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Thursday, July 7th, 2011

The Coolest and Best City Videos

I have posted quite a few “city videos” in the course of blogging. These are usually unofficial short pieces, often art projects, and frequently featuring time lapse, tilt shift, or other techniques to produce a very cool “music video” about a particular place. I thought I’d share a compilation of some of the coolest and very best of these today. If you have other suggestions, please post a link as a comment.

A lot of these are high quality uploads that more than justify watching them in full screen mode. Enjoy!

You’ve Got to Love London

This one was an instant classic (if the video doesn’t display, click here).

Le Flâneur (Paris)

Here’s a variant on the time lapse approach (if the video doesn’t display, click here). The creator of this video discussed his techniques over at National Geographic, but alas the post seems to have expired (or I can’t find it).

Little Big Berlin

This is such an incredible video. It doesn’t necessarily beat you over the head with the coolness of the place like the London and Paris videos, but instead gives you slices of everyday life in way that reveals the city to you. Even the classical soundtrack (Franz Liszt’s “Hungarian Rhapsody #2″) is awesome. (If the video doesn’t display click here).

Le Tour de France Grand Départ 2010 (Rotterdam)

This one actually is a promotional video, shot for the Grand Départ of the 2010 Tour de France. But it’s a great video about cycling and Rotterdam generally. This one I particularly love since the music is a delightful original composition by Erwin Steijlen, featuring vocals by Alma Nieto and Steve Balsamo. (If the video doesn’t display, click here).

Inter // States (Tokyo)

This video by Samuel Cockedey isn’t as good as the rest of them on the whole, but if you’re a transport geek like me, you’ll definitely like it (if the video doesn’t display, click here).

New York City

The best of the city videos all seem to be from overseas cities (though interestingly the London and Paris ones were made by Americans). Here are a couple of great New York timelapses, however. First, one from James Ogle (if the video doesn’t display, click here).

And one by Mindrelic called “Manhattan in Motion” (if the video doesn’t display, click here).

A Summer Sped Up (Chicago)

Here’s a reader suggestion that I can’t believe I’ve never seen before since I live in Chicago at present. (If the video doesn’t display for you, click here).

Hope you enjoyed these.

Wednesday, April 6th, 2011

Le Flâneur

Here’s another super-cool city video. This one is a series of photos combined into a time lapse video with nice music. It’s about Paris and is only two minutes so definitely worth a watch. (If the video doesn’t display, click here).

Of course, it is very much like the similarly awesome You’ve Got to Love London.

Sunday, July 18th, 2010

It’s Time for America to Get On the Bus

New York magazine recently had a fantastic story on NYC’s plan to focus on improving the quality of its bus system:

Buses are what most people think of when they think of not getting anywhere: senior citizens waiting in lines, guys counting out change, double-parked cars. They are less sexy than subways and tend to be ignored until the MTA announces another round of service cuts. The last time buses were new was in the forties, when they were installed around the city as a cheaper, more flexible alternative to streetcars….But over the last decade, in a few transit-enlightened cities around the world, the bus has received a dramatic makeover. It has been reengineered to load passengers more quickly. It has become much more energy-efficient. And, most important, the bus system—the network of bus lines and its relationship to the city street—has been rethought.

If New York City, the ultimate American city for rail transit, can see the wisdom of reinvigorating its bus system, then every other city in America should as well. No, New York is not cancelling its subway expansions. But it realizes that in a world of financial constraint, New Yorkers can’t wait decades for the relatively small number of projects that it has in the pipe to come online, much less develop new ones.

Too many American transit enthusiasts, especially outside our largest cities, harbor a deep hostility to buses for some reasons. There’s been an interesting alliance for light rail between transit advocates who pooh-pooh buses and the traditional rent seeking interests that brought us things like many local stadium boondoggles. Especially for smaller cities, light rail is, like pro sports teams, just another accoutrement of the “big league city” that they need to have in order prove they are one.

I’ll be the first to admit that some who advocate buses actually don’t like transit much at all. Promoting a bus alternative to a light rail line is simply a convenient way to try to sink the whole thing. Also, the bus in many cities isn’t that great, and isn’t well patronized.

But with the financial realities we face in America, and the need to create an actual network of service, not just a couple of showpiece light rail lines, we ought to be giving bus a hard look. This is doubly the case because rail construction costs are simply out of line in the US versus the rest of the world. No one cares to solve this problem – not the FTA and certainly not the consulting engineers, construction companies and rolling stock vendors who are doing just fine indeed off the current system – so we should really be thinking twice about rail anyway until we can rein in the costs.

