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Autonomy, the urge to direct our own lives. Mastery, the desire to get better and better at something that matters. Purpose, the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves. These are the building blocks of an entirely new operating system for our businesses.

Sounds pretty exciting, if not revolutionary! However, Dan’s distinction between creative and mechanical tasks may sound a bit classist. He is focussing on a new operating system for the knowledge workers troubled by facebook and procrastination. The rest of the workforce, it seems, is still well-served with sticks and carrots:

That routine, rule-based, left brain work, certain kinds of accounting, certain kinds of financial analysis, certain kinds of computer programing, has become fairly easy to outsource, fairly easy to automate. Software can do it faster. Low-cost providers around the world can do it cheaper. So what really matters are the more right-brained creative, conceptual kinds of abilities.

I am not so sure if this is what really matters. Doesn’t everybody deserve autonomy, mastery and purpose? I wonder if balanced job complexes would be more suitable for this goal by having workers do both creative and mechanical tasks, using both sides of the brain, and having a diverse set of motivators for different types of tasks.

via swissmiss

However, the next best German translation, Gemeinschaft, doesn’t seem to carry over the enthusiasm for new forms of collective engagements. Could it be that many German speakers are wary of collective structures due to Germany’s history which certainly has contributed to a dark perspective on collectivity. The racist people’s community (Volksgemeinschaft) of the Nazis and the authoritarian collectives in the GDR have made us justifiably suspicious and critical of community reminding us of violence and oppression based on race and ideology.

While the United States have historically put a very strong focus on individuality, there seems to be a surge of community-based activism and civic engagement. Could it be that the individual approach to happiness has also led to isolation and alienation? We need to build open and emancipatory communities that support individuality and collectivity as compliments to each other. Right after the conversation with the aforementioned friend i stumbled upon a fitting quote in the weekly dig (magazine in the Boston area):

The time of the lone wolf is over. Gather youselves! Banish the word struggle from your attitude and your vocabulary. All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.
- The Elders Oraibi, Arizona Hopi Nation

Während es in vielen Ländern eine längere Geschichte städtischer Kleingarten gibt, erleben nordamerikanische Städte gerade eine Renaissance urbaner Gemeinschaftsgärten (Community Gardens). Angesichts sozialer Entfremdung, erhöhter Lebensmittelpreise und globaler Erwärmung können diese Gartenkooperativen als eine interessante Antwort auf verschiedene Herausforderungen angesehen werden.

Neben der gemeinsamen Einnahme allerlei leckerer Dinge (gegen Solibeitrag nach Selbsteinschätzung) möchten wir über die Gemeinschaftsgartenbewegung in Nordamerika reden, diskutieren ob Gartenkooperativen eher Grünzeugkleinkrams oder die bevorstehende Gemüserevolution darstellen, und beleuchten was es für Möglichkeiten für selbstorganisierte Stadtgärten hier und jetzt gibt.

Themenfrühstück: “Selbstorganisierte Gemeinschaftsgärten” (Poster)
Sonntag, 28.6.2009, 10:30 Uhr im ÖZIM (Harsdorfer Str. 49)
Food Coop: http://www.foodcoop-md.de

Dear Calgary Herald,

so you think you can judge what valid neighbourhood concerns are? How would you address the bottleneck you mentioned? Add another lane? A tunnel? Get rid of sidewalks? I (as a citizen) think there are much more critical bottlenecks on the tiny sidewalks on 10th street, on the pathways along the rivers, and almost anywhere in this car-obsessed city. The real problem is that Calgarians are hanging on the needle of individual, motorist mobility and suburban sprawl. In this light, I salute those that attempt to put on a street festival that seeks to celebrate and promote walking, biking, and urban living.

Your view of festivals centring around booths and vendors may be a bit limited to what you’ve seen in the past in this town of Calgary. Street festivals can be so much more. It can be taking a dance class, doing a picnic, practising aerobic, and just getting together. I know Calgary has its fitness studios, dance schools, and coffee shops - but wouldn’t it be great if we all would get out more? Dare I say, streets could be even fun places to hang out? Check out last year’s Summer Streets in New York City endorsed and put on by the city and supported by many organizations and thousands of citizens themselves:

http://www.streetfilms.org/archives/summer-streets-2008-nyc/

Well, I wish Druh and the festival organizers carry through with their ambitions and will not be put down by you, Calgary Herald. The comments at least draw a different picture of Calgary. Maybe closing streets temporarily could help us imagine all the possible things we could do in the streets of this city instead of congesting them with motorist traffic. Maybe even in a couple of years we will look back and will not be able to remember why we haven’t started earlier with starting to close down some streets permanently.

