Reyner Banham, in his 1968 series collectively known as “Four Pieces on Los Angeles,” addresses this condition on multiple fronts.  He compares the topological organization to that of London, in that both cities are agglomerations of smaller towns that have come to fall, more or less, under some civic umbrella.  After admitting to an initially unpleasant experience with public transit upon his arrival in LA, Banham declares the city to be a rather mature and distinctively modern metropolis.  He claims not only that the failure of the railways was a natural occurrence brought on by the inferiority of the Pacific Electric Railroad when compared to the much more comprehensive and freely-flowing highway system, but that the railroad company was to blame for the crime and poverty of the Watts ghetto by having effectively used train tracks to inhibit its residents from circulating between their own neighborhood and the rest of the city. He celebrates the prevalence of libertarian individuality in the citizens of LA, and embraces the fetishisation of the automobile and the rejection of civic responsibility as an extension of the art of doing one’s thing. Perhaps one of the most interesting things Banham said was that the lifestyle of Los Angeles was one that appealed most, in Europe at least, to middle-aged professionals seeking a renewed sense of freedom and excitement that could not be found on either side of the Atlantic seaboard.  That is to say, Banham wrote with a half-admission that the attraction he and others of his demographic felt for Los Angeles was a desire to spin a mid-life crisis into a Wild West adventure.

What Banham was unable to foresee was the astronomical increase in traffic density that has since become the most widely and bitterly held criticism of Los Angeles.  In the four decades that have passed since he wrote these pieces, the population of Los Angeles has outgrown the capacity of its motorways, thus making it much more difficult to maintain the lone driver motoring lifestyle.  Traffic no longer moves reliably, and many people are commuting daily from places as far away as Ventura.  The solo commute, once a symbol of glorious independence from public transportation, has become a tedious and time-consuming battle against far too many other people who also happen to be celebrating their independence.  Indeed, the highway just ain’t big enough for everyone.  There are simply too many people doing their thing over too large and dense an area that the encapsulated lifestyle so easily and romantically manifested in the middle twentieth century has proven gravely unsustainable.

image courtesy <a href=”http://philip.greenspun.com/”>Philip Greenspun</a>

What Banham described as a freewheeling aversion to government oppression may be retroactively and conceptually reassessed as a refusal to accept the terms of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s liberal republicanism, which has long been the overarching standard of American social contract.  The longstanding Angelino illusion that one may escape society by moving to a major city is not one whose irony goes unnoticed, and it is genuinely impressive that so many people have been living this illusion for so long without having some revelation as to its progressing eclipse.

Perhaps it is not too late.  The real problem with ensapsulated transportation at this time is one of congestion and fossil fuel consumption.  People operating as individuals do not possess the collective mind necessary to allow a smooth flow of traffic.  Deficiencies in driver reflexes and lapses in concentration cause traffic jams, collisions, and infuriatingly long travel times, while idling motors waste energy and emit noxious fumes even while standing still.  In this new century though, Los Angeles has a truly profound opportunity to be, as it once was conjectured to be, the most uniquely modern city in the world.  As technology allows, the city could become a large-scale experiment for infrastructural swarm intelligence.

Let the people keep their capsules, but make those capsules subservient, on certain roads at certain times, to algorithms that will allow high densities of private capsules to efficiently flow between destinations.  Fuel emissions and expenditure will no longer be in vain, and Angelinos, if they so desire, will be able to maintain their sacred private interiors, isolated from the forced company of other people that admittedly make many traditional forms of public transit disgustingly unpleasant.  At times of day and in areas where congestion ceases to be a problem, private vehicles will be released from the swarm algorithm and the control of the journey will shift seamlessly back into the hands of the occupant.  A commuter will be able to cruise up to his or her guarded suburban sanctuary in full control of his or her capsule, bringing home none of the stress or anxiety that would have resulted from a long traffic jam.

