Healthy Risks

Chris Whitcomb, writing for Cannon Design Blog, on the dumbing down of playground equipment:

There’s no denying the injury risks that come with climbing walls, running across tires and jumping from swings, but when one considers the potential for childhood obesity and a generation of uninspired children – it’s not easy to determine it’s worth the risk. The world rewards those who take healthy risks, strive for creativity and stay active – our playgrounds should do the same.

I agree. Playground equipment shouldn’t be about eliminating risk but should be focused on allowing, even encouraging, healthy risks. Learning how to navigate a world filled with risks and dangers is part of growing up. Giving our kids a sanitized, completely safe environment doesn’t allow them to stretch and grow and it certainly isn’t interesting enough to hold their attention. Make it exciting and fun. If there are some scrapes and bruises along the way, that’s part of growing up.

Stranded

Peter Lehner, writing for his NRDC blog, laments the lack of transit options for our aging population:

Our car-dependent society poses a real threat to the health and well-being of millions of senior citizens today. Nearly 80 percent of our seniors live in car-dependent suburban and rural communities, according to a 2003 Brookings Institution study. Half our non-driving seniors stay home on any given day because they have no public transit options. Non-driving seniors make fewer trips to the doctor, fewer visits to friends and family, and fewer trips to stores and restaurants, according to a 2004 study. Seniors who stop driving show more symptoms of depression and are less active outside the home.

This is a recurring theme here at The Studio Stoop. Our car centric society is exceptionally detrimental to the margins of society - the young, the old, the poor. Making the ability to drive a prerequisite for participation in society is damaging to both those who cannot drive as they are left out and to those who can drive because they miss out on the rich diversity others have to offer. Crafting a community where the elderly (and the young) can easily mingle with the rest of society downtown, even if only to play chess in the town square, is so much better for everyone.

Miniaturized Lives

Nathan Hurst, writing for Wired, reports on San Fransisco’s latest foray into the trend of micro-apartments:

If you live in San Francisco, chances are you already feel like you’re living in a closet. But soon the city’s smallest living spaces will likely be tiny enough to fit in a compact one-car garage.

San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors tentatively approved Tuesday a trial run of 220-square-foot “micro-apartments” — carefully designed compact living spaces that have become all the rage in urban development. Pending ratification and mayoral approval next month, the plan beats, in smallness, Vancouver’s 226-square-foot “micro-lofts,” and make the 275-square-foot units under trial in New York look like airplane hangars.

I am somewhat ambivalent about this trend. On the one hand, providing affordable places to live for individuals without the need for a roommate seems good. On the other hand, cramming as many people as possible into increasingly smaller spaces seems like a recipe for trouble (the terrible tenements of industrial cities comes to mind). What it comes down to, for me, is an issue of quality. If done well, I can see a segment of the population enjoying them.

Doing micro-apartments well is a tough task. As with gadgets, small is easy but miniature is hard. It takes a lot of work and careful planning to make 220 sf livable. The smaller the space, the less you can rely on furniture. For these micro-apartments to actually work, I’d expect an almost turnkey solution with lots of built-in amenities that may even feature some clever space saving design elements - things like Murphy beds that flip up to reveal a table or desk, sliding walls to flexibly divide space, and well integrated storage. I would expect the cost per square foot of micro-apartments to be higher than more typical apartments due to the increased complexity of additional design, detailing, and construction. There is a cost to doing miniature well. It remains to be seen if the market exists for these miniature apartments.

The Journey

John Siracusa, in an article originally published by The Magazine but now also on his Hypercritical blog, explores the implications of the softer side of online human interaction as exhibited by the Playstation 3 game Journey:

Online discourse can be harsh. Nowhere is this more true than in multiplayer video games. It’s nearly impossible to play a popular online game without being exposed to — or worse, being the target of — the most vile kinds of behaviors and insults, including sexist, racist, and homophobic slurs.

[…]

The lesson of Journey is that success is possible, even in an area like online multiplayer interaction which has seemed so hopeless for so long over so many thousands of iterations. Success is possible.

I haven’t had the opportunity to play Journey, but the description John gives is beautiful and heartwarming. His message of hope, even in the typically inhumane world of video game interactions, is one that resonates strongly. We can craft a better world for ourselves. Not just a better world of online interactions, but a better world for all interactions.

Kowloon Walled City

Roman Mars, in episode 66 of his 99% Invisible program, explores the fantastical world of the Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong:

Kowloon Walled City was the densest place in the world, ever.

By its peak in the 1990s, the 6.5 acre Kowloon Walled City was home to at least 33,000 people (with estimates of up to 50,000). That’s a population density of at least 3.2 million per square mile. For New York City to get that dense, every man, woman, and child living in Texas would have to move to Manhattan.

Fascinating. And amazing. That kind of density just boggles the mind. For perspective, I grew up outside of town on 10 acres (surrounded by additional open acreage). To imagine 30,000–50,000 people living in less space than my boyhood stomping grounds is mind blowing.