A friend of mine once said, “People claim folks won’t ride buses. I agree. So why don’t we work on fixing that problem instead of jumping straight to the conclusion that we need to spend a billion dollars on light rail?”

Actually, people will ride the bus. In London, twice as many people ride buses as the famed tube system. In Chicago, despite its well known and extensive L system, more riders take the bus than all CTA and Metra trains put together. And there is nothing even particularly fancy about Chicago’s bus system. It’s what I call “Plain Old Bus Service”.

Still, with poorly designed systems and poor service levels, buses in many cities aren’t well patronized, particularly by discretionary riders. So how do we fix that? Jarrett Walker over at Human Transit has been on fire lately. He always has some of the finest transit writing anywhere, and if you aren’t reading, you’re missing something.

Lately he’s been writing about Paris, and Europe generally, and how their approach to bus design differs from the US. In Converging Vehicles, he writes:

European systems present buses and trams as part of a unified system, with amenity choices that minimize the difference between the bus experience and the tram experience. This is a striking contrast to US “streetcar cities” such as Portland and Seattle, where the streetcar is as differentiated as possible from the bus system, as though it’s expected to serve a different clientele.

In a lot of cities they do seem to be designed for different clienteles. And I don’t think it takes a rocket scientist to imagine who those might be.

Jarrett supplies a photo of a bus interior to demonstrate.

And here’s the inside of a tram:

He then describes the similarities:

Look again at the [bus] interior above. Note details like the ticket readers next to the first set of doors. Note, just visible in the upper left of the photo, a strip map showing every stop that this bus makes along its route. Note the whole look and feel…. [On the tram] the continuous open space is wonderful. But there’s nothing else about this design, in terms of overall level of amenity, that differs from the bus. This vehicle isn’t trying to serve different people than the bus serves, or to provide a higher quality experience. This vehicle is on rails for one good reason: The corridor it serves needs huge capacity…In Paris, light rail is just what you do when you need a really, really long bus.

In part two, Jarrett goes on to talk about how you can board that Paris bus through any door, with proof of payment just like light rail. The New York magazine piece picks up this theme, talking about the Bx12 Select Bus Service in the Bronx:

All of the sudden, though, here it comes: the Bx12. Right away, you see it’s different. A different paint job—new branding, as the transit people like to say—and bright-blue lights flashing on the header. Buying a ticket is different, too: You pay before you board, from a little box like a MetroCard vending machine that offers you a receipt. In the world of transit planning, boarding time is everything, and the receipt streamlines the process. “You just hold on to it,” a woman offers, shouting from under her earbuds. She smiles. “It’s much faster.” Waiting on the curb, you notice that the bus has its own lane, painted terra-cotta, with signs to deflect non-bus traffic.

The relatively new head of the MTA used to work in London, where he was part of a change that saw a big upswing in bus popularity.

About a year into his tenure at Transport for London, Walder achieved the satisfaction of watching his neighbor, a London business executive, decide to make his primary mode of daily transportation the bus. It was simply the easiest, fastest way to get to work. “He would say to me, ‘Hey, the bus goes where I want to go, and it gets me there, and I’m taking the bus!’ ”

And that’s what a heck of a lot more US cities ought to be doing too. Of course, if there’s a legitimate case for rail, then go for it. I support rail projects ranging from the Second Ave. Subway to the Cincinnati streetcar. But clearly there is enormous opportunity in the US to start transforming the transportation infrastructure of our cities with high quality bus service in a way that is faster, cheaper, and much more pervasive than we’d ever be able to achieve with rail.

As NYC DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, principal architect of that city’s remarkable public space transformation put it, “The bottom line is buses are back.” They need to be back in a whole lot more cities than just Paris, London, and New York.

PS: Again, if you care about transit, you should definitely have Human Transit in your reader. Here’s a link to another piece on Paris, about bus lanes to help convince you.

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

Featured Site: Branding for Cities

As someone who is interested in civic branding, I wanted to highlight a relatively new blog called Branding for Cities, which is put out by one of the brains behind City Mayors. I’ve already found some very interesting information via this site. One of the things I like about it is that, being based in London, it brings a global perspective to the table. This is too often missing from US urbanist discussions. Particularly in civic branding, I think European cities are ahead of American ones, so that global perspective is especially helpful here. I’ll share some interesting highlights I’ve found to give you a flavor for what’s there.

The Brand-Territory Matrix

One highlight is a framework for relating commercial brands with territorial brands called the Brand-Territory Matrix. It was developed by Gildo Seisdedos of IE Business School and Cristina Mateo, a member of the Madrid City Council.