While it is easy at present to deny Banham’s relevance, to demote his essays to the status of period pieces, there is something unique about the idea of Los Angeles that is worth preserving, worth fighting for.  The first experiment for the City of Angels may have ended with disappointing results, but just as every laboratory must move past its failures toward new endeavors, so too must Los Angeles explore new opportunities in radical individualism.

Coney Island Then - Luna Park by Night

According to Koolhaas, Coney Island always existed in binary opposition to Manhattan. At the beginning, Coney Island was a natural landscape with quiet beaches; a relief from the congestion of Manhattan. As the island became more popular and more crowded, it could no longer exist in its current state and had to swing to the opposite binary, one of extreme artificiality and urban intensification. Mutating the island into a city of lights and artificiality, a place where pleasure was created and consumed, required technology. To borrow from Koolhaas, technology of the fantastic was used to create a synthetic reality. Technology of the fantastic was used to create an urbanism and social environment that the public demanded and consumed, one that became a laboratory for Manhattan.

A bizarre landscape of theme parks evolved on the Island, each trying to outdo the last. Dreamland was home to over 1,300,000 electric lights, creating a second city of lights that was the advent of the 24-hour metropolis. Attractions like Fighting the Flames, The Fall of Pompeii, Barrels of Love and Lilliputia developed in line with the public’s demand for the fantastic and bizarre. Each relied on technology to create and sell a synthetic reality to be consumed by the public. Further, cardboard was a predominant building material, resulting in many impossible spires and useless space. However, the architecture was convincing enough to support “the formula: carboard + technology (or any other flimsy material) = reality.” Coney Island’s extreme artificiality and wonderland of lights and attractions prompted some critics to call the place “The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium.”

These factors of technology, synthetic reality, urbanism and the bizarre served as a laboratory for Manhattan, creating a new urbanism and consumer culture to go with it.

That was Coney Island then, but what about now? What is it and how does it function in the metropolis?

To me, it seems like it is caught between lives, between what was then and what it is now. It was interesting to see how my preconceptions of the place both aligned and strayed from what it actually is. It is still a weird outpost at the end of the line, but it is not the abandoned landscape devoid of life that I imagined. In fact, it still seems to be quite popular among the public, offering a unique blend of attractions amid the fading glory. Some of the old attractions, or remnants of them, still exist. You can eat a hot dog at Nathan’s hot dogs, home to the world’s first, ride the old Ferris wheel and other carnival rides. Coney Island retains some its old former weirdness, with fading signs and structures from the previous century, as well as attractions like Shoot the Freak. “Come on up, ladies and gentlemen, shoot the freak and the rest of your day will be gravy.”

Coney Island Now - Boardwalk and old tower

Pier and housing blocks

Image via Wikipedia

The urban composition of the area is quite unique, a blend of carnival, relaxing boardwalk, fenced off fields, housing blocks and an aquarium. It is in this new composition that the weird is preserved. Such a diverse landscape attracts a varied social conglomeration: carnival goers, aquarium goers, tourists, residents, photographers, artists, addicts, etc. The people watching, particularly against the background of Coney Island, is worth the trip out there. Then there are those like me, hunting for the remnants of the Coney Island that used to be, and still exists in our imaginations. I can still drift into the synthetic reality of what I want the place to be, of what it means to me.

Coney Island has certainly changed, but it still exists in binary opposition to Manhattan. Once an intensification of urban pressure, it is now an exhale from the pressure and crowds of Manhattan, a world apart from the museums and fashion of the other island. The attractions and landscape of the island have changed drastically during its lifespan, but the motivations to go have not. It is always has been, and still functions as, an escape, a chance to find, and even temporarily live in, a different reality.

Related articles:

• Phantasmagorical Coney Island (neatorama.com)
• The New And Improved Coney Island (perezhilton.com)
• Coney Island Comeback (neatorama.com)
• This spring at Coney Island (boingboing.net)

The problem with this reality of D.C. is illustrated by several references in the article, most-pointedly the city clinging to the grandiose visions of the 20^th Century as opposed to leading America in a new century of urbanism; and the large, often hot and empty spaces that cannot be utilized easily by the public.

