder to identify needs and work with needs that the community has identified as well.  Our cities and towns can be stronger than they are now, and must be.  It is people power pure and simple, but it needs to be tapped properly.

Even the City of Cambridge, MA (where I work) can do a better job (actually they are doing a better job and are adopting some new outreach techniques I helped develop in the grant program I coordinate).

Lets have more guerrilla signs for walking, biking, transit.  More guerrilla gardening and knitting.  These things are helpful and make our community better.  They make us smile and think about what a great idea that is.  They may not be legal and may only last a couple weeks but sometimes that is enough.

Lets have more engagement with the community that we live in, sometimes it only takes one or two people to get the ball rolling.

Walkable Streets Economy Boosting Potential - This Big City

A good article from the UK on some recent research on how street improvements help increase home and property values along that same street. With research like this there might be an increased opportunity to develop other funding sources for Main Street revitalizations. Of course as goes good street improvements, goes the desirability to walk and the bicycle, which is key.

Take a read over at thisbigcity.net

Research study link, Here.

Dover, NH Parking Meter Map

This is another one of my fun Google map projects.
I came across the new map of parking meters (or Kiosks really) from the parking bureau website. This is the map that they give to the public for folks to find the parking meters.(caution pdf)

First off, the city website is a mess, but that is beside the point, at least the information is there. (unlike the city of Plattsburgh site...).

Second, the map is actually oriented North (amazing right!) which is good, but there is no legend included that would tell a viewer the difference between black and red markers. (Actually it turns out the red markers are the recently launched, Jan 18th, and the black were ones already operating during the fall, I decided not to differentiate between them, once I know more of the planned expansion locations I will add them differently. Of course you had to click on the faq to find that, and see the original map with legend(pg2), which had a Western orientation...)

Thirdly, there is very little information on the businesses or other orientating information, other than road names, you are unable to move around and get your bearing if you are not a resident, and that is really the key point.

Now these are actually relatively minor issues compared to some maps I have seen (the ward map, a complete mess until you zoom way in; my version of it can be found Here); the kiosks are close enough together and visible enough that finding one on the ground should not pose a problem though.

(click through for Google maps link)

The point of the matter is though, that I created the above map using Google (Google Earth, and then uploaded to maps), it took about an hour to do it, including creating the custom marker icon, and now we have a map that is interactive, somebody can search for businesses, or figure out where they are, they can go into streetview and see what the area looks like (meters won't show up though, too recent) they can create trips and better plan for a visit to the city.

The map as the city created it is designed for residents (and even then it may be confusing). That is not a bad thing, but it could have easily been designed for anybody.

The city really needs to get its act in gear and start making use of Google maps and the huge potential that is being missed. The planning department uses Google maps to create maps of locations on their agenda for the next meeting, a very good and useful idea!
I think the city as a whole though can, and must do better!

Communities need to stop thinking like it's 1980, data is all stand-alone, and if somebody wants something they will call or go down to city hall to get it. There are so many more opportunities for the city to really sell its presence and what’s happening; online. These are fairly simple to implement and would go a long way toward providing accessibility to city resources and services.

Simply providing city resource maps through Google would be an enormous step.

From, The Urbanophile on outsiders in a community

I was going through my draft posts the other day and came upon this article from April from The Urbanophile. The premise of the article is that outsiders, e.g. non-natives to a region or city, are key to that city surviving economic problems or other calamities. They help in driving the city toward positive change and make it better for everybody to live in. The conclusion was based on data from corporate problem solving studies that show that a group working independently on a problem will solve the problem slower, or not at all than a group where outside individuals are brought in part way through the process.

So extrapolated out, migration is key to societies survival as a whole and specifically in cities where outsiders can bring a new prospective to what is valuable in a community, what needs to be encouraged, and what needs to change.

It can be hard to understand where these "outsiders" are coming from but if we learn to embrace other migrants to our communities, we might just be able to overcome the looming problems over the next 100 years.

Check out the article at, The Urbanophile.