The general idea is that the brands of products draw on the brand of their place of origin to create part of their own image. Think Hermès , Barneys New York, or Ikea. In return, the products themselves then strengthen the place brand. This reciprocal benefit between commercial and territorial branding has developed organically, and has disproportionately benefited only a few places. However, there is opportunity for cities to look to more consciously encourage this process as part of a place branding strategy.

Here’s a very informative ten minute video where Seisdedos explains his framework. For anyone with an interest in place branding, I strongly encourage watching it. (If the video doesn’t display, click here).

As someone with a background in management consulting, I’m a sucker for 2×2 matrices. Since not everyone will watch a video, I took the liberty of turning their framework into a framework diagram for you. This is part of my continuing effort to provide useful frameworks and techniques cities can apply themselves.

There are two axes, the market scope of the commercial brand (wide or narrow) and the emphasis on the place of origin (low or high). This produces the four brand quadrants of Emerging brands, Ambassador brands, Impostor brands, and Aristocratic brands.

Ambassador brands are those like Ikea that are both broad in scope, but also make high use of place. You know it is a Swedish company through and through. Emerging brands are broad in scope, but downplay their origin. Seisdedos uses Spanish clothing chain Zara as an example. Aristocratic brands are often then most powerfully associated with place. Barneys New York, for example. And as an example of an Impostor brand, Seisdedos uses Victorio & Lucchino, a clothing line that sounds Italian, but is actually from Seville.

For cities, you can catalog your commercial brands and map them on this matrix. Then look at where there are opportunities to mutually enhance commercial and territorial brands through linkages or other mechanisms. For example, how could emerging brands potentially be encouraged to be more ambassadorial? Can aristocratic brands be leveraged for tourism benefits? If your city has lots of Impostor brands, what is that telling you?

Actually, I think Impostor is the weakest of the four, since not all low-low brands are faking who they are. I think of Endangered Species Chocolates in Indianapolis, which isn’t trying to fool anyone about its origins, but doesn’t highlight them either.

Whatever you think of this framework, the exercise of examining the relationship between your city and the commercial brands that call it home is a useful exercise.

Philippe Mihailovich

In part of a series on luxury branding, Philippe Mihailovich extends this theme of the linkage of place brand and commercial brand.

Not long after meeting someone for the first time, you may expect to be asked, “where are you from?” based on your name, your accent or your look. The same will be asked (even if just in thought) of your brand, especially if it is different. We may be interested to know the brand’s place of origin, nationality, neighbourhood, everything. Here’s where heritage kicks in, even for new brands. If a watch brand is from Switzerland, that helps. If the car is from Germany, that helps. Luxury branding cannot be separated from place branding. They work by adding brand value to each other.

Places now compete in the same way as companies do and the emerging nations now realise the need to start developing their own luxury brands instead of importing them. Clearly cities, regions and nations can benefit from encouraging the development of local luxury brands. Paris is no stranger to this. The city positions itself as “Paris, Capitale de la Creation”. It’s a branding operation that brings together 20 professional fashion and home decoration exhibitions annually and helps the city to compete with all others and it works. We believe Paris to be the capital of creation just as we believe the best sparkling wine comes from Champagne and that the best watches are Swiss.

And

Hermès without Paris, could be misperceived as being Greek. Hermès and even L’Oreal, by adding Paris to their brand names, have effectively co-branded themselves with all Parisian associations thereby enabling their brands to stretch into almost any French category that Paris is known for….Reputation of a place can make or break a luxury brand just as it can affect the employment chances of an individual. The “Made in China” brand is a case in point. After concerns over pet food, toothpaste, seafood and defective tires, China had to cope with exploding mobile phone batteries and poisonous baby food. Ironically in the 18th Century the French were importing the finest luxury goods from China. It takes a long time to establish a good reputation for a brand and a very short time to destroy it. “Made in China” now reads like a consumer warning. Bad news always travels faster than good.

Read the whole things for yourself.

Aesthetic Failure in Brisbane

It’s not all Europe and it’s not all good news either, as this opinion piece illustrates.

One of the great frustrations of growing up and living in Brisbane is watching the city get uglier. Granted, we have, in the past few decades, grown from parochial cow town to “Australia’s new world city”, whatever that might mean. But did we have to lose so much of what made the place unique?…..just when you think you’ve seen the nadir of ugliness, something new comes along to set a new benchmark for practical plainness…..Hale says ugly outcomes are a symptom of, among other things, poor leadership from politicians “who fail to encourage better design”. As he said, “no self-respecting European politician would be seen cutting the ribbon on an ugly pile of concrete”. For years our self-promoting politicians have been far more interested in looking good by cutting the ribbon than making sure whatever it is they are opening itself looks good.