Proponents of changing the mall cite a desire of many Washingtonians for a streetcar system, and for returning the mall to a state of civic usefulness and enjoyment, a “Central Park of Washington.”

The issue of monumentalism presented in the article brings up several interesting facets of human behavior as it relates to architecture and the built environment. The first is the determination to preserve the mall as it is, a “grand and imperial city that overawes tourists.” I cannot explain this, but perhaps a century of collective memory has generated a vast cultural value for the mall. We all know what the capitol looks like and stands for, and perhaps there is the implication that changing the physical structure of the city will change the non-physical status and values of the country and people it represents.

What is also interesting is the idea of postcard D.C. being placed above human D.C. This notion reinforces current trends of our society’s obsession with the image and the belief that the way things look is more important than the way they actually are. As technological development has accelerated, this trend has become more prevalent. The camera is often viewed as an infallible observer, the only device capable of capturing the truth. Further, these images can be transported far greater distances and to greater numbers of people than raw experiences can. Even if one has never been to D.C. or the mall, they are likely to have seen dozens if not hundreds of images of the capitol.

This value placed on digital tools and images over experience and real space extends further into architecture and urbanism. Many new developments are planned from a birds-eye view using aerial images, a position that could not be further removed from the people who walk the streets. Architectural projects are often sold on the merits of the rendered images, 2D graphics of the way something may look, but not how it will actually be for users to occupy.

I suppose what is most interesting about monumentalism is the idea that the value of a city can be contained in, and defined by, images. This absurb, but not impossible, proposition reminds me of Colonel Korn in Catch-22 who is perpetually obsessed with aerial photographs of tight bomb patterns. The photographs, in fact, are far more important that if the bombs even hit the target.

Perhaps preserving the monumentalism of D.C. helps to preserve the grandiose ideals and optimism of the 20^th Century, an attempt to counterbalance the turmoil and schizophrenia of the modern world by seeing a different, and familiar, built reality. What do you think?

Related articles:

• Your Future Morning View Will Make You Vomit [Augmented Reality] (gizmodo.com)
• The New Tower of London (blogs.nybooks.com)
• Silverdale Port Says No to 9/11 Monument (kitsapsun.com)

The following paragraphs will seek to shed some light on the anthropological drivers of this behavior and the role it plays in architecture.

One of the effects of this trend seems to be the artificial creation of inaccessibility; a divide between architects and the public, particularly in academia. Architects build for people and the public, generally speaking, but use language as a social tool to elevate themselves above those they build for. Why might this be?

In regards to communications between architects and the general public, the use of language may be a costly display to advertise their own knowledge and intelligence, to inspire, and to concretize their place as a trusted builder. On the level of the profession, jargon may serve to establish the profession as a social group with its own social norms and traits. Similar to how different dialects are one defining element of different peoples and cultures, language used by architects may set them apart from other professions and peoples.

If we assume the profession of architecture can be classified as a social group, several other social and selective factors come into play that may contribute to the prevalence of jargon and superfluous language.

The first that comes to mind is conforming to social norms. According to the article “The Evolution of Ethnic Markers” (see Conforming to Social Norms),  adapting to marker traits, such as dialects, increases one’s own reproductive success and helps to ensure one’s place in a given social group. In the profession of architecture, adapting this marker trait may help architects to be more socially accepted and respected by their peers and support the success of their careers. If the profession as a group has certain social traits that define it, conforming to these norms will benefit all members according to anthropological theory.

Further, architecture is a very competitive profession and as with any group, status is of utmost importance. Language may be used as a tool, or costly display, to advertise intelligence, ideas and education in an attempt to elevate one’s own status and increase one’s own success.

As I mentioned earlier, I observe this behavior more in academia than anywhere else.

