Exclusives

BLOG POST

Remember when interactive television was dead? Time-Warner's Full Service Television experiment in Florida in the 1990s was a failure -- people hated it. Something about how the set-top boxes sucked, I think. So the concept went away, fading like CD-ROMs before the onslaught of the Internet.<br /> <br /> At least, that seems to be what the <em>New York Times</em> <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/21/garden/21SOFT.html">remembers</a>. Here's the part I'm talking about:<blockquote>The Microsoft Home is more like a concept car, a design to dream about. Microsoft has imagined a dream house before: 10 years ago the company unveiled its first such demonstration home. At the time Microsoft's designers were intrigued by interactive television, a technology that never became the next big thing.</blockquote>

October 27 - Anonymous

BLOG POST

Okay, I get it. Cities are getting wireless data connectivity. <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/internet/10/18/wireless.city/index.html">Here's</a> CNN.com on the subject. Salient bits:<blockquote>One of only a handful of cities in the nation to try it, Chaska -- just southwest of Minneapolis -- plans to have most of the city's 15 square miles Wi-Fi operational by the end of October.<br /> <br /> "We firmly believe that the Internet is going to be just as much a part of everybody's future as the telephone or electricity is and we want to make sure that everybody has equal access to it," says Bradley Mayer, Chaska's information systems manager. "We wanted to ensure there was some sort of broadband activity that could be affordable by our residents."</blockquote>

October 18 - Anonymous

BLOG POST

A financial program running on Linux is helping Stanislaw County, CA, <a href="http://www.modbee.com/business/story/9283109p-10187923c.html">save money</a> [Modesto Bee]. <br /> <br /> <blockquote>"The Linux server now in use by the county helps manage its finances...employees who track the county's money log on to the server through a Web browser...Because there's only one program for the server instead of hundreds of copies for each computer at employees' workstations, the county also saves money on software licensing..."</blockquote>

October 14 - Abhijeet Chavan

BLOG POST

<p>The Internet can be a great way to supplement public meetings and get more people to participate in registering their opinions and preferences for planning alternatives. (Of course there are equity issues but that's a discussion for another piece.)<br><br /> <br><br /> The image below is an example of a question asked on the online visual preference survey used by Midtown Columbus Georgia. Results from the survey, gathered both in public meetings and online, are being used as a foundation for guiding the future planning recommendations for Midtown Columbus.

October 14 - Ken Snyder

FEATURE

The challenge for architecture is to be more firmly rooted in the real patterns of human activity. Michael Mehaffy reports on the 'New Science, New Architecture' Conference in London.

October 11 - Michael Mehaffy

BLOG POST

To understand why cities matter in the presidential election, take a look at this map I cribbed from <em>USA Today's</em> coverage of the 2000 campaign, and how it ended:<br /> <br /> <img src="http://www.planetizen.com/tech/files//electmap.jpg" alt="2000 election by county" /> <br /> <br /> Red = Republican, George W. Bush.<br /> Blue = Democrat, Al Gore<br /> <br /> See where the blue is? Cities. One of the ways the Democrats lost the last election was in what's called GOTV -- Get Out The Vote. They weren't able to get enough urbanites (which is an electoral euphemism for minorities and the poor) to the polls.

October 8 - Anonymous

BLOG POST

Just work with me on this. It has a point at the end.<br /> <br /> Earlier this week, my dad -- former lefty activist, retired Los Angeles Unified School District technocrat -- sent me the following e-mail:<br /> <blockquote>When I take Tucker [his English Setter] for a walk along the dirt path next to the country club, and back down the other side of the street, I see that folks leave their dog poop on the ground.  I made a couple of suggestions to the Tarzana Homeowners Assoc. and, now, have been invited to make a Dog Poop Presentation to the executive board of said organization.<br />  <br /> I mention this to make you aware of what could happen to you when you get old.  I've gone from saving the world, to saving LAUSD to saving a few blocks from poop.  I know that all politics are local, but this is ridiculous.</blockquote>

October 8 - Anonymous

FEATURE

A comparison of American and Canadian cities demonstrates that sprawl in has less to do with the American Dream than with the influence the highway, oil and auto lobby has on US transportation policy.

October 4 - Patrick Condon

BLOG POST

<img src="http://www.planetizen.com/tech/files//20040929-jalopy.jpg" alt="" align="right" /><br /> Many state and federal governments around the world are increasingly <a href="http://www.planetizen.com/tech/archives/2004/08/09/127/">turning to open source software </a> for e-government solutions. According to Sun Microsystems Inc. chairman Scott McNealy, a state and local government that bases an e-government portal on open source is building a "<a href="http://gcn.com/vol1_no1/daily-updates/27474-1.html">custom jalopy</a>

September 29 - Abhijeet Chavan

FEATURE

Buying a home in a New Urbanist neighborhood in Eugene, Oregon becomes a practical lesson on the line separating academic discussions on New Urbanism and personal lifestyle choices for Professor Sriram Kh&#233;.