“The destroyers call themselves builders,
and accuse the true builders of being destructive.”

I immediately had to think of the discourse around street art. While commercial billboards are accepted and legitimate, street art gets criminalized and denounced. Yes, i also dislike many types of graffiti, tags, etc., but i have encountered so many beautiful and revealing pieces of street art that i just cannot resist seeing city administrations as the true destroyers here. Many of the pieces i have photographed have been destroyed by the true destroyers. For example, a wheatpaste of a homeless person under the bridge in Calgary—which also has the anti-human rocks—had a very short life span…

If you are interested in participating, please visit this Web page:

http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~mdoerk/view

If you have any questions, please contact me at mdoerk[at]ucalgary.ca for more information. In addition, if you have friends or colleagues who you believe might also be interested in participating in this research, we would be grateful if you were to talk to them about this research opportunity and/or forward them this information about our study.

I have been to the store mentioned in the article before and i agree it has a nice selection of national and international magazines. But as i read and work more online than on paper, i think i am exposed to a wider range of information and inspiration that i could ever afford to access (read: buy) in such a store. While this may have bad consequences for news/magazine shops, i think there are still opportunities to “make money” off of our information needs. But maybe less directly. Maybe we will rather pay for coffee, muffins, and a nice atmosphere. Coffeeshops and teahouses are already experiencing a new bloom, as we yearn for more social and physical interaction.

There are still some glitches to be fixed. For example, right now the system has troubles integrating the C-Train into trip planning, if not the explicit station names are used for search queries. However, one can click the station explicitly. This problem seems to be due to the naming legacy at Calgary Transit. Where, for example, the university station is called “@Unvrsty STN”, which is a bit unfortunate… Anyhow, thanks to both Google and City of Calgary. Let’s hope now that the physical counterpart of Calgary Transit catches up, too.

Last Sunday i took a minor bike ride through the city ending up on a hill that actually stretches all along the major river here. Besides constituting a challenge when bike-commuting, it is one of several reasons to reconcile with a place that may not seem like the best place to live in the world… Standing on this hill provides a way to look at (parts of) the city from a distance while still being rather close. It makes the city somehow graspable and tolerable, if not enjoyable. It puts the city in perspective, in particular because the Rockies provide the next backdrop. And maybe regardless of what i am looking at, i just really enjoy looking into the distance. It is a nice counter-program to the screen that i face so much these days. And because you’re sitting in front of a similar thing, you can check out the panoramas and other views on Calgary that i put together for you.

The major theme I got from this week’s texts is the social meaning of urban space and the collective construction (or deprivation) of place. Norberg-Schulz [1] gives a philosophical account of what the essence of a place might be. Relph [2] and Oldenburg [3] problematize the impoverishment of public space and place in North America. Massey [4] provides a more critical and global understanding of place, whereas Hayden [5] sees urban place as a space for public history. Along these readings, I will discuss in the following a) how place can be conceptualized and b) how place should be transformed for the better.

What is (urban) place?

Christian Norberg-Schulz [1] understands place as a “qualitative, ‘total’ phenomenon” that can be understood along dualisms (e.g., inside/outside and private/public), its relation to the natural environment, and its “general ‘atmosphere’”. While I appreciate the idea of integrating scientific, environmental, everyday knowledge of a place, in my view, his understanding of place is completely missing out on the social aspects of place. The character of a place not only depends on “how things are made”, but also on the people that inhabit, use, and appropriate it. Consider an independent music club (or coffee shop) that becomes overly popular, some veteran guests will say “this place just aint the way it used to be.” If character is denoted only by adjectives, where do the verbs carried out by place dwellers come in? Don’t they also contribute to the spirit of a place? I don’t think that a place can have a universal essence. Maybe there are shared interpretations, but usually experience is very subjective. To “become friends with a particular environment” also includes people. While one may dislike Calgary’s cold winter, good friends and warm coffee shops may help to overcome this. While I agree that a meaningful connection to nature is important, but so is a meaningful correspondence among people. I am not sure, what I take from etymological similes for understanding place. While this may tell how humans have thought about it in the past, what will happen to place, space, and environment in the future? Even though I found Norberg-Schulz’ text hard to read and don’t agree with everything, I think it is good to put focus on environment and take urban design toward place making that is meaningful and possibly sustainable.