Academia, for the most part, places far more emphasis on theory than on practice. Theory, both spoken and written, relies more on language than the physical practice of architecture. With nothing physical to see, occupy, or touch, words become far more important to convey ideas and establish validity and status. As a result, jargon may be far more valuable among academic theorists to establish and define themselves among their peers.

Of course there are exceptions to this trend. In the fall of 2007 I saw Cecil Balmond of ARUP lecture at the Danish Technical University in Copenhagen. He was a clearly brilliant man but was able to deftly and beautifully present his ideas and projects in a manner, and with language, that was accessible to all. This made such an impression upon me that I have remembered it ever since. In my opinion, this did not detract from his brilliance, respectability or status in any way. If anything, it was impressive that he was able to communicate such complicated ideas in a simple way.

So where does this leave architecture? This trend surely affects the social aspect and habits of the profession, but does it also affect what is actually built and the public’s opinion of the profession and built work? This seems plausible. As far is what is actually built and current direction of trends in the profession and academic realms, language and status could play large roles. Architects and theorists who can effectively use jargon and language to convey their ideas and elevate their status may become quite influential. Once their status reaches a certain point, others may copy or emulate their behavior in hopes of increasing their own status and success. Therefore, language and communicative skills may be more important than ideas and more indicative of the direction and trends of the profession, and thereby the built environment. “Good” ideas presented poorly will fail while “bad” ideas presented brilliantly may thrive. Similarly, ideas and communication strategies that are accepted and rewarded in the social environment of architecture will become more successful, common, and popular.

Taken as a whole, language seems to have the power to play a huge role in architecture and the built environment, and jargon may be an adaptive trait to establish a social group, conform to social norms and increase status.

I am very curious about this behavior and the reasons for it, and welcome any thoughts and ideas you may have.

Related articles:

• Communication skills (slideshare.net)
• Helvetica (ryanopaz.com)
• Cut the Jargon! (copychemist.com)
• Grooming and the Human House of Language (slog.thestranger.com)

I find this project fascinating and poignant for several reasons. First, is presents another way of using surveillance technologies as a form of new media art. In a similar manner to Manu Luksch, Elahi sees the opportunity present in increasing surveillance for art, expression and cultural criticism. Second, it presents a very interesting twist on the traditional fear and paranoia of Orwellian surveillance. Instead of feeling trapped by mandatory and pervasive surveillance, Elahi proposes voluntarily cataloguing his own movement in meticulous fashion to serve as an alibi.

Elahi’s project also presents interesting possibilities spatial mapping to discover habits of movement through the urban environment. If patterns of use or desired use could be determined it may present opportunities to plan buildings and urban space to better suite people, rather than people conforming to the patterns of the built environment.

Further, Elahi’s project opens up the possibility of creating a minutely detailed account of one’s life, a streaming autobiography available in real time as it happens. This autobiography could capture not only events but also sights, locations, purchases, movements, etc. all finely captured for those who may care to see. I’m not sure if there is a practical (and non-panoptic) purpose for it, but it may become an interesting experiment or serve to fill the increasingly media obsessed and narcissistic desires of our society.

Related articles:

• [MISP] HASAN ELAHI-artist talk on 2/2 (nm-mediatalk.blogspot.com)
• Hasan Elahi: Tracking Transience (coolhunting.com)

Image via Wikipedia

Articles with positive themes were emailed far more often than negative or downer articles. After noticing that science articles received a surprisingly high rate of email shares, researchers concluded that articles that inspired awe were the most popular and most likely to be shared.

“More emotional stories were more likely to be e-mailed, the researchers found, and positive articles were shared more than negative ones…They used two criteria for an awe-inspiring story: Its scale is large, and it requires ‘mental accommodation’ by forcing the reader to view the world in a different way.”

