Exclusives

BLOG POST

The Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute has a (extraordinarily slow-loading) report out (in Swedish but with an abstract that comes very close to being in English) on tram and bus use. <a href="http://www.vti.se/pdf/reports/M948.pdf">Here's</a> the PDF of the report, but in a TechTalk public service, here's the salient bit, with a couple teeny edits, from the abstract:<br /> <br /> <blockquote>...public transport makes much more efficient use of the street area than car traffic. Trams are more than twice as efficient as buses, when the number of passengers carried is considered. IN the period 1986-1996 the European cities which based public transport on trams show a bigger growth in the number of passengers carried than do cities which rely on buses.</blockquote>

June 29 - Anonymous

BLOG POST

The <a href="http://www.rehearsal.uiuc.edu/">Environmental Rehearsal Studio</a> at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (<a href="http://www.uiuc.edu/">UIUC</a>) has been working on developing a <strong>Planning Data Model</strong> and a <strong>Planning Markup Language</strong> (<a href="http://www.rehearsal.uiuc.edu/projects/PML/">PML</a>) based on the eXtensible Markup Language (<a href="http://www.w3.org/XML/">XML</a>) and the Geography Markup Language (<a href="http://xml.coverpages.org/ni2004-03-26-a.html">GML</a>) developed by the <a href="http://www.opengis.org/">Open GIS Consortium</a>. <br />

June 29 - Abhijeet Chavan

BLOG POST

Why should architects, planners, and developers be concerned about software interoperability and open standards for data exchange? Communication and the exchange of data between partners in a development project is crucial to the success of the project. Anyone who has been involved in a construction project before knows how many opportunities exist to mis-interpret even the smallest detail on a plan.<br /> <br /> Architect Jonathan Cohen concludes in <a href="http://www.jcarchitects.com/islandsofautomation.html">Islands of Automation</a>

June 29 - Chris Steins

BLOG POST

Thinking more about my Spider-Man <a href="http://www.planetizen.com/tech/archives/2004/06/23/86/">post</a>, as well as the science fiction work of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-form/002-9877415-8018419">China Mieville</a> -- who has a third book coming out about the steampunk/magic megacity New Corbuzon in August....<br /> <br /> So which made-up cities would you visit? I think I'd like Gotham City better than Metropolis. You get the sense that the bars and restaurants are better in Gotham.

June 25 - Anonymous

BLOG POST

Via <a href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2004/06/24.html#a7868">Scobleizer</a>, a supercool Web-based traffic monitor with <em>live</em> video of intersections. <a href="http://www.smartcorridors.com/index.jsp">SMART Corridors</a>, a joint project of a dozen or so Bay Area regional transit authorities, is supposed to let commuters see where the clogs are. But the surveillance cameras are kinda spooky. If you timed it right and knew which one to click on, you'd see me walking to my bus every morning (quit stalking me!).

June 25 - Anonymous

BLOG POST

Wonderful article on Mike Melvill, the guy who flew the SpaceShipOne into space over Mojave this week, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/23/national/23pilot.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1088182871-HI2ZLuZP7F30D8gtGDJreQ">here</a>. It's by non-reader but talented New York Times writer John Schwartz.

June 25 - Anonymous

BLOG POST

Marvel Comics has announced that it plans to license out Spider-Man, one of its flagship characters, to an Indian comic book company, for a re-made Indian version of the character. Newsarama did a nice write-up on the details that you can read <a href="http://newsarama.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=14583">here</a>.<br /> <br /> <img src="http://www.planetizen.com/tech/files//indiaspidey.jpg" alt="India Spider-Man" align="left"/> The really important bits: <br /> <blockquote>...the Indian version of Spider-Man, in the form of young Mumbai resident, Pavitr Prabhakar, gains his powers from ancient mystic instead of Peter Parker who got his powers from a radioactive spider. Green Goblin is also reinvented as Rakshasa, an Indian mythological demon.</blockquote>

June 23 - Anonymous

BLOG POST

The <a href="http://www.seeing-stars.com/TVstudios/ABC.shtml#EntertaimentCenter">ABC Entertainment Center</a> in LA is being <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-mystery19jun19,1,7452818.story?coll=la-headlines-california">demolished</a>? Why does no one discuss these things with me? Well, okay, to be fair, <a href="http://blogging.la/">Blogging LA did</a>.<br /> <br /> Man, I loved that place when I was a kid. It wasn't just the futuristic-by-way-of-the-1960s architecture, or the ability to gape up through the tiers of shops and see the aluminum-framed Century City towers.

June 22 - Anonymous

BLOG POST

It's behind schedule, over budget, and, thanks to celebrity architect Frank Gehry, looks more than a little <em>familiar,</em> if you know what I mean. It's soon to open, and thanks to reader (and my cousin) Vanessa Jones, you can see lots of good construction pictures <a href="http://www.landofwee.com/images/millpark/millennium_park.html">here</a>. Thanks, Vee.<br /> <br />

June 22 - Anonymous

BLOG POST

Mojave, Calif. - This morning I watched a space ship take off. The SpaceShipOne, designed by Burt Rutan and funded by Microsoft gazillionaire Paul Allen, made it to just above 100 km (62 miles or, according to the rocket's own systems, 328,491 feet). That's space, baby: high enough so pilot Mike Melvill could see "white clouds above the LA basin [that] looked like snow on the ground."<br /> <br /> The craft, carried to 50,000 feet by a mother ship called the White Knight (it looks a lot like the White Star from <a href="http://www.infinicorp.com/VEX/starships/white-star-medium-cruiser.htm"><em>Babylon 5</em></a>

