Tag: urban

Project Glass and the Perils of Not Shipping

Project Glass - Google+

I guess today we will be talking about Project Glass by Google today on the Internets:

We think technology should work for you—to be there when you need it and get out of your way when you don’t.

A group of us from Google started Project Glass to build this kind of technology, one that helps you explore and share your world, putting you back in the moment. We’re sharing this information now because we want to start a conversation and learn from your valuable input. So we took a few design photos to show what this technology could look like and created a video to demonstrate what it might enable you to do.

If you can get past the very horrible industrial design of the glasses – a kind of cross between Geordi’s VISOR and a Orthodontic headgear – you slam right into the meat of the issue: why would you let an advertising company know and see where you are doing at every minute of the day:

There’s some incredible Orwellian doublespeak at work here, e.g., technology that “helps you explore and share your world, putting you back in the moment.” As far as I can tell, it doesn’t help you to explore your world at all. It helps Google to explore your world.

Additionally, from the video all I see is the same well-worn interaction clichés: overlay icons showing weather updates, emails and instant messages and route finding. Heads Up Displays which overlay data and information are great for specific functions requiring extreme concentration or placing discreet data which eliminates repetitive distraction. Think landing the Space Shuttle, or more everyday, driving on the highway and needing to know your speed. However, they aren’t great at supporting constantly shifting tasks and needs – tasks and needs which are situated in the urban environment will be contradictory and computationally dense.

On a lighter, but equally important note: what New Yorker doesn’t know how to get to Strand? A bookstore which, not to underplay this, is on Broadway and 12th Street not 12th and University as the video shows:

Below is the actual directions to Strand, via (wait for it) Google Maps:

Even this is wrong: who in their right mind wouldn’t just walk down Park and then Broadway? Come on Google: you are a mapping service for pete’s sake.

Finally, the images of the actual product are underwhelming to say the least – and quite possibly a joke: I can’t take seriously the tiny white bar actually holds the following (off the top of my head):

  • Battery plus charging port
  • Display
  • 3g/Edge radio
  • microphone
  • speaker
  • main processor
  • graphics processor
  • camera
  • I/O (bluetooth or micro USB)

This is why John Gruber’s comments, The Type of Companies That Publish Future Concept Videos, are so apt and damning:

The designs in these concept videos are free from real-world constraints — technical, logical, fiscal. Dealing with constraints is what real design is all about. Institutional attention on the present day — on getting innovative industry-leading products out the door and creating consumer demand for them — requires relentless company-wide focus.

Project PERRY

Compare the Google Glasses videos, with the work my friend Adam Greenfield and company at Urban Scale did with their Project Perry (Farevalue) exploration of adding an e-paper display to the standard RFID-based stored-value card:

Our Farevalue project is intended to address some of the minor but real frustrations people experience with RFID-based stored value cards.
…
But what if you had a way to know how much remained on your card before you hit the turnstile, and it didn’t require tapping on a reader? What if that information was presented to you in a friendly way, at a sufficient size that you could read it at a glance from across the room?

Project PERRY

Project PERRY technical prototype

Project PERRY: technical proof-of-principle (version 0.1) from Urbanscale on Vimeo.

Project PERRY: Farevalue technical prototype from Urbanscale on Vimeo.

The difference between Farevalue and Google Glass is startling: Urban Scale actually shipped a complete idea and implementation prototype. They did the hard work of prototyping both the interaction and the hardware needed to solve a real-world problem. Google Glass appears to be a solution in need of a problem, coupled with a lack of real-world engineering knowledge. Google hasn’t gone through the pain, sweat, tears and cursing to actually prototype their concept. Rather, they have done is throw a – to be fair nicely crafted – set of glasses on pretty people and crank out a video.

The Google Glass announcement, and the glossy photo format, doesn’t get me excited, it does exactly the opposite. It makes me wonder if Google Glass will join the pantheon of other Google products: Buzz, Wave, Labs and the rest of the graveyard.

Update 6 April 2012

Jonathan McIntosh created ADmented Reality, a slightly more realistic version of Google’s augmented reality glasses – now featuring contextual Google Ads!

Survey of Reaction: “Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream”

Studio Gang’s proposal for Cicero, Ill

Reality Check: Developers React to MoMA’s Show, “Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream”:

But during a panel on March 8 at the museum sponsored by the Forum for Urban Design, two developers, an architecture professor, and a real estate lawyer reacted soberly to the adventurous and optimistic schemes. Though the panelists agreed that the foreclosure crisis will lead to major changes in suburban development, they all thought new patterns are less likely to be brought about by a revised American dream than by economic and demographic factors. And all said it would be very difficult to change zoning laws to permit denser new development patterns, especially in existing “inner-ring” suburbs.

Financing suburban architecture:

My main beef with the show is that it’s far too utopian and impractical. That’s par for the course when it comes to museum architecture shows, but I was hoping for more realistic proposals in this particular case, just because the foreclosure crisis is so real and urgent.

Dream Deferred: The Museum of Modern Art’s “Foreclosed” exhibit is long on art and short on reality.

Any honest attempt to fix the suburbs has to start with facing up to why so many Americans live in the suburbs in the first place, and who those Americans are. Suburban families are bigger than urban families; they like their space; and they like living in places where they’re a good distance from their neighbors and a long way indeed from people of other social classes.