Determining the root of this behavioral trend was somewhat trickier. Ideas of reciprocal altruism came up, meaning offering something of value and counting on a return favor in the future, as well as the possibility of status and competition, trying to elevate or maintain social status by portraying oneself and well informed. However, researchers concluded that people were actually seeking “emotional communion”

“Emotion in general leads to transmission, and awe is quite a strong emotion. If I’ve just read this story and that changes the way I understand the world and myself, I want to talk to other about what it means. I want to proselytize and share the feeling of awe. If you read the article and feel the same emotion, it will bring us closer together.”

– Dr. Jonah Berger

Can this research indicate anything about how architectural projects or ideas are valued and shared? I imagine that sharing awe-inspiring experiences or knowledge holds true for architecture. There are many projects – modern, classic and ancient – that we hold in our collective consciousness as being awe-inspiring. The Taj Mahal, Machu Picchu, The Acropolis, Therme Vals, The Alhambra, The City of Arts and Sciences, etc, etc. These are projects that, whether we have seen them or not, we understand to be awe-inspiring and value them accordingly.

What makes us want to tell others about architecture we have seen or (preferably) visited? From personal experience I only share projects that seem to hold a connection to the land, people and environmental forces in creative ways. Others, while I may find them interesting, radical, good or absurd, I do not often find them worth passing on. Of the projects and cities that I remember best and tell people the most about that I have visited, it is always ones that carefully, brilliantly or perhaps subtly addressed the human.

Does the potential for people sharing and spreading the word on architectural projects influence the projects? For example consider the Burj Khalifa and the never ending race for the world’s tallest building.  Its seems that the power of awe is being used in a big way; it is difficult to imagine a building reaching half of a mile into the sky. Is it possible that awe is created but also used as a mechanism to ensure that everyone tells everyone and thereby validates the existence of the tower and concretizes Dubai’s prominence? I am also reminded of the building boom in Beijing prior to the 2008 Olympic Games. The projects were, in their own right, revolutionary, a testament to the building boom and the times, and successfully generated a lot of attention. Now, however, many of the projects and planning schemes are facing criticism for being empty, and for not considering their use and value after the Olympics. These two articles, one by The Architects Newspaper and one by the New York Times, look further into this issue and compare Beijing and Vancouver Olympic construction.

Awe is powerful and probably often overlooked, but research shows that we connect strongly to it and that it influences us to share the experience in order to connect to one another. What types of stories do you share? What architectural projects generate the most awe?

Related articles:

• Will You Tweet This Post? Study of 7,500 NYT Stories Finds Long, Happy Pieces Most E-Mailed (trueslant.com)
• So You Want to Get on The New York Times’ Most-Emailed List? [Visualizations] (gawker.com)
• Please Email This Article; Researchers Say You’ll Feel Better (marketingpilgrim.com)
• O Canada! Considering the Impact of Hosting the Olympics (learning.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Shock and Awe: Viral News Is Good News (wired.com)
• Deconstructing Dubai: Considering Questions Posed By the New World’s Tallest Building (learning.blogs.nytimes.com)

–      Herbert Simon, Recipient of the Nobel Prize for Economics, 1978

Information has never been more abundant than it is today, and it seems as if the trend will only proliferate in coming years and decades. More information and more outputs and means of absorbing information are inevitable developments. But what will be done with this information. Excesses of information have already begun to show potential drawbacks and weaknesses, such as the attempted Christmas Day bombing in 2009. Authorities asserted that they had all the information, but failed to connect the dots because they simply had too much information to act on (see The Blindness of Surveillance).

As of January 2009, Technorati was had indexed 133 million blogs. As of this writing there have been over 8.4 billion tweets, many of which link to other sources of information. The unprecedented plethora of information is astounding.  Even by only seeking and absorbing in a specific range or niche, the available information is overwhelming. How much information do you absorb each day through various media? How many tweets do you read? How many links do you follow? How many blogs do you read or follow? How many websites do you visit? And don’t forget books, magazines, newspapers, TV, podcasts and conversation.

