Obesity vs. Sustainable Transportation

     We all know that the problem of childhood obesity in the U.S. is growing and is already a huge problem; no pun intended.  When Mr. Buehler our guest speaker of last Thursday told us about the cycling lessons that are given to school age children in Germany, it made me think about something comparable from my childhood. In Virginia Beach, where I grew up, school age children around the same age of those given cycling lessons in Germany, are given swimming lessons all throughout elementary school. We live at the ocean so what better skill to have children learn, right? I personally think that all children should be given some type of basic lessons in swimming, you know for those occasional flash floods you may get caught in. In Germany it seemed to be a huge part of their culture for people to bike to and from work, school, and other activities. This sparked my interest about sustainable transportation here in the States.
I found an article written by a few students at UC Davis,  http://pubs.its.ucdavis.edu/publication_detail.php?id=1148. This article details the "Bike-to-Soccer" children's program in Davis, California. They determine that in 2002 the CDC report one third of teenagers are not active enough, and that this is in part associated with their travel behavior.  According to the National Household Travel Survey, only 12% of trips to sports activities are done by bicycle.  Davis being a bicycle friendly community set out to try and change this with their American Youth Soccer Organization (AYSO).  The AYSO began a promotional program that encouraged the young soccer players and their families to bike to their soccer practices and games. This program included distribution of "Bike to AYSO" bumper stickers, online bike route maps of the Davis community, and regular emails to all AYSO members about the effort. The results of this program showed an increase in biking, though there is still room for increases in the program. Most people who did not bike to games or practices cited the reason of being more unwilling to bike than any constraints as to why they could not.  And even among those families that bike regularly, a majority of them still drive to games. The program states that a more incentive driven promotional program might achieve additional increases in biking.
     This seems crazy to me, because as I was growing up my family rode our bikes maybe not to practices but just around our neighborhood in general.  It also seems ridiculous that the families in study require more "incentives" to get not only the parents but their children HEALTHY! But then again we are an incentive driven world.  Bonuses at work are based on your "numbers" brought in or quotas met.  Even many "volunteer" programs now a days are given recognition banquets or something comparable at a certain number of hours given.  So why should anyone be surprised when our generations are requiring something in return for making themselves healthy human beings?  Truth is, we shouldn't.
     A website called "The CityFix", http://thecityfix.com/blog/new-report-bicycling-and-walking-in-the-united-states/ , is an online resource for sustainable transport news from around the world.  When searching 'obesity' on their site I came across an article called "New Report: Bicycling and Walking in the United States."  They state that while the obesity levels in the U.S. increased by 156% between 1960 and 2009, biking and walking levels fell by 66%.  Statistics for this came from the Alliance for Biking and Walking report called "Bicycling and Walking in the United States: 2012 Benchmarking Report."  I think by far the most interesting fact presented by this report was that in 2009, 40% of trips in the US were shorter than 2 miles, however 87% of those trips were done by car.

     Doing a bit more research on Google I found on http://ecotopia.com/st/ something called a Buscycle.  I think this is meant as more of a joke but can you imagine if everyone carpooled to work using one of these? It is powered by EVERYONE on the bus pedaling. Something to ponder next time you are squished between the drunk kid and the smelly kid on the Hokie Express.
    
     This may not be as "green" of an idea as bicycling everywhere and may not eliminate obesity, but we also talked about the sustainable transportation idea of car sharing with Mr. Buehler. This was the idea of an organized short-term car rental.  Where many people pay to share cars between the group when they need them.  An idea that may be closer to home, http://www.facilities.vt.edu/tcs/alternative/ucarshare.asp , is an alternative to car ownership here at VT.  It is a program called U Car Share.  Students can join and pay only for what they use in a low hourly rate starting as low as $4.95/hr.  You may have seen the designated parking spots located close to campus buildings and wondered what they were for...now you know.

     So next time you need to get your gut busting 6 pack at your closest 7-eleven, think about burning off some of those calories before you even throw a cold one back. You could bike, walk, or even Buscycle to the next convenience store (:

Monday, February 20th, 2012

Urban Divide

This week, we discussed the many factors that can create an urban divide. Each group drew a poverty trap map, showing how each factor affects each other. Every map included employment, education, income, health, housing, crime, and poverty, and one more factor that we could make up. Our group chose to include natural disasters because they can drastically affect the other factors. On most maps, income was a major factor to urban divide as it had a lot of activity around it. Employment and education can affect the amount of income a person makes, while income can affect every piece of the poverty trap map. 

http://www.irp.wisc.edu/publications/dps/pdfs/dp130505.pdf

The article above shows the effect that income has on child development and education:

A $1,000 increase in income raises math test scores by 2.1 percent and reading test scores by 3.6 percent of a standard deviation. The results are even stronger when looking at children from disadvantaged families who are affected most by the large changes in the EITC (Earned Income Tax Credit). Children growing up in poor families are likely to have adverse home environments or face other challenges which would continue to affect their development even if family income were to increase substantially.