September 27 - Sriram Kh&#233;

BLOG POST

<img src="http://www.planetizen.com/tech/files//20040924-secondlife.jpg" alt="Screenshot of Second Life" align="right"/><br /> <br /> Wired has a story about university professors about taking online education to a new level -- <a href="http://www.wired.com/news/games/0,2101,65052,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_3">teaching classes in a 3-D virtual world</a>. The virtual world in a "massively multiplayer " online game called <em>Second Life</em> includes a developed economy, neighborhoods and communities, all manner of vehicles and the ability to create nearly anything imaginable.

September 24 - Abhijeet Chavan

BLOG POST

In recent years, many large conservation plans -- including the plan that led Australia to ban fishing on a third of the Great Barrier Reef -- were produced using a computer program called <a href="http://www.ecology.uq.edu.au/marxan.htm#about">Marxan</a>. <br /> <br /> <img src="http://www.ecology.uq.edu.au/marxan/fig3.jpg" align="right" alt="Marxan image" />Software developer and Australian professor Hugh P. Possingham is now raising questions about the validity of the software in certain circumstances, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/21/science/earth/21reef.html?8hpib">Second Thoughts for a Designer of Software That Aids Conservation</a>

September 22 - Chris Steins

BLOG POST

Today's <em>New York Times</em> has a kinda terrifying <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/21/national/21cameras.html">article</a> (reg. req'd) about Chicago's new network of "smart" surveillance cameras. Don't worry; <del>everything's going to be okay</del> we're all doomed:<br /> <blockquote>Police specialists here can already monitor live footage from about 2,000 surveillance cameras around the city, so the addition of 250 cameras under the mayor's new plan is not a great jump. The way these cameras will be used, however, is an extraordinary technological leap.<br /> <br /> Sophisticated new computer programs will immediately alert the police whenever anyone viewed by any of the cameras placed at buildings and other structures considered terrorist targets wanders aimlessly in circles, lingers outside a public building, pulls a car onto the shoulder of a highway, or leaves a package and walks away from it. Images of those people will be highlighted in color at the city's central monitoring station, allowing dispatchers to send police officers to the scene immediately.</blockquote>

September 21 - Anonymous

FEATURE

September 17 - Steve Raney

FEATURE

The federal government can play a transformative rather than divisive role if it becomes a better partner in land use, housing - and especially transportation.

September 13 - Earl Blumenauer

FEATURE

Spatial information professionals gather at the 42nd Annual Conference of the Urban and Regional Information Systems Association in Reno, NV.

September 10 - Abhijeet Chavan

BLOG POST

<html><br /> <br /> <head><br /> <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1"><br /> </meta></head><br /> <br /> <body bgcolor="#ffffff"> Here is a neat example of how visualization tools are helping improve the planning process for communities. It's an example we came across while researching tools for a chapter we are writing for the APA. <br><br /> <br /> <p>The City of Vail, Colorado offers an example of 3D visualization tools being used to improve the design review process. The city requires developers to submit a 3D model &#150; preferably a virtual model &#150; for design review. The virtual model is then placed in a 3D model, created by Winston Associates (www.winstonassociates.com), of the mountains, roads and ground plain to make it possible to explore the impacts of new buildings in the context of their surroundings. This technique was beneficial in getting an initially wary community behind a recent affordable housing project. Winston Associates worked with the developers to generate a 3-D model in 3ds max (formerly known as 3D Studio Max) and then placed the housing model into the site model. Using the model they demonstrated how the housing development would look from different vantage points such as the highway. In addition, the model proved to concerned neighbors that the development could not been seen from their homes. The project is currently under construction. <br><br /> </p>

September 8 - Ken Snyder

BLOG POST

So we've all seen those spray-painted marks on the street -- usually they have a line, arrow and say "USA". As a planner, I've always had this nagging sense that I should know what they are.<br /> <br /> Some brilliant editor at Wired apparently decided that it was time to figure it all out. A one-page feature, <a href="http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.09/start.html?pg=9">Urban Markup Language</a>, (Brilliant play on words) in the September, 2004 issue of Wired Magazine offers nine images of the most common forms of the graffiti, along with descriptions of what they mean.

September 1 - Chris Steins

BLOG POST

A report by California Performance Review Commission, recommends that state agencies "should take an inventory of software purchases and software renewals...and implement open-source alternatives where feasible." According to <a href="http://news.com.com/California+considers+open-source+shift/2100-7344_3-5327581.html?tag=nefd.top">CNet</a>:<br /> <blockquote><br /> California joins numerous government bodies that have adopted or considered procurement policies that favor open-source software as more cost-effective and secure. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts cast its lot with open-source last year, as have government agencies in Britain, Korea and elsewhere.</blockquote>

August 29 - Abhijeet Chavan

BLOG POST

Governing Magazine has a special report on "E-Governing" in their September, 2004 issue, <a href="http://www.governing.com/articles/9egdata.htm">Dealing in Data</a>. <br /> <br /> This is certainly true,<br /> <br /> <blockquote>"Governments have been trying to break down the silos of data that have been built up agency by agency, government by government."</blockquote><br /> <br /> But I wonder about this evaluation, which seems to be the foundation for most of the article:<br /> <br /> <blockquote>"There is one basic prerequisite that has to be met before any data merging can take place. Government agencies have to take the information that lives on paper and convert it into digitized form. "</blockquote>

August 29 - Chris Steins