I personally learn, or at least come in contact with, far more information each day than I can possibly act on. Take this post for example. The stimulus to write this came from one page from one book. Through Google Alerts I found at least half a dozen things more I would like to have done something with, and through twitter perhaps a dozen more. In addition there are easily dozens of more things that I learn, think about or otherwise strike my interest each day.

The point of all of this lead up is where is the line drawn? Or how is information best filtered and utilized? Failure to do so could lead to a paralysis from information overload, or the spiraling habit of gathering information for information’s sake.

Author Timothy Ferris proposes trying a “Low-Information Diet” and “cultivating selective ignorance”, the goal being to eliminate interruptions or distraction that are irrelevant, unimportant or unactionable. He argues that the decreased input frees time and energy for increased output. He encourages readers to only seek and consume information that is directly relevant to what goals they are pursuing and the next steps to be taken.

Can architecture and design suffer from information overload? I think it is entirely plausible that projects, both academic and professional, could sink into stagnation. Case studies, new technologies and materials, systems integration, energy, BIM, statistics and theory could weigh projects down. The balance of research and design could be thrown askew; energy far more concentrated on the information and technology of the project than the people they will house.

However, information can be integrated into architecture in creative and interesting ways that address the people and the city. The Polis Blog has a recent post about Urbanism in the Information Age. Citing the Zero Energy Media Wall project, they highlight the possibilities that thoughtful integration of systems could lead to in terms of information display, communication and social interaction in the city.

“Such possible transformations move beyond communicating building/urban data or displaying art installations to a fleeting audience, instead hinting at the reality of a responsive city that has the potential for self-correcting measures.”

–      ­Andrew Wade

Information, whether input or output, influencing or distracting, is something to be intelligently used.

Related articles:

• Information abundance creates attention scarcity (theequitykicker.com)
• Study: Only 17% of Twitter Users Are Active; New User Accounts Down 20% (marketingpilgrim.com)
• Information overload: Google’s Wave technology panned by top bloggers (dailyfinance.com)
• [2b2k] Clay Shirky, info overload, and when filters increase the size of what’s filtered (hyperorg.com)
• Collective knowledge systems (cdixon.org)

Cover via Amazon

Drew Westen, author of The Political Brain, views American politics from the following perspective. Politicians on the Left generally rely on facts and what they deem to be sound arguments to attract voters. Politicians on the Right rely on the trend that voters do not like things explained to them and do not like politicians who portray themselves as know the right answers or knowing what is best for the populace. It is not a matter of which side is right or wrong, it is a difference of strategy. While politicians on the Left continue to struggle using facts to attract voters, politicians on the Right have found success with storytelling. By creating a convincing story that appeals to emotion rather than reason, opposing candidates can easily fall out of favor with the voters, even if the stories hold little or no truth. Thomas Frank, author of What’s The Matter with Kansas, believes that the modern voter prefers emotional argument over reasonable argument.

“For Mr. Westen, stories always trump statistics, which means the politician with the best stories is going to win”

“As Mr. Frank sees it, authenticity has replaced economics as the driving force of modern politics. The authentic politicians are the ones who sound like they are speaking from the gut, not the cerebral cortex. Of course, they might be faking it, but it is no joke to say that in contemporary politics, if you can fake sincerity, you have got it made.”

Another example that is relevant is the campaign slogans that John McCain and Barack Obama used during the 2008 election. The McCain campaign used the image of a Maverick to endorse the candidate, while the Obama campaign used the slogan Change We Can Believe In. Both candidates wanted to cast themselves as a departure from the status quo, as something new in Washington. However, to be successful in Washington it is unlikely that one can be too different. But the reality does not matter, because voters, in addition to favoring policy, will emotionally identify with the image and story of the candidate they prefer.

So what does any of this have to do with the built environment?

Imagine an election that will determine city taxes, future developments, zoning issues or transportation options. The result of the election could lead to policy, or a budget, that could significantly alter the built environment, for better or for worse.

