City Comforts, the blog

London Times caters to sad human trait

Architects: Catch a rising star

If you can't afford Hadid or Rogers, find your own rising starchitect so you too can prove how trendy you are.

Bigger is different; or Jobs and Gutenberg in the same sentence?

It still astonishes me that people (moi included) can get into heated debates about the shape of a product that Apple hasn't even says might exist. But here is one more example: Apple Executives Share Thoughts on e-Book Market, iPhone Profits - Mac Rumors.

One issue in dispute is whether a "super-sized iPhone" would be any big deal. I say "Yes indeed."

And screen size 3-4 x current would do it.

A quantitative change (larger screen) creates a qualitative change --- it allows the one thing an iPhone doesn't: easy reading of long-form contenti.e. books and long articles. 

(And yes I have done my share of reading on an iPhone -- an entire book in fact -- and while it is not bad, it is not a game changer as might an iTablet.)

My guess is that Jobs would like his name to be linked with Gutenberg's as a major cultural figure (and who wouldn't?) and that is not a far-fetched goal for him. A device with a screen 3-4 times larger than an Phone (but with few or any additional features) would be a profound societal game changer, transforming so much it's hard to know where to start.

A nobody will become a somebody on election day

Seattle faces an interesting election. The two-time incumbent (Nickels) didn't make it into the finals. Pretty amazing considering that he had been a 'not bad' mayor. Arrogant, maybe. But a perfect-pitch Seattle liberal with no financial or sex scandals (his own or in his city government entirely) in his 8 years in office. Amazing and admirable, even if I disagreed with much of his policy.

So now we have two guys running for Seattle's top job — neither of whom has held or even run for any public office. Since they agree on so much, the debate comes down to two prongs: the deep-bore tunnel and basic competence.

Here's a plug for Mr. McGinn: The Party of the Future. My own take on his opponent Mr. Mallahan:

I was at the Maple Leaf election meeting last night and I asked Mr. Mallahan how he expected us to pay for the tunnel’s cost overruns.

His response was that with his leadership as Mayor there wouldn’t be any cost overruns.

Such an answer is absurd and patronizing.

What strikes me about Mr. Mallahan is that he simply is not a smart politician. A smart politician would have said something like “Wait a second. I am committed 100% to the tunnel but we do have to clarify this issue of cost overruns. I am fiscally responsible and I want to make sure that Seattle is not stuck paying for management errors when we are not responsible for management.”

Such an answer would have reassured the tunnel advocates AND the tunnel waverers (though not tunnel adversaries, I admit.) But as it was, Mr. Mallahan’s answer made him look like a patronizing fool — trying to tell us that HE can prevent cost overruns. Talk about arrogance.

TED dreams

ARCHITECTURE THAT REPAIRS ITSELF?

The speaker describes an interesting technique for (potentially) repairing/regrowing(?) piling under Venice. But her sneering characterization of current building methods as "Victorian technologies" is vast over-reaching, too-too trendy and it seemed to me a bit shallow.  

Open government via Google

With reference to Better Transit Information:

In general one of the best things a city can do these days is simply open information flows up so that third parties can develop interesting applications. If Google can access your city's public transit scheduling data, then people can use Google Transit to figure out how to get where they're going and your agency doesn't need to worry about coming up with a better map-making program than Google's. But by the same token, if some rival firm does invent a "better than Google" mapping program, they'll be able to access your data too and launch a competing product.(emphasis added)

Absolutely so. The issue far transcends transit, Google maps etc and into open government. I'd love to see the City of Seattle. which is the only local government I watch very carefully and which largely drives me nuts, open up its data base(s) (and virtually everything the city does is on that data base and has been for years) to Google et al. 

Then we'd have real open government and the City might even save some money by minimizing its own web page efforts. 

Not "almost"

Scientists identify new galaxy cluster. 

It is also of almost unimaginable size, containing hundreds of galaxies,

Intriguing and mystifying

The only two Westerners living on their own in Kandahar reveal what they've learned about the war in Afghanistan

More courage than common sense? Hard to know. But fascinating anyway.

Out of the mouths of babes...

OK. So that says more about my age than his. Matt Yglesias is only in his twenties and yet I believe one of the cleverest op-ed heads writing anywhere. His post this morning On Geoengineering is both funny and wise.

On a non-insane level, the idea of trying to build machines that suck CO2 out of the air and then somehow store it is pretty clearly worth researching. That said, trees already do this quite well and our tree-planting technology is fine. Rather than wait around for the hypothetical "artificial trees" of the future why not just plant more trees? It seems to me there are lots of places in America where trees could be growing but aren't. 

Which comes around to the overarching point that the term "geoengineering" often obscures more than it reveals. There's a world of difference between offering financial incentives for people to build high-albedo roofs and building a miles-long hose to pump sulfur into the upper atmosphere. Do I get to be a bold contrarian thinker if I propose that surface parking lots should have more tree cover? Somehow it seems I don't. But it makes much more sense to focus on practical deployments of proven technology (trees, white paint) than on trying to dream up the most fantastical possible solution.

To sum up so that the larger message should not be lost in the droll humor: 

Do simple things first. 

Then, if you need to, go back and do the difficult. Cherry pick. Grab low-hanging fruit. etc etc

What he said

Midtown theater's design brings structure smack up to the sidewalks

In his plain-spoken book on how to create vibrant commercial streets through urban design, David Sucher gives only three rules: 

Build buildings to the sidewalk. 

Use windows and doors (not mirrored) to connect the inside of the building to the outside. 

 And prohibit parking lots in front of the building. 

Whether or not they've read "City Comforts: How To Build an Urban Village," the folks who designed the new Playhouse on the Square follow nearly all its principles.

David Sucher didn't devise the principles. He simply observed them and their power, under the right conditions, to generate urbanism.

Grasping at straws

Marching Toward Zombieland is political? So says James Howard Kunstler. 

The "people" across this big country may not have a clue how any of this is done, and there may be much to fault them on from the care-and-feeding of their own bodies to the content of their dreams, but you can't argue with the fact that they are heavily armed to an extreme. And although it may be hard to measure with precision, one might venture to state that they are increasingly pissed off. How else explain popular entertainments like "Zombieland?" (italics added)

Because the movie is funny? Which it is.

Only someone who hasn't seen it or with excess of imagination could think that there is any political content at all in Zombieland. I saw it Saturday night and I thought it was very funny and with no political message whatsoever except....well I can't find one even by reaching. OK. Maybe "Zombies are bad." How is that for trenchant political insight? The movie doesn't even start to suggest reasons why the country was laid waste by zombies beyond, I think it was, "a bug."

However I do agree that the Goldman Sachs profits were scandalous and will have political repercussions. And the appointment last week of a Goldman Sachs employee — all of 29 years old  — to be head of an important enforcement division at the SEC was comical, no matter how bright he might be.