Fifteen years later, Doreen Massey [4] puts forward a more progressive account of how place can be understood. She notes that demands for sense of place can be reactionary when too much emphasis is given to the inside and its history. Instead she argues, place should be understood more holistically, in context of global structures, networks, and processes. In particular Massey looks at mobility and how it is unevenly accessible to the rich and privileged leaving many people behind in the periphery. If we assume that mobility is a good thing, how can places be made open to strangers so that both visitors and residents can benefit from each other? I like Massey’s textual sketch of Kilburn High Road and how it includes shared struggles and conflicts. Instead of focussing on recreation and relaxation, shouldn’t we see urban places also as the public space for carrying out struggles and negotiating conflicts? I must say I subscribe to Massey’s conceptualization of place as dynamic, interconnected, and contested space. It seems to be a proper corrective to the rather essentialist view of Norberg-Schulz.

What should (urban) place be?

Edward Relph [2] juxtaposes two types of places: place as an emotional, subjective, experienced counterpart to space and placelessness as sheer social insignificance. Even though this text has been written more than 30 years ago, I think the main critique of lack of meaning is still valid for today’s cities and urban places. While I don’t take issue of blaming centralized authorities, I have troubles making causal connections to technology per se. Sure, the physical experience of place implies immediacy in contrast to the indirect and mediated processes through information technologies. Yet, I wonder what kind of possibilities emerge through new media use that enhance or improve spatial awareness and place making. I think comparing a significant place to home may not be so effective: to me home implies exclusive and private places, but I’d like to feel at home at different places in the world and experience social meaning beyond my original roots. Places should work for both those that have lived there for long and those that just arrived.

Along a similar vein, Ray Oldenburg [3] criticizes the lack of what he calls the third place in North America: a place beyond home and work that allows for casual, spontaneous, and non-commercial social interaction. While I heard before about this concept, it has struck a nerve in me. I felt grumpy yesterday after staying mostly at home reading, but I feel much happier when going through my readings in a third place (a coffee house or a library). On another note, considering that a significant demographic of those moving to suburbs are families, how can we make inner cities safer and funner? Comparing it to making buildings more accessible to the disabled, would making an inner city more compatible with families’ needs also be of benefit for those that aren’t/don’t have children? I like the simile of womb and rat race: what would be a good metaphor for a proper third place? Oldenburg doesn’t mention it explicitly, but it certainly is part of the concept: civic engagement and political activism. The Paris Commune probably heavily relied on the third place. After all I found Oldenburg’s text probably the most entertaining this week, in particular this line: “About the only need that suburbanites can satisfy by means of an easy walk is that which impels them toward their bathroom.”

Lastly, Dolores Hayden [5] discusses place with a focus on public history. While I don’t deny the significance of history, I would like to see how this can be integrated with experimentation for a better future that relates to the past. Somehow, I didn’t get some of her examples. How does a community garden really connect to the urban past? Is it the old Coke cans that are to be rediscovered when digging? I think Hayden is onto something when discussing how community members should be involved in historical place making. They could contribute their own stories and artifacts. But why do we have to go through lengthy processes and have great patience for this? Aren’t there more direct approaches? I think there is a need for creation and sense-making in the neighbourhood without having to attend long meetings.. After all it has to be fun! We don’t have to (always) “agree on what is meaningful and what is creative”, we should design places that accommodate multiple, divergent perspectives and still co-engage citizens. I wonder how GPS-technology could allow for public, urban memory that is multi-vocal and contradictory.

[1] C. Norberg-Schulz, “The phenomenon of place,” Architectural Association Quarterly, 1976.
[2] E. Relph, Place and Placeessness, ch. Prospects for Places. 1976.
[3] R. Oldenburg, The Great Good Place, ch. The Problem of Place in America. 1989.
[4] D. Massey, “A global sense of place (1991),” in Space, Place, and Gender, pp. 146–156, University of Minnesota Press, 1994.
[5] D. Hayden, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History, ch. Place Memory and Urban Preservation. 1995.

