San Francisco’s Next Museum?

25 03 2010

Very very short blog post this week, unfortunately.  Anyways, it’s not anything new that San Francisco is a city full of eccentric’s.  However, for such an eccentric city, the museum’s and attractions don’t necessarily highlight this side of San Francisco.  But according to a story Jaunted.com, the newest San Francisco museum may include such things as a tree that shoots flames and a magic show.  Hotelier Bob Pritkin is considering opening his mansion for tours (with an approximate cost of $49 per tour).  The whole concept sounds like stepping into some kind of weird Alice in Wonderland fantasy.  You can check out the story here.


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U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray Lahood announces major shift towards a bike friendly future

20 03 2010

Ray Lahood, the U.S. Secretary of Transportation, recently made an uplifting appaerence at the National Bike Summit.   There appeared to be a lot of good news and Ray Lahood was quite clear in his commitment to making urban environments more bike friendly:

Today, I want to announce a sea change. People across America who value bicycling should have a voice when it comes to transportation planning. This is the end of favoring motorized transportation at the expense of non-motorized.

We are integrating the needs of bicyclists in federally-funded road projects. We are discouraging transportation investments that negatively affect cyclists and pedestrians. And we are encouraging investments that go beyond the minimum requirements and provide facilities for bicyclists and pedestrians of all ages and abilities.

Ray Lahood also made some key recommendations for future transportation projects including treating pedestrians and cyclists as equals in relation to vehicles and protect sidewalks and shared used paths the same way that roads are protected.

With the Obama Administration onboard as well, it seems that the future may actually look bright for cyclists in the future.  Check out Ray Lahood’s post on his appaerence at the national bike summit.


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The Failure of New Urbanism

10 03 2010

Cyburbia.org is an excellent forum for the urban planning community whether you are an urban planning professional or simply have a heavy interest in urban planning and design, like myself.  One of the hottest forum discussions has recently involved the the failure to apply the rules of New Urbanism (dense European-style neighbourhoods) to the suburban sprawl of the vast majority of the United States.   According to the forum discussion, the main issue surrounds the fact that these neighbourhoods seem to be created ad-hoc and are islands of new-urbanism within a pool of suburban style neighbourhoods on all sides.  It’s encouraging to hear that developers are attempting to create more workable and livable neighbourhoods, but are they going about it the right way?  This brings up a really interesting question for me:  how and where do you actually begin to apply new-urbanism style developments to suburban cities?

You can find the forum post here: The failure of New Urbanism


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Vancouver the greenest Olympics yet, but could Sochi 2014 be the dirtiest?

6 03 2010

Vancouver garnered a lot of attention for it’s commitment to energy efficiency during the recent 2010 winter Olympics.  Certainly, this commitment will help the city on a global scale and will help it grow it’s already incredibly green reputation.  Yet, according to this article on Fast Company, the 2014 winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia may actually become the dirtiest Olympics yet.  According to the article, Sochi has already managed to contaminate it’s water, destroy wildlife habitats and cut down thousands of trees in preparation despite the Olympics still being four years away.  What is even more interesting (or shocking) is that Sochi was able to get the Olympics at all as it did not outline much of a sustainability plan.   Many of the recent Olympics have already gained a strong amount of negative attention, most notably Beijing in 2008, but  is it possible that Sochi 2014 could end up being the dirtiest?


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Categories : General Thoughts, News