The article quotes the project’s leader commenting on the power of new visualization techniques that allowed the researchers to see hundreds of millions of fish forming vast mega-shoals off the coast of Massachusetts:
If we see what’s in the ocean we’ll be more mindful of conserving it.
Colony collapse disorder (CCD) once made headlines; now it’s the bee glut. While the cause of the former remains a mystery, the latter is largely economic:
The price of almonds dropped by 30% between August and December last year, as people had less money in their pockets. That has caused growers to cut costs, and therefore hire fewer hives. There is also a drought in the region, and many farmers are unlikely to receive enough water to go ahead with the harvest. Meanwhile, the recent high prices for pollination contracts made it look worthwhile fattening bees up with supplements over the winter. That may help explain why there have been fewer colony collapses.
The rise and fall of the managed honeybee, then, owes as much to the economics of supply and demand as it does to the forces of nature. And if the nutrition and disease theory is correct, next year’s lower contract prices may see beekeepers cutting back on supplemental feeding, and a resurgence of CCD.
Another New York Times article on Serenbe, a development to the southwest of Atlanta:
In just a few years, this idyllic community — which aspires to be something of a Sonoma for the New South (though without the wine) — has become a destination for Atlantans in search of a day trip with the kids or a getaway without them.
I’m not buying the utopian rhetoric of Serenbe’s founders nor any news article echoing it. Serenbe is simply not a sustainable model.
It’s still a greenfield development despite the plan to preserve 80 percent of the 40,000 as green space. It’s still a contributor to automobile traffic on I-85 despite accommodating bicycles in ways that other Atlanta-area communities do not. It still adds new homes to an urban area Forbes.com recently called the “third emptiest city,” based on rental unit and home vacancies.
Serenbe is still sprawl; it’s just a softer way to sprawl.
Three Octobers ago, The New York Times ran a piece on Serenbe’s founder, Steve Nygren. They quote an Urban Land Institute Fellow claiming that Serenbe is “based on the idea that the small towns of the South are not just a charming anachronism.” The article is right to praise the promising techniques Serenbe has used to beat its path from the city. Lost in this discussion of sustainable novelty, however, is that the reasons for beating this path are the same as they’ve been for just about every other postwar suburb. Especially in the Atlanta area.
I can’t help but see the “back to nature” aspect behind Serenbe’s establishment as merely the other side to the “away from the city” coin that has had such currency among middle- to upper-income, typically white Atlantans since the 1950s. Princeton historian Kevin Kruse’s book, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism (2005), has this to say about suburbanization in Atlanta during (and in reaction to) the Civil Rights Movement:
Ultimately, the mass migration of whites from cities to the suburbs proved to be the most successful segregationist response to the moral demands of the civil rights movement and the legal authority of the courts. Although the suburbs were just as segregated as the city—and, truthfully, often more so—white residents succeeded in convincing the courts, the nation, and even themselves that this phenomenon represented de facto segregation, something that stemmed not from the race-conscious actions of residents buy instead from less offensive issues like class stratification and postwar sprawl. To be sure, on the surface, the world of white suburbia looked little like the world of white supremacy. But these worlds did have much in common—from the remarkably similar levels of racial, social, and political homogeneity to their shared ideologies that stressed individual rights over communal responsibilities, privatization over public welfare, and “free enterprise” above everything else. By withdrawing to the suburbs and recreating its world there, the politics of massive resistance continued to thrive for decades after its supposed death. (8)
I’m not suggesting that Serenbe is some sort of segregationist development. It’s certainly not. In fact, I have every reason to believe that Nygren and his community exemplify a new wave of progressive activity in the Atlanta area (Nygren himself has been a generous donor to Democratic politicians, both at the local and national levels). What I am suggesting instead is that Serenbe represents a new and subtle twist on the Atlanta model of suburbanization. Unlike many of the Civil Rights-era suburban residents, Serenbe’s really do care about communal responsibility and the public welfare. They’ll just do it from way over here, thank you very much.
My concerns are reinforced by the vocabulary used to sell Serenbe to potential residents. From the development’s home page:
Let’s say you could create the perfect place to live. Blank slate. Anything you want.
This embrace of blank slate-ness—especially in an area as historically unblank as Atlanta—is irresponsible.
A recent report comparing six alternatives for crossing the Thames found cable cars the most sustainable option.
Cable cars are increasingly used for mass transit in world cities and across rivers because they need little space, have virtually no waiting time, can run at over 20mph, and have very low emissions. They are already used in New York, Istanbul, Vancouver, Madrid, Caracas and Hamburg, and other cities are planning systems. A cable car has crossed the Rhine in Cologne since 1957.