I started with the ‘ecological’ readings and was baffled by the idea of treating the city as an ecosystem and bringing nature back into the city. First it seemed to me that the city is everything but nature. Reading along McHarg’s [6] argument, I started to appreciate the idea of considering the functions that could be fulfilled by natural processes. One of the considerations he ends the article with is the comparison of nature and art; here I think he actually provides an intriguing alternative way for bringing nature into the focus, as a ‘subject’ of art that may lift up human spirits and open horizons. Spirn’s [7] account of urban ecosystems extends the conception of integrating natural and human processes, by ‘classifying’ everything as nature with differing degrees of wilderness.

Similar to the neglect of nature, the authors writing about social aspects of public space criticize the neglect of sociality and community as a key parameter for urban design. I found Whyte’s chapters [1] quite entertaining, in particular the observation of self-congestion was particularly interesting to me (have a look at this YouTube video of his study). Contrasting this to motorist traffic where congestion is not really something desirable, people (we) behave so interestingly when there are not separated by concrete or steel. Gehl’s [2] classification of activities and varying degrees of social interaction tie back to class discussions on spontaneous sociality and how certain environments may support it. He presents interesting guidelines to support richer and more diverse modes of social interaction. Complementing observations and guidelines, Marcus and Francis [3] present a nice typology of currently existing plazas and squares that may inspire new types of public space.

Scheer [5] and Carmona et al. [4] address issues of participation in the design and planning process. Thinking of last class and the discussion around the role of professionals and lay people, I found these readings quite interesting, however, they don’t go far enough in my view, even though the ideal of public participation is lauded by both. It is rather assumed that architects/professionals with global knowledge innovate, while the public holding local knowledge reacts. To me, the public has a broader knowledge and experience going beyond the ‘local’ and theoretical specialization of designers and architects. The question is how could innovation and participation go hand in hand? How could the public enter the realm of active creation,invention, and design? And what would the role of professionals? Carmona et al. mention the Web as a communication medium; we’re seeing now that it is evolving into a collaboration medium that may provide completely new configuration of crowd design. As the dominant forms of representations (mapping and 3d modelling) are becoming already far more accessible, the conflict between “view from above” and “ground-level view” could be easier to bridge than assumed.

If we would like to respond to some degree to ills of society, what should we address? Scheer [5], for example, talks about greed, consumption, and natural deterioration. Considering last week’s discussion about Benjamin’s [8] critique of the city as an array of commodities and images and the environmental, social, and administrative issues raised by some of the readings this week, I think a particular charming intervention is the community garden. In its small scope, it gives interesting answers. It is small scale and is doable without having to understand the whole complexity of the city. A group of committed people is required and not necessarily the endorsement by the city council, professionals, or developers. In addition to the many mentioned functions parks fulfill, community gardens provide food and sociality. Community gardens may actually be a prime social, ecological, participatory approach to public space in a city.

[1] W. H. Whyte, The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, ch. “Introducton”, “The Life of Plazas”, “Sitting Space”, and “Sun, Wind, Trees, and Water”. 1980.
[2] J. Gehl, Life Between Buildings, ch. “Three Types of Outdoor Activities” and “Life Between Buildings”. 1987.
[3] Marcus and Francis, People Places: Design Guidelines for Urban Open Space, ch. Urban Plazas. 1998.
[4] T. O. Matthew Carmona, Tim Heath and S. Tiesdell, Public Places - Urban Spaces: The Dimensions of Urban Design, ch. The Communication Process. 2003.
[5] B. C. Scheer, Design Review: Challenging Urban Aesthetic Control, ch. The Debate on Design Review. 1994.
[6] I. McHarg, “The place of nature in the city of man,” Annals of the American Academy, vol. 352, pp. 1–12, March 1964.
[7] A. W. Spirn, The Granite Garden: Urban Nature and Human Design, ch. “Prologue” and Chapter 1 “City and Nature”. Basic Books, 1984.
[8] W. Benjamin, Reflections, ch. Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century, pp. 146–162. Harvest/HBJ, 1979.

To me, it is particular fascinating how the different modes of transportation had and have such a significant influence on urban structures. Similar to how railway stations divide(d) Canadian cities into, e.g., rich and poor neighbourhoods, large built transportation structures such as airports and multi-lane highways fragment the urban landscape. I think it would be interesting to compare multiple cities around the world with regard to their mobility stats in relation to different urban and social variables, e.g., health and happiness. While we may not necessarily know how we will move around in the decades to come, we can certainly look around and think about what our options are. After all it is not only about projecting how the city of the future might look like, but also about proposing some ideas, right?