Los Angeles v New York City: Which One is more Dense? You would be surprised…

The US Census Bureau has begun to release findings from the 2010 Census, showing a considerable Growth in Urban Population Outpaces Rest of Nation:

The nation’s most densely populated urbanized area is Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, Calif., with nearly 7,000 people per square mile. The San Francisco-Oakland, Calif., area is the second most densely populated at 6,266 people per square mile, followed by San Jose, Calif. (5,820 people per square mile) and Delano, Calif. (5,483 people per square mile). The New York-Newark, N.J., area is fifth, with an overall density of 5,319 people per square mile.

What is interesting to me, is that using the MSA, which we have talked about before (Metropolitan and Micropolitan Statistical Areas), but it is helpful to remember that the OMB defines MSA’s as, “one or more adjacent counties or county equivalents that have at least one urban core area of at least 50,000 population, plus adjacent territory that has a high degree of social and economic integration with the core as measured by commuting ties.” Below is a comparison of the Los Angeles MSA (on the left) with the New York MSA on the right, along with data from the 2010 Census:

Los Angeles and New York City MSA, 2010 Census.
Dark poche indicates urbanized area or urban cluster of 10,000 or more
MSA Population Area Density
Los Angeles:
LA, Long Beach, Anaheim		 12,150,996 people 1,736.02 sq. miles 6,999.3 people per sq. mile
New York:
NYC, Newark, Bridgeport		 18,351,295 people 3,450.2 sq. miles 5,318.9 people per sq. mile

As you can see, the New York MSA is almost twice as big in land area as the Los Angeles MSA. If we look back up to the definition of a MSA, specifically the part about a high degree of social and economic integration with the core as measured by commuting ties, this makes sense: New York’s subway and commuter rail is magnitudes bigger and more effective than Los Angeles.

There is no doubt that the less dense suburban areas of Connecticut, New Jersey and Long Island bring down the top-line density figure. In this case, the MSA comparison hides more than it reveals: while LA is undoubtable denser than popular notions give it credit for, the more complete transportation system of New York creates a larger livable catchment area.

Also see Nate Berg’s article, U.S. Urban Population Is Up … But What Does ‘Urban’ Really Mean?.

Laws That Shaped LA

LA City Hall

The Laws That Shaped L.A. will spotlight regulations that have played a significant role in the development of contemporary Los Angeles. These laws – as nominated early on by a variety of experts we’ve been polling – may be considered by readers and nominators to have either been beneficial to the city or malevolent.

via Laws That Shaped LA | Land of Sunshine | KCET.

Anxiety and Isolation: Behind Bars in American Gated Communities

Globalization and the resultant economic restructuring further weakened existing social relations, and traditional ways of maintaining social order, such as the police and schools, were no longer seen as effective. The gated residential community became a socially acceptable solution for neighborhood residents who felt threatened by this breakdown in social control. The transformation of established neighborhoods into gated communities—a step towards building what author Mike Davis dubbed the “fortress city”—became an alternative strategy for regulating and patrolling the urban poor, comprised predominantly of Latino and black minorities. But while the protected area shields its privileged few occupants from the “dangerous” behavior of outsiders, it has the drawback of diminishing collective responsibility for the collective safety of society.

via Next American City » Magazine » Behind Bars.

Urban Architects

The new Urban Architects:

These and many others are our new urban architects. I am not suggesting that the traditional roles of urban planning and architecture aren’t still important to our cities.

God View in Port-au-Prince

Fast Company asks, Port-au-Prince 2.0: A City of Urban Villages? discussing Duany Plater-Zyberk’s new plan for Port-au-Prince (download the Downtown Port Au Prince Renewal Plan for full draft proposal):

Can Port-au-Prince be saved? More than a year after a catastrophic earthquake devastated Haiti, much of the capital is still rubble, with basic infrastructure (water, power, sewage) nonexistent. Reclaiming the core of the old city could require block-by-block redevelopment, at least according to the plans presented last night in Haiti by the architect Andrés Duany and his firm Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company.

The plans envision partial demolition of existing blocks to create parking and open space in the middle of each one. Strict codes and zoning rules would carefully regulate what gets built. Over time, one- and two-story building would be built out to four stories, with buildings on the perimeter opening onto the streets.

Answering his own question of why the plans privileged so much parking, Duany — a founding father of the New Urbanist movement — was characteristically blunt. “If Port-au-Prince is to be rebuilt, it can only be amortized by the middle class and above. The question is: how do we bring them back? Because you cannot reconstruct the city without them.”

I can’t quibble with the design: Port Au Prince historically had a mid-rise density (3-5 floors) so replacing it with a plan for growth approximating the existing height does not bother me. The focus on cars is a Middle Class MacGuffin: setting aside so much land and infrastructure for private automobiles with a hope (a hope) of supporting a perceived want, instead of supplying a concrete need – that of providing room for 2 million people – is a huge oversight. 3-4 floors is fairly dense with the inclusion of front arcades, while historical, makes sense in a tropical climate. Hopefully any zoning would allow flexibility of use so that live/work spaces could occupy the block creating a vibrant streetscape and income for those living in the units.

But the real shortfall is deeper than the design presented and is illustrated by the above image: a god’s eye view. While there were community design charrettes (I would like to know more about the process), urban design as a whole seem to suffer from overuse of the god view, divorced from the street and the person. Perhaps the scale of the system and the totality which the designer is trying to control (not to mention the history of SimCity) pushes the god view as the only way to illustrate the total system.

I wish I had a better alternative. I admit that I am looking for a better theoretical underpinning for my thoughts on urban design, and I hope to talk more about this in the near future.