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 most global cities boast round the clock activity, made possible by armies of streetlights, many cities are moving to reduce nighttime lighting to save money on electrical bills. Citizens have expressed concern about safety, environmentalists welcome a darker night sky and others are exploring solar or concentrated lighting systems to reduce costs and focus the illumination where it is needed. (NYTimes)
• A photographer in London, a city famous for 24-hour hustle and bustle, captured what happens when the streets are empty on Christmas morning. (Flickr)
• Forget the metropolis. The new unit of urbanity ought to be the megapolitan area, argue Arthur Nelson and Robert Lang, authors of the new book Megapolitan America. By 2040, they forsee a United States carved up into 23 “megapolitan” areas – large regions of interconnected metropolitan areas. While issues such as housing and education will be controlled at a smaller scale, the authors argue that the megapolitan area will be the unit of choice for transportation, economic development, and environmental planning. (The Atlantic Cities)
• What’s in a name? When it comes to a neighbourhood, a lot. The Atlantic Cities explores efforts in cities such as Indianapolis to enhance civic identity by creating or resurrecting neighbourhood names. While the practice can improve a sense of belonging, it can also fuel bitter divides and even facilitate gentrification. To counter the practice of real estate neighbourhood toponymy (ie. Nolita, SoBro), New York State assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries introduced legislation to ban realtors from inventing neighborhood names.
• Dave Gardetta at Los Angeles Magazine has a must read article on parking in Los Angeles and the work of guru Donald Shoup. “I truly believe that when men and women think about parking, their mental capacity reverts to the reptilian cortex of the brain…Our mental capacities just bottom out when we talk about parking,” says Shoup. The article explores the history of parking practices in L.A. and the evolution of parking planning from “a number you looked up in a book” to million dollar wireless meter systems.
• But if you’ve got it, flaunt it. Michael Kimmelman at NYTimes explores opportunities to enhance the urbanity of parking lots and encourage their use as meaningful public spaces. In the U.S., a country with as many as 2 billion parking spaces, there’s lots of room to work with.
Do you have a World Wide Wednesday worthy article you’d like to share? Send the link to www@spacing.ca
2 comments
About that proposal in New York State: it seems as though Ottawa’s developers have been getting ever more generic in their own choice of “brand names” for the projects they’ve been building and touting as well.
No?
A colourful article in The New York Times. Too bad the author’s personal opinions on city lighting in the last paragraph aren’t based on much experience that I’m familiar with. In fact the article starts off with a few casual mistakes, then becomes more accurate until near the end when it veers off. He’s right when he states that cities are saving money by using smart lighting that directs light onto the needed areas of a street for example. He acknowledges light trespass and glare as negatives, but without describing the detriment to human and animal health and welfare of glare. I believe that Ottawa to some degree anyway, has a shielded light policy that saves us money, because going into the future we’ve been wise enough to begin to understand the importance of not throwing money away. As well we want to make our city more sustainable and healthy. Biologically, humans need particular kinds of lighting and we’ve figured out the health issues. The author goes into left field when he states that we need lots of lights at night to be sustainable communities. Actually crime in properly shielded light areas does not go up, since our eyes are not blinded by light glare. With age this becomes even more an issue. He thinks we can enjoy overly lighted cities and feel safer to “look heavenward” outside. Woah. He won’t see too many stars. We are designating Dark Sky reserves across Canada specifically because stargazing in overly lighted cities and surrounding rural areas is not properly possible. I invite this author to Tucson, as just one city, where the pleasure of being out at night with properly shielded lighting, is so enhanced that it draws people to visit and experience this. I’m one of them. As Robert Dick wrote in the Ottawa Citizen, Saturday May 14, 2011, on the subject of engineering night into day, “The blue components of colour that produce white light are fine for the daytime indoor lighting, but at night they are exceptionally potent in affecting our circadian rhythm and our health.” In my opinion we enjoy plenty of light in Ottawa, and could use more city-led experiences and information sessions about how wrongly designed night lighting affects us. We could keep this at the front of our minds when we are talking about what makes a great city.
In Ottawa we could use smarter thinking at the community level over the lighting methods we use as individuals.
I would like to see us all check our porch lights to see if they are pointed toward the areas we think we need them for, and not uselessly leaking light into the night sky.