World Wide Wednesday: LRT in LA, beautiful billboards and city software

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.

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• The Expo Light Rail Transit line in Los Angeles’ west side is expected to generate all sorts of dividends. The New York Times reports that the line will remove tens of thousands of cars from the road, support a variety of mixed-use real estate projects and bring jobs and services to people living in Crenshaw, a largely African-American neighborhood located around the line’s midpoint.

• Worldchanging heralds the recent growth of small wind turbines in urban America. Where most previous wind development has been located in rural areas where zoning codes are loose and neighbours are distant, more urban residents are generating power due to government incentives, improved zoning procedures and other emerging financing mechanisms.

• After Sao Paulo’s move to ban neon signs, billboards and advertising in public spaces, The Pop-Up City asks, can light signs be beautiful? The author shares some interesting examples from Berlin and suggests that light signs can play an important role in helping us to navigate the city.

• At the risk of simplifying our metropolises into machines, The Infrastructurist asks if cities should be run like software. Building on ideas like 311, Jyri Engeström envisions a user friendly, “simultaneously citizen-facing and bureaucracy-facing” issue board. This type of software would allow users to communicate their grievances to the city, view currently open cases and see problems solved on the basis of scale, severity and urgency.

photo by Faria!