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Why Did Some Streetcars Survive When Most Didn’t? – Commute – The Atlantic Cities
Interesting discussion of streetcars’ ability to cement a sense of place (which buses can’t do):
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… the old New Orleans streetcar is inextricably linked to the city it navigates. This sense of permanency is a big reason for the St. Charles streetcar’s success. It’s also something buses lack: because they can go anywhere, they belong nowhere.
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Is This the Future of Farming? – Sarah Rich – Technology – The Atlantic
Amazing. This should be a useful tool in urban food self-sufficiency.
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When the new site gets up and running, Backhaus estimates that Podponics will turn out 40-50 tons of green per year, though with the newly available real estate, they expect to experiment with other crops, which may vary the total weight output. While they could continue to expand many times over within the bounds of their current location, they have designs on a different kind of expansion model.“Our ultimate vision is to get 80-100 pods next to the Publix distribution center in Florida or the Walmart distribution center,” says Backhaus, “so that we can harvest right there in the morning and plug it directly into their supply chain. We’re mainlining fresh produce into the regional distribution network.”
They are also talking with potential partners in the UAE and Germany, who are dealing with various resource limitations that make this model look appealing. For now, this is a Georgia business serving other Georgia businesses. And while you probably won’t spot these shipping containers while visiting Atlanta, you’re likely to spot Podponics lettuce on any number of local menus.
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Why “branding” won’t save the creative class – Scott Timberg – Salon.com
A terrifyingly important article about the gig / freelance economy…
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For Gioia himself, it’s made being a freelance man of letters – like his heroes from mid-century – much tougher. “I don’t think that’s possible anymore,” he says, as writing becomes unpaid volunteer work. “There are fewer gigs.” The number of papers with real book or ideas sections is down substantially; serious magazines are half the size they used to be. “If I’d quit my job this year, I don’t think I could have made it as a literary freelancer. The problem isn’t the decline of the economy, though that doesn’t help. The problem is the collapse of culture.”
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The Food Truck Industrial Complex – Arts & Lifestyle – The Atlantic Cities
Super-interesting article about the growth of food trucks. And who knew that there’s even a trade magazine devoted to mobile food trucks? “Mobile Cuisine Magazine” http://mobile-cuisine.com/ ??
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In fact, restaurant industry analysts say that rather than bucking the trend, brick and mortar restaurants increasingly are looking to gain market reach and heighten their public profile by putting their own mobile kitchens on the road. And retailers such as Crate + Barrel have hosted food truck nights in their parking lots on the theory that people who come out for the food may come inside to shop, Myrick says.
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The 19 Building Types That Caused the Recession – Jobs & Economy – The Atlantic Cities
I like the retail-on-ground-floor/apartments-above model. Standardize away. Most towns and cities could use more of it.
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Leinberger, an urban land-use strategist and professor at the University of Michigan, includes the Grocery Anchored Neighborhood Center on his list of the 19 standard real estate product types dominant in post-war America. Also on the list: suburban detached starter homes, big-box anchored power centers, multi-tenant bulk warehousing and self-storage facilities. All of these products are designed for drivable suburban communities. (…)
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But we overbuilt these 19 models, he says.“We built the wrong product in the wrong location, and nobody wants it any more,” he says. “That’s the reason for the housing crisis, and therefore the mortgage crisis, and therefore the Great Recession.”
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…Leinberger estimates that a good 90 percent of new development in the [DC] area has lately been planned for walkable, high-density living… These are the real estate products Leinberger believes we’ll need going forward: ground-floor retail with rental apartments on top, hotel/convention centers with condos above and a subway corridor below. These models may very well become standardized, too.
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If Professors Stop Lecturing, Will Students Stop Checking Facebook? – Education – GOOD
Sure, university professors provide a service. But are they really just service providers? And if that’s all they have turned into, what does it say about the nature of universities? Change, change, change…
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Because “Harvard students are generally pragmatic and hyper-concerned about maximizing their Return On Time Investment,” Gandhi writes, they log onto the site… Besides, he says, students no longer have to pay attention to the professor’s lecture to learn the subject matter because “much of knowledge has become commoditized on the web.” To solve the problem, Gandhi believes professors must “start thinking of themselves as service providers who must constantly innovate to serve students better.”
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G. Roger Denson: Projecting the Future of Painting in Claudia Hart’s 3D Utopian eScapes
Terrific article by G. Roger Denson on Claudia Hart.
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It’s a prejudice that signals many of us are largely unaware that the pinnacle of artistry has, with the use of the computer and virtual effects software, turned a full 360 degrees in shifting, first from hand-eye coordination in painting, then to automatic reproduction in photography and film, and now back to the hand-eye coordination of 3D computer animation and virtual effects. Whether or not this means that CGI and 3D animation will become the dominant future mode of painting is to be contended. But Hart’s 3D projected paintings suggest that were Goya, Rubens, Delacroix and Ingres alive today, CGI would be their medium of choice.
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Making Pittsburgh New by Keeping it Old – Neighborhoods – The Atlantic Cities
This is very heartening:
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…Ziegler’s approach was about adding the positive to diminish the negative, not erasing the negative and expecting a positive to emerge.In the end, the PHLF approach has been enormously successful. A variety of strategies, as opposed to a master plan, were established that could be applied according to different local conditions. Residents were involved in the process from the beginning. The worst vacant properties were purchased from absentee landlords and restored.
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