June 21 - Anonymous

FEATURE

June 21 - Justin Hollander, Cuauhtemoc Perez, Ethan Bindernagel

BLOG POST

David Flether's <a href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0110120/">Government and Technology Weblog</a> frequently makes for great reading. Today he discusses <a href="https://www.core.gov/">CORE.GOV - Component Organization and Registration Environment</a>.<br /> <br /> CORE.gov uses the <a href="http://www.collab.net/products/enterprise_edition/index.html">CollabNet SourceCast</a> tool for sharing and tracking business and technical components available as part of the Federal Enterprise Architecture.<br /> <br /> Now I'm not sure I entirely understand this, since it is heavily buzzworded: <br /> <br /> <blockquote><img src="https://www.

June 18 - Chris Steins

BLOG POST

Five years ago, in an article titled "<a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20011122182720/linuxpower.org/display.php?id=143">GRASS Is Now Greener</a>" [Linuxpower, Oct 1999] , I had written about the significance of the <a href="http://grass.itc.it/grass51/index.html">GRASS</a> GIS being released under the GPL and the potential of combining the newly "open-sourced" GIS with the open source MySQL database. A reader had commented that the open source <a href="http://www.postgresql.org/">PostgreSQL</a> database was more commonly used with GRASS.

June 17 - Abhijeet Chavan

BLOG POST

This from reader Matt Bai, who responds to my observation that all the buildings in Times Square are coated with animated, lighted advertising signage: "I noticed the same thing when I was staying in Times Square recently. It's like a sci fi movie--everything is live action distraction. (I just coined that term, <br /> by the way--live action distraction. I want to be credited in your blog.)"<br /> <br /> Okay, Matt. There you go.

June 15 - Anonymous

BLOG POST

We knew about <a href="http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=5NMBENMBBXMO2CRBAELCFEY?type=scienceNews&storyID=5408235">this</a> already - Reuters is reporting yet another United Nations report that says global warming and population growth are increasing vulnerability to floods. This time they say there'll be 1 billion people exposed to the threat by 2050.<br /> <br /> I didn't go back and re-read before posting, but if I remember right that's much the same as what the Pew Oceans Commission said about <a href="http://www.pewoceans.org/reports/water_pollution_sprawl.pdf">coastal sprawl</a>

June 14 - Anonymous

FEATURE

June 13 - Owen Courreges

BLOG POST

San Francisco - The current issue of <em>Science</em> has an interesting Policy Forum laying out some of the challenges of building in earthquake country (fulltext <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/304/5677/1604">here</a>; pdf <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/304/5677/1604">here</a>). The salient point:<br /> <br /> <blockquote>...basic data and analysis are lacking for how buildings and structures perform under the extreme loads produced by earthquakes. Some experts think structural damage prediction models are based largely on opinion. Application of laboratory data is difficult because of soil- structure interactions and difficulties simulating excitations at high frequencies. These limitations are increasingly important as the postearthquake performance goal for critical buildings moves toward immediate occupancy and functionality.</blockquote>

June 10 - Anonymous

BLOG POST

Kevin Leeson, Special Projects Coordinator and Chris Alvarado, Associate Senior Planner, setup and run the <a href="http://planning.co.cuyahoga.oh.us/blog/">Cuyahoga County Planning Commission Weblog</a>. As far as I know, this is the first public-sector planning blog in existence.<br /> <br /> The purpose of the Cuyahoga County Planning Commission Weblog primarily is to act as a news gathering and dissemination resource for the Greater Cleveland and Cuyahoga County planning community, which includes 59 communities, cities, villages and townships.

June 9 - Chris Steins

BLOG POST

<a href="http://www.visitorville.com/">VisitorVille</a> is a website log analysis program that uses an <a href="http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,63767,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_1">graphical urban metaphor</a> to visualize website traffic flow.<br /> <img src="http://www.planetizen.com/tech/files//200406609-visitorville.jpg" alt="VisitorVille Screenshot" align="right" /><br /> <blockquote>"A company's entire Web presence is seen as an urban or suburban neighborhood, with each individual Web page presented as a building. The more visitors on a site, the taller the buildings, and the brighter the lights on each floor...each visitor is represented by a small avatar that, when clicked, presents a passport that offers several pieces of information about the user, such as her or his IP address, where that person came from and more. Avatars from dot-com domains wear a suit. Those from dot-edu domains dress as students."</blockquote>

June 9 - Abhijeet Chavan

BLOG POST

The US Environmetal Protection Agency has launched their daily <a href="http://www.epa.gov/sunwise/uvindex.html">Ultra Violet Index</a> website, where you can search for your zip code's daily UV Index rating.<br /> <br /> Tomorrow's Los Angeles UV Index rating is 9: "Try to avoid the sun between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. Otherwise, seek shade, cover up, wear a hat and sunglasses, and use sunscreen. " <br /> <br /> The UV Index is computed using forecasted ozone levels, a computer model that relates ozone levels to UV incidence (incoming radiation level) on the ground, forecasted cloud amounts, and the elevation of the forecast cities.

June 8 - Chris Steins