Urban Gardening: Chicago

Small Steps: Walkable Times Square

See:
photo: Damon Winter/The New York Times

Read: Times Square Closes To Traffic (NYT Article)

Learn: NYCDOT's Strategic Transportation Plan

Liveable Streets Contest Winners

image from www.good.is

GOOD's contest to get re-visioned plans for liveable streets has announced the winners. Great visual explanations that are easy to understand. Click the picture to go to their site.

Winner of World Bank Climate Change Documentary

Winner of the World Bank Micro-Documentary Contest
Social Dimensions of Climate Change

Flood Children of Holdibari


Bangladeshi kids make an educational group to teach their community about how to stay safe during flooding.

Get Rich Quick: Hip Hop Gasping

My heart tells me, that this is not what graf was supposed to become:

image from Carmichael Gallery on Flickr
Uhhhh. An "urban art" show titled "Get Rich Quick"? Gross. Come on artists, what about something more "hip hop" themed like "Get Rich or Starve Tryin." Or does 50 Cent have copyright on that? What's killing me is that I really used to like you guys. You all were my last little hope that winning at life doesn't mean materialism, but you get a show in a beautiful gallery and this is what they name it? Swoon -- when you pieced those boats together with your friends, was it really to have your name joined with Shepard Fairey? Ick. Your work is BEAUTIFUL! And I thought those projects meant something about having a community. KAWS, maybe you could get a collaboration going with Damien Hirst. When you were cooking wheatpaste in your kitchen, was it really with dreams of a big house in the suburbs with expensive leather sofas? And Banksy, come on! What about all of that the social commentary? Was that really all about making money? Really?

YES! artists should get paid for their work. I've seen my mom lugging supplies and plywood enough to know that you have to have your heart and soul and body in it to stay in the game. But the title of the show is just repulsive considering what street art used to be at its inception, and what I thought it was all about. I thought it was about adding beauty, commentary, and creativity to public spaces that everyone else had thrown away. I thought it was about engaging with the community and grabbing people out of their haze and back into their environment. There's also a solo show at the same time by Brazilian artist Thais Beltrame coincidentally entitled "When all the stars are gone." Interesting.

What's making me bite my tounge a little is that this gallery shows gobs and gobs of ridiculously talented visual artists. So my qualm is not with the gallery, it's with the "artists" who are going to add a show called "Get Rich Quick" to their credentials. Bleh.

Maybe I just don't understand the deeper artistic meaning that the title is trying to bring to contemporary art. Maybe I'm not appreciating the irony (which, itself would be ironically ironic??). Or maybe, this what the Splasher (remember him/her?) was trying to make a statement about -- if you're going to let street art be synonymous with materialism, instead of opposed to it, all you're posting around the neighborhood are unpaid advertisements for materialism, not public art.

Public Karaoke in London

Thousands of people sing karaoke together in London.

VIDEO HERE

Here's a fun, free time for a lot of city dwellers of all ages to hang out together and participate in something that makes them smile. Interactive engagement, especially in fun, creative things that everyone can do is a great way to get people to enjoy living in their city. Nice.

It's a bit on the commercial side -- since the hosting telecommunications company will use the video footage to make commercials & promotions, but I'll take it.

Urban Gardening: My Rooftop Garden

I planted seeds! Soon they will make food (in theory)! They will continue to get glamor shots on my flickr account. So far I've started lettuce, zuchini, green beans, cilantro, and morning glories from seed. It looks like the daisies and poppies are not interested in sprouting. It also looks like I didn't spell daisies right. Oops. The plan is to buy tomatoes, basil, and some flowers, which should yield a nice summertime mix of fresh food from my back "yard," er, deck.

Goal: Play in dirt, be responsible about watering, grow my own food in containers, eat fresh, free veggies!

[Bonus points if my roommates decide to grow food] :)

Avaaz's Elixir for Exxon Ad Propoganda

I was in an airport with my sister recently (yep, I fly 3 or 4 times a year) and saw a full hallway of these Exxon ads about climate change. Made by Euro RSCG, but not featured online. They were these beautifully laid out equations with declarations that climate change will be solved by technology, so leave the problem-solving up to our scientists who understand these elegant equations & reactions (my personal favorite being pV=nRT), and just keep going about your business as usual, everything will be fine, Exxon has it under control. While I generally think of oil companies as delusionally market driven and not necessarily outright slimy, the propoganda factor was so obvious in these ads that they were vaguely funny. And perhaps all the more ironic because it was just last year that the Rockefellers pressured Exxon to stop funding for climate change denial groups. Apparently my sister and I weren't the only ones grossed out by these ads. Avaaz, an organization encouraging social action on a variety of global issues, made a spoof ad (perhaps not far from the original) to call Exxon out on its blatant ridiculousness:

See Avaaz's counter commercial here

Hometown Represent! Braddock Grows Green

The first-term mayor of Braddock, PA is showing where the rubber meets the, uh, bike path.

See a video clip here.

Photo by Lake Fong, Pittsburgh Post Gazette

What I like about this present-day story is that the work really gives voice and thought to a community identity, something that has been absent from community development since Robert Moses (ick) told us what city living was supposed to look like. What we're seeing is the real and concrete development of a new mode of urban living, and the energy around Braddock has realized the theories of new urbanism into:

• An urban garden that sells produce to the community
• Low-cost housing for artists
• Local engagement in the arts
• Community events and community engagement for residents, providing a sense of place for people of all ages and backgrounds
• Reclamation of existing architecture (instead of those weird suburban condo things)
• Dense, mixed-use development
• A loud call for green job development & clean energy businesses to set up shop

What I encourage for long-term success is that the mayor, John Fetterman, bring other leaders and "figure heads," especially youth from the community, along with him so that he's not the only one talking, and so there are several long-term faces associated with the neighborhood who are allowed to go out and be strong and be vocal to take the message to the streets. I mean, bike paths. This makes the community stronger and avoids the fiefdom complex that so often pervades Pittsburgh neighborhood politics. I would also encourage a thorough long-term plan of how to empower the current residents to take advantage of the economic change that will come to their community when housing prices begin to rise.

If we're going to make cities livable, that has to mean for everyone, and this model brings together a lot of the ideas. There are a lot of people rooting for these models to work. And of course it's nice to see it happening in my hometown.

Zaproot - More Green News

Zaproot produces short, quirky video segments about the daily news in the world of green.


This particular reporter, Jessica Williamson, speaks English, although quite fast & with one of those fun non-American accents (she's from New Zealand).