Having now read several texts about historic urban planning, it is interesting to look at the differing determining factors that the authors draw from to explain how cities came about and changed over the centuries. The readings about early Greek and Roman settlements focussed on religion, food supply, and community. Last week’s texts discussed structural inequalities on one hand and grand scheme planning on the other hand as the two major factors for how Medieval, Renaissance, and Modern cities were shaped. This week’s reading highlights the effects of new modes of transportation and the rapid growth of urban populations and areas. What will be future factors for city evolution? Surely, modes of transportation will always be key. But what about the socio-economic picture?

It seems as if the concepts mentioned in the article proposed parks and gardens as a balancing intervention, so that workers would be granted a temporary escape into nature away from factory machines and office work. While I do not think this constitutes a holistic approach, i think this leads to an interesting question: what are we mostly deprived of today that a proper urban design could possibly respond to? Assuming, we are socially and environmentally disconnected, urban planning should strive for spaces where immediate and spontaneous interaction with people and nature would be possible, in contrast to the mediated, non-personal, commercial counterparts in semi-public environments. But i believe that those new kinds of spaces should allow for more fundamental activities that address needs that go beyond temporary, recreational demands.

Ultimately, even though past planning has significant consequences on today’s cities, built structures and usage patterns can be contested and changed. Using parking lots as micro parks or closing several major streets for free (non-motorist) movement on one day in the week show that the conventional programme can be interrupted for alternative practices. Even though the planners planned otherwise.

[1] G. Hodge, Planning Canadian Communities: An Introduction to the Principles, Practice and Participants, ch. 2 - Physical Foundations of Canadian Communities, pp. 40–74. Methuen, 1986.

The main theme throughout the readings for me was the significance and the divergent interpretation of open streets and squares as public spaces. It was particularly interesting to read how Baudelaire (as discussed by Berman [4]) sees Paris’ boulevards as a place where people of different classes would eventually come together again, whereas Engels understood Manchester’s thoroughfares as a “hypocritical plan” to hide the misery and poverty present in workers’ districts [1]. What troubled me reading this, is that his description of how Manchester is structured along class divisions, still applies to most cities of the world. People living in gated/suburban communities and those living in poorer neighbourhoods are not really bumping into each other on great common boulevards—instead, they probably stand bumper to bumper separated by steel, glass, fumes and noise.

It is also interesting to see how the different lifestyles over time and culture may lead to completely different types of streets and city layouts. The Gies’ describe the streets of the medieval town Troyes based on need and everyday practice: streets are often named after the trades that were located therein [3]. While the cities of British America four centuries later also heavily relied on trade, the naming and layout of the streets show the rejection of the dense European city in favour the ‘green country town’ with Oake and Pine Streets laid out after a rather spacious grid (Girouard [5]). To me it was striking how British and French city planning tended to favour open streets and squares for leisurely strolling (mostly by the privileged), as evidenced in Calcutta’s esplanade, Paris’ boulevards, and Williamsburg’s main street, whereas the Spanish plazas in Latin America must have been planned rather for churches, markets, and celebrations (Girouard [5])—possibly oriented more towards common/communal needs of city inhabitants. Ironically, the wide open streets of British America turned out to be particularly practical for motorist traffic, so that the envisioned seeing and being seen happens less during strolling through cityscapes, but during the rush hours of car traffic.

When reading about how cities and spaces have been designed and restructured by ‘great’ thinkers and doers, such as Michelangelo with Capitoline Hill in Rome [2] and Haussmann with the boulevards in Paris [4], I wondered who really was part of the planning process and—maybe more importantly—who should it be in the future. Bacon mentions the ‘principle of the 2nd man’ and thus alludes to a process of many actors throughout the planning process of urban space. I would argue that planning, changing, improving neighbourhoods should be a much more interactive and participatory process. After all, city planners and architects may not live in the spaces they create and envision. We have seen many provocative works that certainly contributed to artsy and intellectual discourse, but what about the people actually living in such urban spaces? Should they have a say? How could this ‘say’ be transformed into practical participatory planning? I could imagine that a more inclusive approach towards planning could also be a catalyst for community building. Wouldn’t people relate more to each other, if the built environment has been conceived and created together in a collaborative process? I would assume that shared experiences relating both people and built artefacts may better support a richer social fabric in contrast to the often anonymous relations in our cities.

