Using Technology To Help People Change Their Own Community

Web 2.0 and the Internet are a new medium, but they are not an end in themselves. At some point all of this has to come off of the computer screen and go on to the streets. This is all of little use if it only applies virtually to Second Life worlds. MIT has had a number of conferences and seminars on the use of the Web for community building but this particular one is a bit more person on person in its approach. The authentic voice is from the community, helping to find and express that voice can be assisted using the tools of Web 2.0.

• Technologies Changing Communities, Communities Innovating Technology | MIT World

  “With community-based media projects, you must believe with all of your heart that people in that community have the best knowledge of anyone in the world about their own community.”
  

  Alexa Mills
  

• tags: innovating, MIT, colab, community-planning

  • The best way to help a community help itself, say Dayna Cunningham and Alexa Mills, is to enable its members to find their voices and talk to each other. In several projects in the U.S. and overseas, the two speakers are developing methodologies for enabling communities to express and define themselves, so they may become more engaged in a larger civic and political process.
    

• Colab | About

  tags: colab, MIT, innovation, community-planning, innovator

  • The Community Innovators Lab (CoLab) is a center for research and practice within the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP).
    

    CoLab supports the development and use of knowledge from excluded communities to deepen civic engagement, improve community practice, inform policy, mobilize community assets, and generate shared wealth.
    

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Role of Architecture In Defining Ourselves

One of those subjects that doesn't seem to fit the focus of Milestones For A New Millennium is the role of architecture in creating communities. With so many problems facing the world and efforts to house millions in need of shelter does architecture make any sense any more? Should architecture simply be a matter of pragmatic technology or is there still a place for the art of architecture? Can architecture as art be made sustainable?

Frank Gehry asks the question in this TED talk, Nice building. Then what? Ironically, he mentions, mostly in passing, the MIT Stata building as a future example of ideal architecture. He uses the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao as the testing ground to ensure that the Stata doesn't leak.

Of course, it did leak and MIT sued. Seems Gehry is allegedly famous/infamous for leaky buildings. The TED video has a view good lines by Frank Loyd Wright on leaks. John Maeda also references the quote in his defense of form being more important than function or at least being more forgivable. Others were less willing to take the more idealistic perspective.

These ideas are further touched upon in this two part look at Frank Gehry's Stata building at MIT by MIT World » : The University as Patron of Cutting Edge Architecture.

Part 1 of a 2 part series that discusses Frank Gerhy's Stata building at MIT.

Part 2 of a 2 part series that discusses Frank Gerhy's Stata building at MIT

These two videos occur after the TED talk but before the lawsuit. There is much more available on the web. This is just a current example of artistic vision wrestling with pragmatic necessity. Clicking on the various labels provided below will take you to other perspectives on architecture, cities and community-planning put forth by this blog.

The Role Of Architecture In The Life Of Cities

The role of architecture involves the creation of cities as much as the individual buildings that make up those cities. Below are two ostensibly different perspectives on the world's cities that demonstrate the challenges facing efforts to house and feed 6 billion people. The first, from TED involves the creation of mega-communities growing seemingly beyond their capacity to be viable.

Robert Neuwirth on our "shadow cities" Video on TED.com

Robert Neuwirth, author of Shadow Cities, finds the world’s squatter sites -- where a billion people now make their homes -- to be thriving centers of ingenuity and innovation. He takes us on a tour.

diigo tags: TED, architecture, cities, community-planning

The second involves Shrinkingcities

which involves established urban cities disappearing.

Whether in the USA, Britain, or Belgium, Finland, Italy, Russia, Kazakhstan, or China: everywhere, cities are shrinking. The dramatic development in eastern Germany since 1989, which has led to more than a million empty apartments and to the abandoning of countless industrial parks and social and cultural facilities, has proven to be no exception, but a general pattern of our civilization.

diigo tags: shrinkingcities, community-planning, architecture, development

Helping Myanmar (Burma) rebuild, Using Architecture to Rebuild Humanity

A number of the stories that have been held in the draft bin deal with architecture. The concept of architecture, however, applies to more than the design of individual buildings. It also applies to other things such as the web and to entire cities.

Does architecture give us a model as to how we can we use the Web to drive social change? The TED prize is one avenue created to bring about social change. Architecture for Humanity leveraged a 2006 TED Prize to build the Open Architecture Network, linking communities around the globe with architects and designers who can help them solve problems.

