Contributor Blog

I'm at the Paris Hotel on the Vegas strip for the 100th annual American Planning Association (APA) conference, which started Saturday, and runs through Thursday, May 1. The conference offers 300 sessions and 60 mobile workshops to the approximately 5,000 participants.

And it's going to be a crowded week, if the 30-minute line for coffee this morning in the Paris boulangerie is any indication.

Infrastructure matters; Planners should be politically active.

So how do you permit and build a 4,000-mile undersea communication cable system? And why do we care?

Here at Planetizen and Urban Insight, many of our efforts to serve the planning community take place on Windows and Mac computers that would, much like your own computers at your home and office (or even your sparkly new iPhone), dwarf even the most powerful machines of a generation ago. We use these computers to build websites, create maps, share data, explore 3D environments, design, organize databases, and lots of other tasks that can bring new worlds to life without shoveling an ounce of dirt.

I'm posting this blog entry live in front of a panel session of approximately 200 participants at the 2007 Ohio Planning Conference at the Columbus Conference Center to demonstrate, live, how one posts to a blog.

I'm presenting on "Web 2.0 Tools to Communicate Planning Ideas". Here's the pitch:

I was visiting Las Vegas for a wedding and, rather than blow my salary on the blackjack table, I was eager to try the new Las Vegas Monorail. As the world's only city-scale example of a technology that was once envisioned as the future of mass transit, the Las Vegas Monorail has seven stops along a route that roughly parallels Las Vegas Strip, with stations connected to major hotels.

I'm making a prediction: While the real estate market in RL (real life) is cooling off, the real estate market in Second Life (SL) is heating up.

I was recently contacted via IM (instant message) by Elliot Eldrich. I interviewed Elliot several months ago for a feature-length article about urban planning in Second Life. (The article appeared in the January, 2007 issue of the American Planning Association's Planning magazine, but is now also available online.)

Are politicians becoming obsolete in the age of the Internet? Are they simply the 'middle-men' that will be replaced by votes cast directly by citizens? This was the issue before a veritable rock-star cast of poliltical insiders from California and around the country. So what is the G-Word?

 

 

 

I've just about finished researching and writing an article about the implications for planning in a virtual environment called Second Life.

If you're one of the 578,672 people worldwide who participate in the virtual world called Second Life, you are empowered. You use the game's virtual environment to interact with others, design buildings, develop communities, or even construct your own island, complete with an economy, design guidelines, and many of the same issues and problems that come with a real community.

Bob Jacobson emails to say that Brian Deagon's article for Investor's Business Daily, "Cities' Wi-Fi Efforts Might Pose Threat To Cable, Telecom" is a good article and reminds him of "the early cable days!"

More cities are starting to manage Internet access much like they manage electricity, water and transportation services. That trend could cost cable and telecom providers billions of dollars in lost business.

As of July 1, 59 cities were running broadband Internet networks, up from 38 a year earlier, according to MuniWireless.com, which tracks this subject.

Publish is reporting that Google has released a free version of the popular 3-D drawing program, SketchUp, reviewed so well on TechTalk earlier by Ken (Snyder).

Note to readers: Justin Emond is a project manager and web developer at Urban Insight, and a former IT manager for the University of Southern California's School of Theatre.

By Justin Emond
My First Experience with a Sun Server.

I was excited when the company I work for decided to take advantage of Sun's Try and Buy program

Will the new urban ecosystem be wireless? And if so, will corporate American own this new ecosystem?

That's the fascinating point Jeffrey Chester makes in his new article, "The Dangers of Corporate Wi-Fi", published on TheNation.com and distributed through AlterNet. Chester argues that there's no such thing as a free wireless lunch:

"Consumers and public officials should have no illusions that what is being touted as a public benefit is also designed to spur the growth of a mobile marketing ecosystem, an emerging field of electronic commerce that is expected to generate huge revenues for Google, Microsoft, AT&T and many others. Soon, wherever we wander, a ubiquitous online environment will follow us with ads and information dovetailed to our interests and our geographic location."