[1] F. Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, ch. The Great Towns. 1845.
[2] E. N. Bacon, “Upsurge of the renaissance,” Design of Cities, pp. 9–16, 1967. From The Urban Design Reader (Routledge, 2007).
[3] J. and F. Gies, Life in a Medieval City. Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1969. Chapter “Troyes: 1250″ (23-33) and “A Medieval Housewife” (46-52).
[4] M. Berman, “”the family of eyes” and “the mire of the macadam”,” All That is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity, 1982. From The Urban Design Reader (Routledge, 2007).
[5] M. Girouard, Cities and People, ch. 11 The City as Export. Yale University Press, 1985.

Dear web team of Calgary Transit,

I value very much the existence of public transport, even when there may be some service irregularities, and I think Calgary Transit is a valuable part of the city’s life. However the CT website has very fundamental shortcomings. In fact, looking up connections and bus schedules on the CT website is an extraordinarily frustrating experience. Being forced to enter bus stops or road names in a specific way and even when entered correctly being told that there are technical difficulties is just not acceptable. Furthermore the site is very slow and it is not possible to bookmark certain connections or bus stops. There are many other things I could mention, but I am certainly not the first one to complain. I just don’t understand how Calgary Transit - the transport company of such an economically thriving city - gets by with this kind of service. What are the plans? When will this problem be solved? Would you consider putting the route data on Google Transit? I would really appreciate any clarifying answers on this. Thank you.

This rather annoying member recruitment practice is only a small thing that makes me feel pity and at the same time slight disgust for the organization that represents so many computer science students and professionals. Academic values like advancing the field for the sake of humanity and sharing knowledge in an open fashion seem to be replaced by careerism and exclusive content — which is ironically only accessible via horrible interfaces such as the ACM digital library. Can you believe people being lured into becoming an ACM member with a flip-flop calculator? It just seems a bit surreal.

It’s not the yearly fee that keeps me from joining. It just doesn’t appeal to me becoming a member of a cheesy elite club, that has little to do with educational, egalitarian, or emancipatory values that i would rather see embraced in computer science and academia in general. ACM is a member-based organization and ultimately — if the members choose so — it can be transformed. I sure hope it does soon.

PS: while i pick here on ACM, the critique probably equally applies to the IEEE Computer Society and the many profit-driven publishers.

Guerilla Gardening ist eine feine Sache, aber ebenso wie gutes Graffiti und Streetart bedarf es keine eingeschworene Öffentlichkeit oder Sponsoring dazu, sondern die klandestine Aktion und das dazugehörige subversive und kreative Potenzial. Wie Schneider und Schilling aber das urbane Gärtnern anpreisen, erinnert eher an Sauberkeitskampagnen der Magdeburger Stadtverwaltung. Der Witz (lies: die Tragik) ist doch, dass Schönheit blumenverzierter Verkehrsinseln oder Sauberkeit hundekotbefreiter Gehwege die gesamtgesellschaftliche Scheisze unberührt lassen. Sicher, wenn wir uns beim gemeinsamen urbanen Gärtnern besser kennen lernen, ist das schon mal etwas. Blumenbeete sind toll, keine Frage. Aber was ist mit Ernährung? Brachflächen ungefragt aufzuhübschen ist nett… Ist es aber möglich darauf Gemeinschaftsgärten zu starten? Wie war das noch mal mit Privateigentum? Welche Rolle spielt freies Saatgut im agrarindustriellen Kontext? Ich bin gespannt, was sich aus der Idee hier in Magdeburg ergibt. Aber es kann beim Guerilla Gardening um mehr gehen als ums Aufhübschen öder Innenstädte.

Yesterday we took our bikes and left all concrete behind to have a picknick along the river of the city we inhabit. Although windy and cloudy at first, it turned into an enjoyable evening. The girls and social scientists teams won in Boule against the teams of the boys and engineers–if you permit fuzzy borders and some overlap. Thanks everybody for joining in. Uwe found it to be a paradise-like place and took some beautiful photos.

Icaro Doria came up with the great idea of using national flags to visualize social issues of different countries. The project Meet the World (larger images) was actually an advertising campaign for the Portuguese magazine Grande Reportagem.

This saturday the third see conference on visualization of information is happening in Wiesbaden. It features quite a speaker list including Ben Fry, Bruce Sterling, and Frank van Ham. I really wanted to go, so i got my tickets well in advance, but something came in my way and now i hope for good video streaming. By the way, i was promised to get the money back. Very nice.

