I just found an urban design "game" that is in the works by IBM. The trailer said it will be available in the fall of this year. I just wish there was a trial version up on the site.
I found out about this on thecityfix.com and the website for the game is here.
Friday, May 14, 2010
Friday, April 30, 2010
Phoenix coffee may put their lattes where their mouth is...
Phoenix coffee, if you happen to be a cave-dwelling microorganism with no propensity to sip a latte, is a locally owned coffee chain in and around Cleveland that has been pretty consistent with their aims and actions in pursuing sustainability. So it is out of no occurrence of happenstance that I just so happened to be in the West 9th location this very afternoon meeting with my college mentor.
While I was at Phoenix I saw a flyer about a forum on sustainability that they are hosting. It turns out (and how I missed this when my roommate was a 40+ hr a week barista there remains a supreme enigma) that Phoenix has a series of "conversations" with sustainability professionals in the area for the use and engagement of the general public. The one advertised on this particular flyer is for this Sunday, May 2, with Terry Schwarz. I've mentioned Terry in other blogs regarding pop-up city, etc. The forum will be on 'Shrinking Cities and Urban Design' and hopefully I will learn a thing or two!
If you are interested here's the info. Go! If I get enough studying done, I will definitely be there....ehh, no matter what, I'll be there.
While I was at Phoenix I saw a flyer about a forum on sustainability that they are hosting. It turns out (and how I missed this when my roommate was a 40+ hr a week barista there remains a supreme enigma) that Phoenix has a series of "conversations" with sustainability professionals in the area for the use and engagement of the general public. The one advertised on this particular flyer is for this Sunday, May 2, with Terry Schwarz. I've mentioned Terry in other blogs regarding pop-up city, etc. The forum will be on 'Shrinking Cities and Urban Design' and hopefully I will learn a thing or two!
If you are interested here's the info. Go! If I get enough studying done, I will definitely be there....ehh, no matter what, I'll be there.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Destroy what destroys
Reading this makes me want to take a trip to Detroit as soon as possible (I never thought I was capable of such an utterance).
An artist there is doing some amazing things right now to highlight vacant space in much of the same way as pop-up city has done in Cleveland, yet I am almost inclined to say in a somewhat cooler way (but not THAT much). I love this so much because it was during my first trip to Detroit from Bowling Green that I realized I the passion I had for environmental issues. Drivng through the River Rouge on I-75 would upset just about anyone. All you see is litter on the sid
e of the roads, smog being pumped out of factories, and blighted neighborhoods that make anyone familiar with the term "Not In My Back Yard" (or NIMBY for short) and the concept of environmental racism, fuming mad.
The artist, Tyree Guyton and his project the Heidelberg Project, has turned a whole section of a neighborhood into a magical urban wonderland. Houses once vacant are now occupied and adorned with the very things that made them so unwelcoming in the first place. Guyton transforms trash and other relics of a home once loved into something so appropriately symoblic of a rustbelt city...A city once booming with productivity and the promise of acquiring the American Dream. A dream that everyone has begun to chase after elsewhere.
I cannot urge anyone who has kept up with this blog enough to utilize the links I am tagging on to this post. Read about it more on gcbl as well. Please watch this video too:
An artist there is doing some amazing things right now to highlight vacant space in much of the same way as pop-up city has done in Cleveland, yet I am almost inclined to say in a somewhat cooler way (but not THAT much). I love this so much because it was during my first trip to Detroit from Bowling Green that I realized I the passion I had for environmental issues. Drivng through the River Rouge on I-75 would upset just about anyone. All you see is litter on the sid
e of the roads, smog being pumped out of factories, and blighted neighborhoods that make anyone familiar with the term "Not In My Back Yard" (or NIMBY for short) and the concept of environmental racism, fuming mad.
The artist, Tyree Guyton and his project the Heidelberg Project, has turned a whole section of a neighborhood into a magical urban wonderland. Houses once vacant are now occupied and adorned with the very things that made them so unwelcoming in the first place. Guyton transforms trash and other relics of a home once loved into something so appropriately symoblic of a rustbelt city...A city once booming with productivity and the promise of acquiring the American Dream. A dream that everyone has begun to chase after elsewhere.
I cannot urge anyone who has kept up with this blog enough to utilize the links I am tagging on to this post. Read about it more on gcbl as well. Please watch this video too:
Monday, April 26, 2010
Lake Eerie (I couldn't make a more obvious pun)
Toxic algal blooms a HUGE problem in Lake Erie.Possibly irreversible. Why was this story front page in the Akron Beacon Journal and not The Plain Dealer? How are Clevelanders supposed to be informed of all the ways they are contributing to the degradation of their water supply? You know, the freshwater supply that is already inspiring political tension by being the most strident example of global resource envy, aside from oil in Saudi Arabia.
I recommend reacting accordingly:
I recommend reacting accordingly:
1) Read this.
2) Get really upset
3) Get rational: Tell everyone to stop fertilizing their invasive, non-native grass because it is contaminating the water supply.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
In regards to Sustainability:Ask not what Cleveland can do for you, but what you can do for Cleveland.
No one is more aware or afraid of preaching one thing and practicing another as I am. I mean, I drive a car. A lot. To study sustainability...so I'm aware of my everyday contradictions. And I work on them.