In 2006, Cameron Sinclair asked TED to help him build an open-source platform to help architects connect with communities in need of designs. The result was the Open Architecture Network -- a successful website that acts as both a clearinghouse for building plans and a vibrant social network, allows its users to sample, remix and customize design work for their needs. To help Sinclair's wish come true, join the community at the Open Architecture Network's website.

One of the latest examples of their work is their attempt to help Myanmar (Burma) rebuild, with Architecture for Humanity as told by the TED TEDBlog by on 5/6/08.

Following the devastating Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar (Burma), Architecture for Humanity asked for help in rebuilding the country over the long term. They wrote:

While the media will focus its attention on the loss of life, there will be millions displaced in the coming weeks -- and like most natural disasters, there's no plan for long-term sustainable reconstruction. Large aid agencies like Oxfam and Care will be knee-deep in immediate delivery of aid. How will the country respond to the long-term strategic need to rebuild the country?

In the first 6 hours of this drive, AfH raised $4,000 from over 120 donors. Learn more about this appeal >>

Cities Under The Microscope and From A Balloon

There have been a number of articles on cities passing my screen lately, but from varying perspectives. Another of the approaches of this weblog is to combine those different concepts together. The concepts in this post go from the technical to the artistic and from the abstract to the personal.

Science Magazine takes a special look at cities in February.
Science, Volume 319, Issue 5864, Cities dated February 8 2008, is now available:

Video Special: Cities
See a special video introduction to this week's special issue on the science of cities and

Science Podcast Join host Robert Frederick for interviews and stories on the environmental costs of biofuels development; the 2009 U.S. science budget; reproducing in cities; good monitoring relationships;

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In this week's issue of Science: SPECIAL ISSUE:

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Reimagining Cities by Caroline Ash, Barbara R. Jasny, Leslie Roberts, Richard Stone, and Andrew M. Sugden

The TEDBlog on the other hand introduces us to Jaime Lerner , who has a maverick flair and a strategist's disdain for accepted wisdom and who re-invented urban space in his native Curitiba, Brazil.

He talks about how to revolutionize bus transit, awaken green consciousness in a populace accustomed to litter and blight, and change the way city planners and bureaucrats worldwide conceive what's possible within the tangled structure of the metropolitan landscape.

It is David Macaulay of The Way Things Work fame, who, in his TED Talk, provides a personal connection with one city in particular:

His love and fascination for Rome dates to his days as an architecture student, but found the path to his book Rome Antics took some unusual (and frustrating) turns. Through failed pop-up designs, scribbled-out title possibilities, surreal sketchbook pages (think "Piranesi meets Escher"), and rambling storylines, Macaulay details each step of his winding journey toward completion of his illustrated homage to the city.

Excepts from -David Macaulay: All roads lead to Rome Antics

I draw to better understand things. Sometimes I make a lot of drawings, and I still don’t understand what it is I’m drawing.

I also make drawings to help people understand things. Things that I want them to believe that I understand. And that’s what I do as an illustrator. That’s my job.

So I’m going to show you some pictures of Rome. I’ve made a lot of drawings of Rome over the years. These are just drawings of Rome. I get back as often as possible. I need to. All different materials, all different styles, all different times, drawings from sketchbooks, looking at the details of Rome. Part of the reason I’m showing you these is that it sort of helps illustrate part of what I go through with trying to figure out what I feel about Rome and why I feel it.

How Should We Be Thinking About Urbanization? Are We?

A question for a Freakonomics Quorum "How Should We Be Thinking About Urbanization?" - Freakonomics - Opinion - New York Times Blog

Urbanization has been climbing steadily of late, with more than half of the world's population now living in cities. Given the economic, sociological, political, and environmental ramifications, how should we be thinking about this?

We gathered a quorum of smart thinkers on this subject — James Howard Kunstler, Edward Glaeser, Robert Bruegmann, Dolores Hayden, and Alan Berube — and posed to them the following questions:

• This year marked the first time in human history that more people lived in cities than in rural areas. What problems and opportunities does this present? What effects has it had on our local and global culture? Economy? Health?

For some additional insights TED Theme The Power of Cities filed under Pearls of Paradigm Processing Social and Economic Paradigms.

This should also be a Davos Question, though it does not appear to be high on the agenda for this year. For some questions on urbanization from past World Economic Forums we have Urban and Lower Income: Asia’s Future Consumer Class from 2007 and Urban Renewal: Holding the Keys to the Future? from 2006.