Urbanization

In class we have discussed urbanization, the process in which an increasing proportion of an entire population lives in the cities and suburbs of cities. Urbanization brings several challenges to society: how to balance inequality (measured by the Gini Index) and how to deal with issues of housing, mobility, public space, civic engagement, economic development, and environmental policy.
The documentary, Urbanized, addresses the issues of urbanization and how designers, planners, and architects are approaching city design. The documentary was created by Gary Hustwi, who also created Helvetica and Objectified (both films that I highly recommend.) View the preview of Urbanized below, or pay to stream or download the entire film:





Perhaps rather than focusing on the negative aspects of cities, we should change focus on the possibilities of cities. Cities become loud, dangerous, dirty places if we let them become that way. Proper planning and design can allow for the cities that we will likely live in (Over half the world’s population now lives in an urban area, and 75% will call a city home by 2050) can be invigorating, clean, and inspiring places.

Week 3 - Urban Sensing!

     Mobile devices are becoming more and more sophisticated every day. They are capable of capturing images (of your reckless Friday nights), videos (of your graceful relief of Friday night's beverages all over the side of someone's apartment building), locations (of your favorite Friday night trough), and other data (how much you over drafted your bank account with the round of tequila shots you bought) interactively with their user, or autonomously.
     Mostly today we are using participatory sensing, "people equipped with today's mobile and web technology observing, studying, reflecting on and sharing your unique world."  Or in plain english capturing the wonderful highlights and lowlights of our's and others' lives with the push of a button.
     One website we found this week to discuss this topic,  http://urban.cens.ucla.edu/ , contains a blog about urban sensing. They have introduced a new program in California called PEIR.  This stands for Personal Environment Impact Report.  With the recent fads of going green, this program is for the environmentally conscious-on the go.  This program uses a GOS application downloaded to your phone to show your impact on the environment and the environments impact on you.  It gives four categories of updates 1) Smog exposure 2) Fast food exposure 3) Carbon impact and 4) Sensitive Site impact such as on schools and hospitals.  PEIR has even made the program compatible with Facebook so that you can share your overall impact and exposures with friends (as if they care).
     Another project released in the Los Angeles area by the the same group is called CycleSense; http://urban.cens.ucla.edu/projects/cyclesense/.  Just as avid runners can track their routes, running times, and overall satisfaction with Nike+ (http://nikerunning.nike.com/nikeplus/) , bikers can now track the same information via the CycleSense program. It allows bikers from the LA community to upload pictures of hazards to fellow bikers in the area and different routes to avoid them. One of the most dynamic features of the program is that it records sound volumes.  So if you want to enjoy your hipster bike ride to work without any commotion, you can track the lowest decibel route possible.
     Yet another program, this time located in Australia, by a company called Arup Australia, has been released as per http://www.experientia.com/blog/urban-sensing-via-mobile-phones-an-arup-project/.  This project in collaboration with UTS Centre for Real-Time Information Networks http://www.crin.uts.edu.au/, can track mobile phone presence and usage within public transit options such as the bus, ferry, or train. Not only can it provide information from group transport but it can provide presence from pedestrians as well.  This data can help aid decisions for public planning and transportation planning as well.
     In case you don't feel like the government is watching you enough already, many cities across the country have adopted red light traffic cameras such as the ones in Virginia Beach described in this article.  http://hamptonroads.com/2011/01/have-redlight-cameras-made-beach-streets-safer  This article describes how much money was made by the city and how much the subcontracted company made during the year of 2011.
     All of these programs and projects are examples of urban sensing and can be used in everyday life.  Thanks for listening to week 3 hope you had an amazing time!

Week Two the difference in parts of the cities and critiques

If you close your eyes, and think of an urban area, what comes to mind?  Is it a skyline that blocks out the sun, is it the sound of farm equipment working in the not to distant pasture.  What ever your idea of an urban area is it will always be slightly different from one person to the next.  All urban areas no matter how they are thought of are designed and planned out using key locations such as nodes and paths.  Each and every area has a node that has been planned out and most likely is lead there by a path.  These areas can be as purposely built as examples of Europe with town squares such as the St. Mark Square in Venice Italy.  Then it can run to a more up and coming area of a new city such as the area around of Cowboys Stadium in Dallas Texas, where people are building around it to make it even more of a node.   The way that these form or sometimes deliberate and sometimes it is just a surprise that they form and then are just thrown into an area which then tries to accommodate it as best it can.  When this happens it leads to an up building trying to maintain and further the node until it is central to the idea of the area.