Regardless, choices like your diet are very personal and at this point, if you have studied it, found logic in your decision, and actually live it consistently, then you have made it halfway there. The point is a sustainable diet is one that is active, that is informed, and that is made with a conscious effort to do right based on where all that information has taken you. I really don't care what you choose or don't choose to eat. It's the fact you actually considered it first that means so much-and that's mostly what sustainability demands: thought, getting people to think about their food choices. But there are parameters: buy local, the price must be truly reflective of actual cost, and organic is better and in the case of meat, grass-fed beef, free range, hormone-free and all that is what's best.With that said...
Michael Pollan's book "The Botany of Desire" is making me look at Cleveland differently and to tell you the truth, I'd look at Kazakhstan differently if I was reading this book while living there. It's just good enough to make me look at all the tulips blooming around the city (as a whole chapter in the book is devoted to them) and understand them a bit better.
Michael Pollan is pretty much the authority on the sustainable diet-and he isn't even a vegetarian. Nor did he pursue the title I just bestowed upon him, but nonetheless he deserves it and I find solace and logic in what he has to say about being an omnivore in a sustainable world.
If you have the time read something by him. I suggest starting with Power Steer, a New York Times series he did following one steer from birth to slaughter...and consider (since I make no direct reference to the city of Cleveland and local sustainability efforts in this particular post) how you as a Cleveland resident can make your daily choices sustainable ones.
Regardless, choices like your diet are very personal and at this point, if you have studied it, found logic in your decision, and actually live it consistently, then you have made it halfway there. The point is a sustainable diet is one that is active, that is informed, and that is made with a conscious effort to do right based on where all that information has taken you. I really don't care what you choose or don't choose to eat. It's the fact you actually considered it first that means so much-and that's mostly what sustainability demands: thought, getting people to think about their food choices. But there are parameters: buy local, the price must be truly reflective of actual cost, and organic is better and in the case of meat, grass-fed beef, free range, hormone-free and all that is what's best.With that said...
Michael Pollan's book "The Botany of Desire" is making me look at Cleveland differently and to tell you the truth, I'd look at Kazakhstan differently if I was reading this book while living there. It's just good enough to make me look at all the tulips blooming around the city (as a whole chapter in the book is devoted to them) and understand them a bit better.
Michael Pollan is pretty much the authority on the sustainable diet-and he isn't even a vegetarian. Nor did he pursue the title I just bestowed upon him, but nonetheless he deserves it and I find solace and logic in what he has to say about being an omnivore in a sustainable world.
If you have the time read something by him. I suggest starting with Power Steer, a New York Times series he did following one steer from birth to slaughter...and consider (since I make no direct reference to the city of Cleveland and local sustainability efforts in this particular post) how you as a Cleveland resident can make your daily choices sustainable ones.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
I've been smited by a sustainable business
Well, I am working on securing some reservations for a dinner after commencement and I of course thought to go to the Greenhouse Tavern downtown on East 4th. I thought it appropriate to really reign in all everything I have learned by being obnoxious and forcing everyone else to eat vegan chickpea mush (which I would love by the way) and washing it down with local beer. But I have hit a bump in the road...
Greenhouse Tavern wants $1,500 for a reservation of 6...up front.
I understand there aren't great theoretical ties to be made here in the fact that I can't/refuse to pay that amount to eat there on my big day and the concept of sustainability as a whole (they are trying to run a business, right?) But I find it extremely ironic given the circumstance.
Looks like I will commit some fundamental hypocrisy on my graduation day by sedating my sustainability stupor with a meal crafted from dozens of ingredients shipped from all over the world...and country. And to top it off, there will be 15-20 of us...what a demand we will create in the global food market and what a hit for the local.
Greenhouse Tavern wants $1,500 for a reservation of 6...up front.
I understand there aren't great theoretical ties to be made here in the fact that I can't/refuse to pay that amount to eat there on my big day and the concept of sustainability as a whole (they are trying to run a business, right?) But I find it extremely ironic given the circumstance.
Looks like I will commit some fundamental hypocrisy on my graduation day by sedating my sustainability stupor with a meal crafted from dozens of ingredients shipped from all over the world...and country. And to top it off, there will be 15-20 of us...what a demand we will create in the global food market and what a hit for the local.
Monday, April 19, 2010
A 19th Century historic school house reduced to...chairs and shelves?
Here it is, definitive proof that a historic building does not have to be reduced to rubble in order to provide value to the city...and it also turns out that I really don't have to face the rush hour traffic on 2 East/90 East coming out of downtown this afternoon to take pictures of the school at East 55th and St. Clair that I saw get deconstructed for my internship (this I promised in an earlier blog).I found a blog on it at the A Piece of Cleveland site. Super cool pictures. The architect in charge of this school was also commissioned to do the Arcade downtown. You know the building is beautiful now. Plus, the material harvested was used to make the furniture below and the bricks were recycled and donated to urban gardens for walkways, etc. free of charge. Plus, the site of the building is being used for an urban garden in the future, thanks to new Cleveland urban garden zoning laws. The furniture is not necessarily my style (minimalistic Ikea-esque furniture makes my stomach turn most times), but this is way too novel and amazing to be passed up.To learn a little bit more about Stanard School, click here.
From this:
To this:
From this:
To this:
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