This is just a sample of what you’ll find at Branding Info for Cities. So if civic branding is your game, check it out.

Friday, September 11th, 2009

Midwest Miscellany

Recession Job Losses

The Windy Citizen pointed me at coverage of metro area job losses in the recession. Here is how the 12 cities I principally cover in this blog stacked up, sorted in descending order of percentage losses:

1. Detroit; 139,600 jobs; -7.5%
2. Milwaukee; 44,800; -5.2%
3. Cleveland; 54,100; -5.1%
4. Chicago; 206,200; -4.5%
5. Indianapolis; 40,200; -4.4%
6. Cincinnati; 42,200; -4.0%
7. Louisville; 22,900; -3.7%
8. Minneapolis-St. Paul; 63,100; -3.5%
9. St. Louis; 43,900; -3.3%
10. Pittsburgh; 32,800 – 2.8%
11. Kansas City; 21,900; -2.1%
12. Columbus, Ohio; 19,600; -2.1%

A couple things that jump out of me from this are that Chicago and Indianapolis are doing far worse than conventional wisdom views of their overall economic health. Both regions are getting clobbered. The Pittsburgh story gets some additional ammunition, as does my view that Columbus is the next Midwestern star.

Recession Job Recovery

So when will the jobs come back? Nobody knows for sure, but an organization called IHS Global Insight has predicted the year in which employment will match its pre-recession peak in various major US cities (via IBJ News Talk):

• Kansas City: 2011
• Columbus: 2012
• Indianapolis: 2012
• Louisville: 2013
• Minneapolis-St. Paul: 2013
• Pittsburgh: 2013
• Chicago: 2014
• Cincinnati: 2014
• St. Louis: 2014
• Cleveland: After 2015
• Detroit: After 2015
• Milwaukee: After 2015

High Speed Rail Roundup

Harvard economist Ed Glaeser writes for the NYT Economix blog. A few weeks ago he did a four part series on high speed rail. I’d meant to do a post on this but didn’t get around to it. So here are some belated links. I think it is fair to say he’s a skeptic:

• Is high speed rail a good public investment?
• Running the numbers on high speed trains
• How big are the environmental benefits of high speed rail?
• What would high speed rail do to suburban sprawl?

Race is on to grab stake in rail effort (WSJ)

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles: Is America Allergic to High Speed Rail? (WSJ Op-Ed)

Amtrak runs off the rails (New Geography)

The “Prince of Pops” Dead at 74

Erich Kunzel, longstanding pops conductor at the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, died recently at aged 74.

The Cincinnati Symphony is a well known national orchestra, but it was as the Cincinnati Pops under Kunzel that they achieved their greatest popular success. Kunzel recorded 85 albums with the Cincinnati Pops, an astonishing 55 of which made it into the top 10 on the Billboard classical charts. They sold over 10 million copies and and earned several grammy awards. Truly a giant has passed.

Indy Cultural Trail Bus Shelters

The Indy Cultural Trail program announced that it will be installing three new bus shelters along the trail designed by local architect Donna Sink:

These shelters will feature the works from local poets, and are also constructed with an eco-friendly design.

Ohio Ambassadors

@AndreaApplegate pointed me at this program the state of Ohio is launching called “Ohio Ambassadors” looking for volunteers who are willing to “tell the Ohio story”. Done correctly, this could be a big win. In fact, it is something I suggested that Indianapolis adopt at variation of, particularly for minorities. Let’s face it, if you are an ethnic professional, gay, etc. and considering a move to the Midwest, the reputation alone could give you pause. But the Midwest is already diverse today. Why not tap into that by getting local volunteers of similar backgrounds to be on “hot standby” to help show a prospective recruit around town and show him or here that there will be a community of people like them, an active social life, access to native culture, etc.? This might actually prove more powerful than any swank dinner or trip to the local sports team’s skybox.

One thing about this program that caught my eye was the concept of the “Ambassador at Large”, which is made up of, “Anybody not living in our state that has had a positive Ohio experience and wants to Share the Ohio Story with others.” Imagine that, looking at people who left as a sort of field sales force and and actual asset.

We’ll see what this program turns out to be since so few details are available. If it is just a marketing mailing list and some freebies, it probably won’t amount to much. But done right, it could have some benefits.

Powering the World With Solar

Here’s an interesting map showing the surface area that would be required to supply the world’s energy needs with solar power. I don’t know if it is accurate, but it is provocative.