Some pictures for examples:

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW9BWgv6BoGuOWdnYvuhev5bBYilmcrnyj_dG6de5HRNluLpz5eViq5QYCqPCFiPNyLapfBkjUu8K_TUmD1RhLhuvh2GykpmPKtNZYT6wCy2THkk51Dn-GLS-7j0kyUpRZmKtbjv9OE2w/s1600/dallas+texas+christina+aguilera+botched+national+anthem+packers+steelers+cowboys+stadium+above.JPG

-This one of the Cowboys Stadium and how as soon as it was built became a node and many other companies and groups wanted to build around it turning it into a true node.  A up start not truly designed one but still a good node.

http://cache2.allpostersimages.com/p/LRG/26/2659/P8DUD00Z/posters/vidler-steve-grand-place-floral-carpet-brussels-belgium.jpg

            -The squire of Brussels Belgium and how it was made into the focal point and node of the area to hold all type of events gatherings and anything conceivable by people. 

We then continue to paths and edges going right along with the critique of a city.  Paths and edges are used to not only open a city up but also keep parts of the city away from others.  This can probably be seen best in areas such as New York City and Los Angles.  In these two particular areas, paths lead from one area to the next but will not go through some of them to help try and avoid certain undesirable areas.  This is because the cities wish to exclude parts such as dumps or the run down living areas.  This is for the simple fact that they are not up to standard or attractive to the urban areas over all goals.  These areas get second hand treatment and through such a edge or barrier is created to prevent them from being truly part of the city.  This has been done over time as subtle as in LA where it is a drainage area separating to different sections of a city or to the far extreme in history such as the Berlin Wall.  The idea is to separate the worse section of the city from that of the more prosperous and node region.  Leading into the critique of a city that it favors some over others and does not fully support its entirety.  When this happens it becomes clear that the city does not care about a certain area and has given up letting it go into ruin.  This can be best seen today of a city slowly killing of sections of itself, in the example of Detroit Michigan. 

Some more pictures as examples:

http://www.thecoolist.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/ruins-of-detroit_marchand-and-meffre_8.jpg

            -The picture of a former opera house in Detroit and how the city has let it fall apart for it is no longer in a key location and so they have taking the path away from it and just let it fall into the worst part of the city.

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVVDhDaRmeQaRr2QEYSuKrD_5ijnY1BS20o9gxtbyn_Yfdxdewk-PGnqHiXt7lG2u-sZDubUN7VZKjYNCQJdxV071_TQlSQCsT3EbMMWGny55zIa6BQ7vlgxuEiGxNOvqGU6FJeTKuEZOP/s1600/Over+New+Orleans.jpg

            - A drainage ditch in New Orleans used to separate one side from the other and by dueling such putting a physical edge between each other so that they will not be together and that there is someway to force the node to one side of the other to which the path will go as well.

Week One the change in identity of an urban area

The change of the urban society, is different, and is never consistent to one area or type of change.  There are many reasons for the change in the structure and purpose of an urban center.  In the beginning, the primary reason for a city to pick its location, either had to do with protection or key location in control of an area or trade.  Those are the original reasons to why cities picked their places and developed with that in mind.  Take cities like Baghdad (Iraq) and Cape Town (South Africa), both cities grew up based on trade and due to one reason or another are no longer as important in trading as they once were.  For Baghdad, the transition from moving items across land to moving them across the oceans.  Which, then is why Cape Town became so important, as I key stop along the ocean trade rout around Africa.  This was until the Suez Cannel was built, and Cape Town became less of an important location in the trade industry.  The same concept happened in Europe, with castles being built for protection but then being abandoned later.  This was due to cannons being brought to Europe and able to destroy a wall from far away.  All these changes have one thing in common they are the adverse reaction to an advancement in science.  With advances in Science urban areas are forced to change and adapt, but due to the long process of change, most times people move to a more modern or currently important urban area instead of waiting for theirs to evolve.   Thus bringing around the migrant work force that is, common today around the world.  This is because people travel to were opportunity is, and will always continue to do so.  With this moving of people and ideas that force urban areas to change they turn away from their roots and shift into something that is not their original purpose causing some transitional problems and truly forming different and new cities all to their own. 

            Other factors can push for change in urban areas, which the last great time this was seen was after world war one, and in the great depression in the United States of America.  During this time frame agriculture forced the moving of millions.  With the collapse of the finical sector, people turned to farming.  However when a drought hit that just devastated the crops people in the hundreds of millions abandoned any sense of home and traveled around the country looking for work.   With people having no home and just moving as migrant workers cities changed and even grew out of nowhere such as tent cities.  The forcing of people to adapt to a different living status forced the urban life to go through radical changes so not only will science force changes but also agriculture and financial reasons will force changes as well.  Probably the most modern case in the United States of America would be Silicon Valley in California, as soon as tech became important and a very large financial sector millions moved there and the surrounding area to be apart of it and to alter the previous urban ideology of the area.  

Below is a link to the library of congress and an article to further explain the movement of people and what it does to an urban ideal.

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/afctshtml/tsme.html

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