Category Archives: Changing World

Polling Fever

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Apologies for not posting lately. Fervent activity on the dissertation front and professional pursuits have kept me busy. Not to mention, the very exciting Presidential race with umpteen polls to sift through have provided much fodder for thoughts on survey methodology and poll aggregation.

Among the plethora of polling companies and results, I highly recommend Five Thirty Eight, an excellent compendium on daily tracking polls and excellent accounts of the ground game of the two campaigns. If you’ve been reading this blog for a while now, it should not be difficult to guess whom I’m rooting for. Go out and vote now!

Reinventing College Towns

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Colleges could maximize their real estate and financial position if they can bring in boomers as full or part-time residents. This is true not only in metropolitan areas but in broad parts of the country including the rural south, Midwest and places like Pennsylvania. Many boomers do not view retirement as a permanent vacation but as a place to start a “second life.”

Joel Kotin writes on the need to reinvent college towns to take advantage of emerging demographic trends that are highlighted by an increasingly vital aging population.

Creating Democratic Cities

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New Urbanists believe in the power of physical design (of cities and neighborhoods) in influencing user behavior. John Thackara and Sunil Abraham talk to Cluster Magazine about the dynamism of cities in fostering democratic perceptions and influencing user behavior [hat tip: Jinal Shah]:

Tolerance of everything and openness to everybody are not universally accepted principles. This is one reason why globalization and migration have introduced new complications. Most religions advocate tolerance in theory, but organised religion can be oppressive in practice.

I’m glad they recognize the limitations imposed by differentiation of cultural and religious norms within civilizations in creating democratic cities and unless users themselves demand certain freedoms, it will be hard to impose such on them. But at the same time, unless you expose them to certain freedoms that we take for granted they’ll not know what they are missing out on. Considering the current conflict in Iraq which also faces similar dilemmas, can the nature of rebuilding their cities help any?

Driving Habits and Oil Price

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In America, driving habits probably aren’t as inelastic as they are thought to be. This graphic [source] definitely shows consumers reacting to the oil price hike by cutting down on their driving. This summer given the gas prices is going to be a low-traffic one. We canceled our summer vacation and instead bought a Wii. Will continued rise in oil prices or even stagnation at this level modify our lifestyles and in the long-term create dense and walkable neighborhoods?

Evidence-Based Approach to Planning Using Technology

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Noah Radford, US Director for Space Syntax and PhD candidate at MIT presents an evidence-based approach to the planning and design of buildings and cities using computer modeling technologies.

His talk as part of a series on technology, people, place, and space covers documenting the sense of place in today’s cities. I’m sure Google’s StreetView layers has added rich information not just with use of technology but also by harnessing its reach as a primary information provider of real-time mapping solutions. I was particularly impressed with use of innovative visualization techniques to depict spatial relationships in our activities (e.g.cell phone usage). This graphic of population concentrations in America in Time Magazine is one such example.

Ruins of Detroit

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Residents of Detroit will not appreciate calling their city an urban wasteland. Unfortunately due to the downturn in the manufacturing economy on this side of the pond, the city bears obvious signs of neglect and rising incidence of abandonment. Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre photograph the ‘ruins of Detroit’ through a series of photo essays in contemporary ruins and urban archeology.

The Evolution of the New York Subway Map

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The New York subway is one of those connecting systems that helps us make sense of the complex urbanscape of the Big Apple. Ben Popper at Men’s Vogue shares the evolution of this cartographic beauty that tends to make complex connections decipherable to the common New Yorker (and the confused tourist).

The mashup map of of the Vignelli map and the current edition designed by Eddie Jabbour is one of my favorite versions.

Skyscrapers in Moscow

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When you hear skyscrapers these days, you instantly think of Dubai but it turns out that Moscow with its 103,000 dollar millionaires isn’t far behind:

By 2015, Moscow will boast the 10 tallest office buildings in Europe—and already prime office rents in Moscow are going above $2,000 a square meter, 50 percent higher than the most prestigious skyscrapers of midtown Manhattan [via].