Portland Creatives Find Ways to Work Together

GOOD explores the problem of what to do when there are more people who want to live in a city than jobs for them with regards to Portland, Oregon:

Portland, Oregon—the misty evergreen Shangri-La for the young, the creative, and the progressive—has an interesting problem. Its miles of bike lanes, its rock-bottom rents, its deep vats of craft brews are all far too good. Yes, Portland has actually made itself too attractive. According to one study that compared May of 2009 with May of 2008, Oregon’s unemployment has grown faster than any other state in the country, 3 percent. For large metropolitan areas in the country, Portland has one of the highest unemployment rates, which topped out at about 11.8 percent—even higher than Detroit. To blame, some economists believe, are the large numbers of designers and artists who have been moving there without jobs….As I strolled the city from meeting to meeting, I realized that out of necessity, Portland is quickly finding the answers to a much greater issue that’s going to affect an increasingly freelance workforce across the country: Where are all these people going to work?

This interesting piece talks about firms opening up their office space for “co-working”, and interesting things like low cost space in converted motels turning into labs for small business startups.

Paris Metro Augmented Reality Application

One of the super-cool features of the new iPhone 3GS is the so-called “augmented reality”, where you hold up the phone and view a live picture of what is in front of you through the camera lens, with information overlaid on it.

The first app out there taking advantage of this is the Paris metro system. You activate the map, hold up your phone, and you see a picture of the street with big signs where the metro is. Pretty cool. Of course naturally they also include advertising as well. You can search for McDonald’s and Starbucks. I don’t know about you, but the sight of all those huge American logos on the streetscapes of Paris is pretty creepy.

Here’s a video demonstration. It’s in French, but even if you don’t speak the language, the pictures are worth a thousand words. So enjoy a little “réalité augmentée”

National and International Roundup

Joel Kotkin looks at world capitals of the future.

There is more tension and fallout from demographic change resulting from the surging white population of the city of Atlanta, as the CS Monitor reports how a “Memo about a ‘black agenda’ in mayor’s race roils Atlanta“. Interestingly, as a city that has long been known as a great place for blacks to live, we may be looking at the first major city in America to flip from majority white to majority black and back again. The dynamics resulting from this will be important for others to study, particularly as central cities regain attraction to many of the people who originally fled them for the suburbs, and their children. See also: “After 35 years, next Atlanta mayor may be white“.

Florida Exodus: Rising Taxes Drive Out Residents (Time Magazine via Yahoo)

Planetizen looks at toolkits and design design manuals.

A look at the power of flowers to improve urban streetscapes (via @GenslerOnCities)

Is making right turns easier always a good thing? Interesting thoughts from American Dirt.

Forbes looks at very smart cities in South Korea.

More Midwest

Chicago
The Industrial Wonders of Northwest Indiana (Chicago Sojourn) – Great pictures. Related is “The Magic of Marktown” at the Chicagoist.
Celebrating the 100 year anniversary of the street addressing system (Tribune)
West Loop park infuses Chicago with green space (Inhabit)
O’Hare to get competition? (DC Velocity)
CTA to share bus tracker code with outside developers (CTA Tattler)

Cincinnati
UofC Student Government Votes to Oppose Issue 9 (Urban Cincy)
Jobs aren’t coming back (Enquirer)

Detroit
A lesson in municipal finance (Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space)
Southeast Michigan faces $35 billion deficit in road revenue (Detroit News)
Tolls may not cover Mackinac bridge upkeep (Detroit News)
Meijer sees a chance to prosper in Detroit (Daniel Howes @ Detroit News)
Michigan Subsidies Fail (WSJ op-ed) – study referenced comes from a right wing think tank

Indianapolis
Indiana leads the nation – in coal ash ponds (C-J)
Surprise in Indiana: A deli worth the trip (The Atlantic) – Props for the Goose; h/t UrbanIndy
Arkansas Innovation: Stunning Southern Architecture (Web Urbanist) – awesome photos of the work of Marlon Blackwell, who is the architect of the visitor’s center at the forthcoming IMA Art and Nature Park.
NIMBY’s Gone Wild (Indy Star) – My title

Louisville
Tyler Allen to enter mayor’s race (C-J) – Co-Founder of 8664
Neighbors want meat plant out of Butchertown (C-J) – Ironic headline of the day. I hope Louisville keeps in mind the need to preserve manufacturing in the city.
New sectors will heat up in Louisville’s economic recovery (C-J)

Memphis
Aerotropolis Redux (Smart City Memphis)

Milwaukee
Study fingers state for Milwaukee’s financial woes (J-S)
Zoo interchange delays could cost drivers millions (J-S)
Doyle renews push for transit plan (J-S)

St. Louis
CVS store design rejected (StlUrbanWorkshop) – Attributed to “recently arrived neighbors passionate about urban design”

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