Sick People or Sick Societies? Part 1 (MP3):

Sick People or Sick Societies? Part 2 (MP3):

To learn more about social determinants of health check out the WHO’s special section.

Peter Suber points to some more options for scholars beyond comepletely boycotting closed-access publishers. One of the major one is self-archiving online – which many publishers actually allow. Putting papers on one’s own personal or research group Website is usually accepted. There are also OA repositories that facilitate the self-archiving process. Through services like CiteSeer or Google Scholar it is then possible to make these contributions available in an OA fashion without actually submitting them to an OA venue. Good thinking. Take a look or two into Peter’s short and longer primers on Open Access to learn more around OA principles and practices.

By the way, i have ranted and chanted about Open Access before.

I have suspended using this Email address.
Please, go to my contact page to get in touch with me.
Thanks for your understanding!

…………………………………………………..

I habe dieses Emailadresse eingestellt. Um mit mir in
Kontakt zu tretten, benutze bitte dieses Formular.
Vielen Dank für dein Verständnis!

…………………………………………………..

Terminé usar esa e-mail. Por favor, visite esta pagina
para poner en contacto conmigo.
Gracias por tu comprensión.

Only problem is that spammers use existing sender addresses they found on the Web. Hence, my auto-responder would automatically increase spam-caused traffic and annoyances for those whose email address was hijacked. Therefor i will just discontinue the mailbox silently and hope that people that want to reach me would remember my name and search for it and would somehow come to this page.

And by the way: this is, of course, proof of my capitulation to the state of email these days. It seems as if email is broken, yet, it still works well enough considering its importance and relevance in professional and personal communication. May somebody have mercy and fix it?

• Lakota Freedom Delegation (official page of the Lakota)
• Lakota Indian tribe declares secession from US (Wikinews)
• Lakota (Wikipedia)

PS: While i write this post i am listening to Björk’s “Declare independence” that was dedicated to Greenland and the Faroe Islands…

UPDATE: A recent Wikinews report suggests that the activist group led by Russel Means does not represent the Lakota people and acts without the consent of the elders of the Lakota. Some tribes have openly rejected the actions and other are still considering supporting the activists’ proposal.

Liebe Skeptiker, es geht beim Retten der Erde nicht alleine ums CO2, auch wenn das jetzt gerade mal besonders häufig in den Medien besprochen wird, sondern um Umweltschutz allgemein:

• um die Faktoren, wie Anarchitect schon angesprochen hat (lokale Produkte konsumieren usw.)
• um erheblich verringerte Energie- und Materialmengen in der Produktion eines Fahrrades im Vergleich zum Automobil
• um die Verhinderung des weiteren Zubetonierens von Landschaft zum Füttern des Mobilitätsgötzen “motorisierter Individualverkehr”
• darum zu verhindern, dass millionen von Tier- und Pflanzenarten ausgelöscht werden
• um die Verhinderung von Kriegen um den Energieträger Erdöl
• um Gesundheitsaspekte: wer sich den ganzen Tag nicht bewegt und dann abends mit dem PKW nachhause fährt, lebt ungesünder und denkt weniger klar und benötigt vermutlich später im Alter einen teuren und energieaufwändigen Fuhrpark, um seine eingeschlafenenen Lebensfunktionen zu reanimieren
• um das Bewusstsein, dass man sich auch im näheren Lebensumfeld gesund bewegen kann und nicht erst (überspitzt geschrieben) mit dem Flieger nach Tibet fliegen muss (hohe C02-Emission!), um sich dann im Himalaya auszupowern
• um eine Wertschätzung der eigenen Lebensenergie und der Ressourcen des Umfeldes: kein großkotziges “Think Big”-Gehabe. Ein dicker Schlitten allein macht noch keine Persönlichkeit
• u.v.m.

Kurz: durch Radfahren und die Bewegung an der (dann wieder verstärkt) frischen Luft wird der Tunnelblick des PKW-Fahrers geweitet…

via Rad-Spannerei blog: Zweiradheld

via information aesthetics: typographical music video

The likelihood of a vehicle displaying a yellow “support our troops” sticker/ribbon seems to be directly proportional to the size of the vehicle. I haven’t seen one on a Prius.

This is also a good occasion to point out that there is a monthly Critical Mass ride in Calgary every last Friday 5:30 pm at Eau Claire Plaza. I have attended the last one and met quite a few friendly people – on bikes.