Each week we will be focusing on blogs from around the world dealing specifically with urban environments. We’ll be on the lookout for websites outside the country that approach themes related to urban experiences and issues.
• While functional bike sharing systems are in the works for many cities, project execution can sometimes be a challenge. The New American City profiles Social Bicycle System (SoBi), a project founded by former NYC Department of Transportation bicycle planner, Ryan Rzepecki. SoBi uses secure lockboxes that can be added to any bicycle (and secured to any standard lock), along with enabling software which uses GPS and mobile phones. The system, being piloted in New York this fall, promises to reduce the cost of implementing a bike sharing system and creating opportunities for grassroots bike sharing systems to develop.
• Having fun isn’t hard when you’ve got a library card. And in St. Paul, Minnesota, you don’t even need the card, according to the Wall Street Journal. In a time when library budgets are often the first to be slashed, unmanned robo-libraries are popping up in all sorts of unusual locations (strip malls, parking lots, city hall). For folks looking for out of the way books in New York City, the New York Times recommends the Terence Cardinal Cooke-Cathedral branch of the public library system located just outside the turnstile entrance to the No. 6 train on the northwest corner of Lexington Avenue and 50th Street.
• Urban Ghosts Media features a series of 1950s posters found during a recent upgrade to London’s Notting Hill Gate tube station. The preserved posters will be featured in the station post-upgrade.
• WorldChanging looks at metropolitan agriculture’s reach in Amsterdam, London, Detroit, Flint, Johannesburg, Sao Paolo, and Chennai
Photo from Urban Ghosts Media
Do you have a World Wide Wednesday worthy article you’d like to share? Send the link to www@spacing.ca
One comment
RE: unconventional libraries. In Bogota, the Transmilenio Bus system has a ‘books on buses’ program (that is my name for it): pick up a book when you get on, and then drop it off when you get off. I am not quite sure how it works, nor how effective it is, but it seemed interesting. Here is some background: http://www.bilinguallibrarian.com/2008/02/21/libro-al-viento/