A concrete example of this is a November 2009 election in Colorado Springs, CO. Facing a severely tight budget, the city was looking for ways to save money. The leading proposal was to cut fire fighter jobs and stop maintenance on city parks, close public swimming pools and cut youth sports. Not great options for most citizens of the city. As an alternative, a tax was proposed to alleviate the financial strain and avert a reduction of city services. The tax would have cost families approximately $120 per year over 10 years. However, facts were quickly overwhelmed by contradicting stories that passing the measure would increase taxes by 300%, as well as stories that citizens should not have to pay more taxes and outrage at the failure of the city counsel (not necessarily unjustified).

As background, Colorado Springs has some of the lowest property taxes in the state and nation, and the population largely supports small-government and anti-tax politics.

Despite facts supporting passage of the bill with tangible urban benefits at stake, stories appealing to the emotions of voters won out. The measure was defeated by nearly 2 to 1. As a result, unless private money comes through, or some other unforeseen solution develops, many of the more than 140 parks throughout the city will go without water or maintenance during the summer. No public swimming pools will open and many youth sports programs will be eliminated, and community centers closed. In addition, 1/3 of the cities streetlights will be turned off in an effort to save more money. It seems as though the city, backed by the voters, have chosen to generate their own urban blight and reduce the value of cities and neighborhoods. This decision does not seem to be in anyone’s best interest, and yet the voters were sold on the stories.

To recap, in elections and politics, facts and tangibles can be outweighed by stories, no matter if they are true or false. If the political decisions impact city resources, or civic and transportation projects, then these stories can impact the built environment. As voters and designers, we need to be aware of how stories can influence our decision making, as well as how stories can lay the groundwork for amazing and positive urban and architectural developments.

Related articles:

• Make me poorer (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Is Obama trying to please everyone? (cnn.com)
• Drew Westen: The State of the Union Is… It Depends on How You See It (huffingtonpost.com)

How has the “spatial turn” in the humanities and social sciences transformed the ways in which history of the built environment is theorized and researched?

What are the potentials and biases in the use of particular research techniques and narrative forms?

How might such interrogations help us conceive new pedagogies for design and planning?

Image via Wikipedia

This conference is full of potential to further explore and understand the connections between the humanities, social sciences and the built environment, as well as refine methods for continued learning and discovery. The multidisciplinary and collaborative approach is extremely valuable and opens broad avenues of possibility. What will be interesting to see is how knowledge communicated and developed at this conference can be practically applied beyond academia.

Related articles:

• Bunker Recycling Services (ivanpope.com)
• Reflections on a Decade (metamorphblog.com)
• Yahoo! and Social Science Research (seekingalpha.com)
• Speedbumps and a city’s carbon footprint? (scripting.com)

Image via Wikipedia

To me, this situation is quite reminiscent of the fall of 2008 when Denver hosted the Democratic National Convention. Part of the $50 million provided to the city for security purposes were used to install advanced surveillance cameras to be used during the convention. In addition, many private business owners installed their own cameras in preparation for possible civil unrest. Although intended for the duration of the convention, the cameras have remained in use since that time. With such a dramatic increase in the number of surveillance cameras in such a short time, and so many from private businesses, no one is sure just how many surveillance cameras are in the downtown areas.

As expected, there are both critics and supporters of the change. Police maintain that First and Fourth Amendment rights will not be violated, and that the cameras are “not an Orwellian type of thing…It’s a crime thing.”

Critics question the effectiveness of cameras and cite the London study showing how ineffectual cameras have been at reducing crime.

It seems, however, that the trend if increasing urban surveillance will not slow. At this point the public seems happy enough to hold onto the belief that the cameras are making them more secure. As this trend continues, I always find it interesting to sidestep the public/private/security debate and explore new media opportunities á la Manu Luksch, as well as the culture behind the growing trend.

Related articles:

• Public not worried about increased public surveillance: report (nationalpost.com)
• Big brother increasingly watching over Canada’s streets: report (canada.com)
• Do You Have Any Legal Right To Privacy For Information Stored Online? (techdirt.com)