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Jan Gehl in Ottawa

Here's a transcript of my tweets about Jan Gehl's presentation on October 6, 2010.

Although it was promoted by the NCC as part of their bicycling planning (Cycling as Part of Urban Living: Public Presentation), he actually talked about the history of urban planning and related disciplines, and the thinking he has developed that led to his new book Cities for People (there were supposed to be copies of the book for him to sign, but they weren't there due to some snafu).

They were filming it, I hope they put it online. The NCC seems a bit social media challenged (no Twitter feed, no blog, no videos - not even a place online where you can sign up for a mailing list).

The first tweet was 6:58 PM Oct 6th, 2010 and the last one was 8:51 PM Oct 6th.
Other people tweeted as well, but they weren't using a hashtag.

Tweets from my account @rakerman:

at @MuseumOfNature for NCC Jan Gehl event. in absence of info I declare tag to be #nccgehl - good turnout.

Cities for People #nccgehl http://twitpic.com/2v8mrn

cool to see such a good turnout in #Ottawa to hear Jan Gehl speak #nccgehl

Wikipedia - Jan Gehl http://bit.ly/aTZd3j #nccgehl

Mayor of Gatineau is here #nccgehl

standing room only #nccgehl

new #NCC 50-year city vision plan will include urban mobility component #Ottawa #nccgehl

Jan Gehl talking about importance of human-scale space #nccgehl

Jan Gehl's book Cities for People http://amzn.to/bjkThO #nccgehl

"a good city is like a good party" - Jan Gehl #nccgehl

Jan Gehl is funny #nccgehl

Jan Gehl talking about his training 50 years ago - modernism - must always separate zones - cities bad #nccgehl

Jan Gehl talking about Le Corbusier #nccgehl

from very slow development concerned for people to very fast building around 1960 #nccgehl

big scale "professional" urban planners car invasion circa 1955 #nccgehl

cars arrived in cities like a tsunami circa 1955 - Jan Gehl #nccgehl

started thinking purpose of city planning was making room for cars #nccgehl

Gehl cites Jane Jacobs #nccgehl

"the Brasilia Syndrome" - city planning from 5km above the ground - technocratic #nccgehl

from the airplane Brasilia looks smashing - Jan Gehl #nccgehl

Brasilia completely ignored human scale - at human level it's "shit" - Jan Gehl (yes he said shit) #nccgehl

planners didn't help... #nccgehl

... but architects also became obsessed with form over function #nccgehl

Gehl has lots of criticism for "buildings dropped from the sky" architecture in Dubai #nccgehl

now we come to traffic planners - Jan Gehl #nccgehl - their purpose was to make cars happy

cities have traffic departments with wonderful statistics #nccgehl - cars very visible in planning process

landscape architects at least are working at eye level - but not so interested in function #nccgehl

who is left to look at the human dimension? #nccgehl

pedestrians tend to be invisible in city planning #nccgehl

Gehl flagging architectural renderings that show spaces full of happy people #nccgehl

Gehl is hilarious #nccgehl

the most important scale of all is People Scale - eye level at 5km/h #nccgehl

more and more private space lost public space #nccgehl

the number 1 attraction in cities is other people #nccgehl

Jan Gehl talking about about Copenhagenizing New York #nccgehl

300km of bicycle lanes added in New York in 2 years #nccgehl

I gave a standing ovation #nccgehl

Q about where funding came from. A bicycle infrastructure is cheap #nccgehl

Gehl talking about current cyclists in parts of North America : small percentage of cyclists high-speed cyclists on racing bikes #nccgehl

Thanks to TwapperKepper for the archive http://twapperkeeper.com/hashtag/nccgehl - I used Export to get the tweets into a spreadsheet so they would be in FIFO order.

Labels: books, jan gehl, ncc, ottawa, urban planning

posted by Richard at 21:29 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)

Marge Atwood talks a lot of nonsense

Writers know that words mean things.
Atwood's denial that her work is science fiction can only be one of three things

1. She's being deliberately disingenuous
2. She doesn't actually know what science fiction is
3. She is hiding in the "literary", invented non-genre of "speculative fiction", lest she be put on shelves with--shudder--books by men! for boys! about space! ewww

I suspect #3.

Look at this total nonsense:

What the book absolutely is not, she insists, is science fiction – a statement she has made repeatedly since the 2003 publication of Oryx and Crake, a novel that shares the same future as Flood and some of the same characters.

Science fiction takes place “somewhere in space, far, far away in a distant galaxy,” she explains. “That's where hell and heaven went after Milton, escaping literarily.”

On Planet X, you can still have voices speaking out of burning bushes and “strange creatures with bat wings and horns on their heads flying through the air – dragons, of which I'm very fond.” But “speculative fiction” of the sort she writes deals strictly with things people can experience on Earth “without being stoned,” she says. “It has to be based on real technology, real science, real possibility.”

Atwood: ‘Have I ever eaten maggots? Perhaps …' - Globe and Mail - September 12, 2009

Ok first of all, "somewhere in space" is the definition of space opera, a 1950s era sub-genre of SF that, while still the popular image of much SF in clueless media circles, hasn't actually been written SF since the Golden Age of Heinlein and such.

Second of all, she then conflates space opera with fantasy, which is a completely different genre.

Third of all "based on real technology, real science, real possibility" is the DEFINITION of hard science fiction.

Labels: books, science fiction

posted by Richard at 10:52 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)

the politics of nowhere

MIT economist Lester Thurow summarized the eighties boom nicely: "We borrowed a trillion dollars from the Japanese and threw a party." Now you could add to that heap of debt the $500 billion price tag on the Savings and Loan bailout, and throw in another trillion in yearly federal budget deficits accrued since Thurow made his remark -- the Bush administration [1989–1993] looked more and more like a case of fiscal delirium tremens. On top of this, you might also figure in the looming costs of global warming, and the long-term consequences it augured for the national lifestyle. And of course, sooner or later the price of petroleum was apt to destabilize again. Hence, the overall prospect seemed dim that Americans might continue to afford an economy based on people endlessly driving around, buying smurfs and Michael Jackson posters.

The Geography of Nowhere, Copyright © 1993 James Howard Kunstler

Well, it's good they learned that lesson, and that you couldn't replace Japanese->Chinese, Savings and Loan->ABCP/subprime, Bush administration->err, Bush administration

Hey, they did it better 14 years later though, they did all of the above PLUS they had much, much bigger Iraq war. Progress!

There's good rantage from the book (QuickTime video) in Radiant City.

You can also see him in fine form at TED from 2004 (ironically ad-supported by BMW).

Labels: books, urban planning

posted by Richard at 09:58 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)