Conan O’Brien rode on the Rhine cable car during his 1997 visit to Cologne (fast forward to about 1:21).
Wait.
A best-of list for 2009? Already? I’ve bookmarked them all in delicious; go and save them all to yours if you’re pressed for time.
A Flickr set containing some absolutely stunning visualizations created by Jer Thorp using Processing and the New York Times article search API.
These visualizations show the top organizations and personalities for every year from 1985 to 2001. Connections between these people & organizations are indicated by lines.
He must have added some recently, because he’s got 1984 to 2009 represented now.
Update: there’s more information about the visualizations over at blprnt.
‘Untouched’ East German flat discovered
[via hawktrainer]
It appears the inhabitant of the humble flat fled in a rush.
Grocery brands from the Socialist state filled the kitchen and old bread rolls still lay in a string bag.
A wall calendar showed August 1988 and an empty bottle of Vita Cola, Marella margarine, Juwel cigarettes and a bottle of Kristall vodka were in the kitchen.
The only foreign product to be found was a West German bottle of deodorant.
See also the most popular bookmarks tagged ‘abandoned’ on delicious.com.
The Siege of Leningrad ended 65-years ago today
[via bldgblog]
Old photographs from the Siege of Leningrad superimposed over photographs from the city as it is today. (English translation of the original page.)
“rising like alien plants on the terraformed lakebed”
[via mtchl]
In order to minimize the carcinogenic dust storms off of barren Owens Lake, the City of Los Angeles built a series of over 5,000 irrigation bubblers on the lakebed at a cost of $425 million. Pruned compares these bubblers—sad, broken sprinklers, really—to fountains:
since time immemorial, fountains have been creating micro-climates, cooling gardens, palaces and sartorially bedecked aristocrats. The array of bubblers, you could say, is also a type of weather modification system: an anti-dust storm.
Looking toward EveryBlock’s future
[via migurski]
Adrian Holovaty announces the EveryBlock publishing system will go open-source when their grant ends five months from today. With so many smart people able to get their hands on that code, I wonder how long until we have the beginnings of a Craigslist for location-based local news.
I also wonder if this decision by EveryBlock will force Sufjan Stevens into open-sourcing his album-writing formula so the rest of us can release material based on the other states.
[via nielsen]
I’ve encountered several faculty members who have a low opinion of blogs, including academic blogs. I’m thinking about giving a presentation about what I call process blogs. These are blogs that present either one big problem (as I hope the The Daily Clique does) or several problems (as Terry Tao’s does) and work to solve these problems using the tools and communities that have developed around online conversations (comments, RSS, search, delicious). From Michael Nielsen:
You can think of blogs as a way of scaling up scientific conversation, so that conversations can become widely distributed in both time and space. Instead of just a few people listening as Terry Tao muses aloud in the hall or the seminar room about the Navier-Stokes equations, why not have a few thousand talented people listen in? Why not enable the most insightful to contribute their insights back?
You can also think of blogs as a way of making scientific conversation searchable. If you type “Navier-Stokes problem” into Google, the third hit is Terry Tao’s blog post about it. That means future mathematicians can easily benefit from his insight, and that of his commenters.
[via anne]
This article’s take on the popular “city as open-source software” metaphor is backed by an exceptional collection of supporting examples, including Montreal’s Roadsworth:
Perfectly mimicking the colours and aesthetics of Montreal’s metropolitan street markings, Roadsworth plays with the visual language of the street itself – joining two streets by painting an oversized zipper head where their lines merge, or transforming a pedestrian crossing into a row of oversized birthday candles. The city’s visual grid no longer functions as a symbol of control but as a catalyst for expression.
In a post from Spacing a few years ago, Peter Gibson—Roadsmith’s given name—explained his motivation for playing with the city:
“Painting images on the street is actually a very innocuous gesture in the face of the problems that exist. We are living in serious denial if we feel that business as usual is going to ensure our continued survival and well-being.”
Documentary filmmaker Alan Koln premiered Roadsworth: Crossing the Line in Montreal late last year.
[via bldgblog]
Architects talking about coziness. I’m now fascinated by the Madrid Barajas Airport:
There was a deliberate decision there to go for warmth and texture - to do what airports don’t do. We asked - what don’t we like about airports? It was things like those greying carpet and ceiling tiles, finishes that made you feel uncomfortable. At Barajas the roof swoops down quite low, you almost feel you can touch it.
There are some great images of Madrid Barajas on Flickr.
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Every weekday, I use this space to share the best links from a select group of 21 people in my network on delicious.com. The membership of this select group (listed in the right-hand column above) is subject to change. That's where you come in.
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