In a 2005 trip to Hong Kong, I unknowingly had the opportunity to visit the site of the Walled City which had long been demolished and turned into a park of the same name. (The picture above is my favorite shot from that trip.) The park is a lovely place but the history of the area is even more fascinating. I wish now that I had known the history as it would have been astounding to consider that the beautiful park was once home to so many.

Reinventing the Wheels

Josh Sanburn, writing for Time, reports on the the other option for holiday travel - private busses:

By embracing technology, the new companies are trying to freshen the seedy image of bus travel. They ticket online and offer free wi-fi and plug-in capabilities at every seat. They realized that young consumers feel unembarrassed about bus travel—as long as they can stay online.

[…]

Even more than high-tech amenities, cost is driving the bus business: prices of gas and train and air travel are near record highs. Drivers pay $25 to $50 in fuel costs to drive from New York City to Washington, D.C. The same trip averages $19 on Bolt and $22 on Megabus.

No security lines. Convenient locations. No altitude adjustments. Always connected. And cheap. Sounds like a good option to me.

The Best

Dustin Curtis, on having the best:

Reasonable people would probably not spend the time to read a book about the history of flatware, buy twenty sets, and test the feeling of each metal utensil against their teeth. That sounds completely insane. But who cares about reasonable people?

If you’re an unreasonable person, trust me: the time it takes to find the best of something is completely worth it. It’s better to have a few fantastic things designed for you than to have many untrustworthy things poorly designed to please everyone. The result–being able to blindly trust the things you own–is intensely liberating.

Details matter. For some, details are the only thing that matters. Those are the people we want designing our stuff.

Strong Towns

I just donated to Strong Towns and I encourage you to do the same. My reason for donating is simple: I believe that the Strong Towns message is unique, compelling, and most of all necessary.

Unique

There are many groups advocating for better places. Some are very narrowly focused on one aspect (Complete Streets). Others are very broadly focused but come from a distinct frame of reference (CNU). Strong Towns adds to this dialogue in a unique way because of its focus on fiscal resiliency and clear minded economics. If there is one term I would use to describe the Strong Towns philosophy it would be productive growth. It is this focus on making our cities and towns productive that gives Strong Towns its unique edge. In a field so dominated by advocates rightly proclaiming life could be so much better, Strong Towns tells us that those things we all want to help us thrive actually end up costing us less.

Compelling

The Strong Towns message is so simple and clear. Chuck Marohn is a master of cutting through a complicated subject to get to a simple and compelling truth. And it is a credible message because of his background and training. In an era of a tough economy and mind blowing public debt, the Strong Towns message of stewardship, return on investment, and responsible productive growth is a compelling breath message that is sure to resonate with a lot of people.

Necessary

I find the Strong Towns message necessary on two levels. First, because of the unique focus it adds more breadth to a growing body of knowledge on how to make better places. If we all work towards a common goal from different areas of expertise, we have a better chance of getting there. Second, I think the Strong Towns message has a chance to reach a different crowd, possibly even a demographic that would typically be hostile towards a message of urban vitality.

I believe that more people hearing this message can only make the world a better place. And so I donated. And I hope you do too.

Shooting Spielberg

Kyle Buchanan, writing for Vulture, has an interesting interview with Janusz Kaminski, Stephen Spielberg’s cinematographer:

Few men know Steven Spielberg as well as Janusz Kaminski. The Oscar winning, Polish-born cinematographer has shot all of Spielberg’s films since 1993, and their latest collaboration, Lincoln, is in theaters now. (Our David Edelstein reviews it here.) What better time, then, to talk to Kaminski about how he managed to create some of the most interesting shots and sequences in Spielberg’s modern ouevre? Here are eleven striking images and moments from films like Lincoln, A.I., and Schindler’s List, followed by commentary from the cinematographer himself.

Fascinating.

Policy not Preference

David Edmondson, writing for The Greater Marin, had a great post exploring the effect policies have on cities:

Suburbanization, and the policies that encourage it outside and within cities, is to blame. The layers of regulation banning increasing density; the hundreds of billions invested in roads to speed suburbanites into the city in cars; the parking lots to store all those cars that destroyed buildings and the city’s fabric; and the zoning codes that locked uses into place have released bizarre forces on cities. Where suburbanization has been restrained, city living is so valuable but so difficult to accommodate that housing is squeezed into every nook and cranny of developable space, and there’s not a lot of that. Where suburbanization runs rampant, cities collapse under the weight of regulation and outright destruction.

His thoughts about the emerging discussion of micro-apartments being a symptom of decades of bad policy rather than a solution for meeting extraordinary demand were particularly compelling. One effect of Euclidean zoning is a lack of flexibility - a lock-in of sorts. Without up zoning, a neighborhood has no chance to change - to mature and grow up as neighborhoods traditionally have. Without the ability to mature, neighborhoods are legally prevented from adjusting to meet demand which leaves only sporadic opportunities for growth or vast unmet demand. With the latter, we begin to talk of cramming more people into smaller spaces. It’s an interesting angle on an increasingly prevalent topic.