I was interested to find this interview with Bill Welt, the Chief Information Officer of theCalifornia Air Resources Board (ARB), discussing with ARB is increasingly building models and applications using Open Source software. The interview appears on the Mad Penguin

Thanks to a kind invitation from Wally Siembab to present at the well-attendedSouth Bay Cities Council of Governments' Seventh Annual General Assembly, I had the opportunity to unveil my annual list of the top technologies for planning.

I briefly presented each of the top eight technology tools, and then provide one or more examples of each.

I got a slew of responses (some positive, some not) on my post, "Top 8 Sins For RFPs". The best response came from Chelsea Pierce, an Associate Planner with the City of East Providence, Rhode Island , who offers a few of her proposal pet peeves. Chelsea writes:

Great list of RFP sins! I'll keep those things in mind when I write my next one. I have a few proposal submittal pet peeves I'd like to share - small things, really, but also things that drive me bananas.

Working at Urban Insight, I see about 10-20 RFPs for various projects each month. We have to evaluate the cost/benefit of deciding to respond to any one of these RFPs, and so the RFPs are evaluated by us much the way that our proposal would be evaluated by an organization or agency.

While some RFPs are outstanding, and clearly describe the project, evaluation, and process, others are, well, downright embarrassing, or contain clauses and provisions that leave you scratching your head.

Clark Kelso, California's Chief Information Officer, was kind enough to respond to my recent post, California Updates State IT Strategic Plan, commenting on the state's new strategic plan and what I perceived to be a lack of focus on making technology accessible to people with disabilities.

Clark writes:

...I am pleased to see that our planning activities are being followed so closely in the trade press.

The last paragraph in your article suggests we may not be paying sufficient attention to Section 508 issues in our web developments. Although we did not cite Section 508 in the strategic plan, accessibility is the very heart of our efforts. As your article notes,
the very first goal of the plan is to "Make government services more accessible to citizens and State clients." That concept of accessibility includes not only opening up new, technology-enabled vehicles for delivering services, information and benefits, but the goal of ensuring that those vehicles -- as well as all existing vehicles -- are ADA accessible and compliant.

Our Portal Steering Committee, which was only recently created and is just starting to warm up to the topic, has already expressly recognized ADA compliance as a required component of the State's web presence. The following link plainly identifies ADA accessibility and compliance as a necessary aspect of the user interface:
http://www.cio.ca.gov/PDFs/Portal_Committee-040805.pdf (PDF, 100KB)

The State's web pages are NOT always appropriately accessible, but this is most certainly an issue that we take seriously at the highest planning levels, and we encourage all departments to make accessibility a high priority.

So we're hiring for two new positions at Urban Insight (the company that supports Planetizen). We're hiring a Web Designer/Developer (with preference given to candidates with backgrounds in planning), and a Web Developer / Programmer.

I published the job announcements to several lists and also on a few online services that I've had success with in the past. I've received a fair number of responses, and, thank goodness, and several highly-qualified candidates (although not so many with backgrounds in planning/architecture/urban esign).

While not strictly relevant to planning, it's always interesting to compare plans prepared by planners with plans prepared by other branches of government, in this case the California CIO and the IT Council Strategic Plan Committee have prepared the new California State Information Technology Strategic Plan (PDF, 220KB)

The plan lists six impressive strategic goals:

Make Government services more accessible to citizens and State clients.

Abhijeet presented last week at the Nonprofit Technology Enterprise Network (NTEC) 2005 San Diego Regional Conference on open source content management frameworks for building websites for nonprofit. He published his fabulous presentation online under a creative commons license:

Building Websites For Nonprofits With Open Source Content Management Frameworks

He really knows what he's presenting on, since much of his presentation is based on his hands-on experience with a massive project we just completed here at Urban Insight.