Collaborative, Creative Placemaking: Good Public Art Depends on Good Public Spaces

“More than ever before, public artworks are stimulating and inviting active dialogue rather than just passive observation, thereby fostering social interaction that can even lead to a sense of social cohesion among the viewers themselves. Maybe this is happening because some planners, artists, and architects are no longer afraid to see themselves as resources, facilitators, and collaborators, rather than as experts. In such cases, the design of art in public spaces moves away from reverence for textbook ideals and toward flexibility, changeability, evolution, and an appreciation for humanity.” - Cynthia Nikitin

Note: bolds are mine.

Depave. From Parking Lots to Paradise | Asphalt and concrete removal from urban areas. Based in Portland, Oregon.

Depave promotes the removal of unnecessary pavement from urban areas to create community green spaces and mitigate stormwater runoff. Through partnerships and volunteers engagement, Depave strives to overcome the social and environmental impacts of pavement with the use of action-oriented educational events, community stewardship, and advocacy to reconnect people with nature and inspire others. Depave is a project of City Repair, a nonprofit organization based in Portland, Oregon, USA.

- Excerpt from About: Mission

guifi.net is a telecommunications network, is open, free and neutral because is built through a peer to peer agreement where everyone can join the network by providing his connection, and therefore, extending the network and gaining connectivity to all. Is a collaborative project horizontally managed composed by individuals, organizations, enterprises, education institutions and universities and government offices. Is open so everyone can participate in same terms and conditions within the scope of the Wireless Commons. Excerpt from What is Guifi?
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guifi.net is a telecommunications network, is open, free and neutral because is built through a peer to peer agreement where everyone can join the network by providing his connection, and therefore, extending the network and gaining connectivity to all.

Is a collaborative project horizontally managed composed by individuals, organizations, enterprises, education institutions and universities and government offices. Is open so everyone can participate in same terms and conditions within the scope of the Wireless Commons.

Excerpt from What is Guifi?

Source: guifi.net

radarqnet: El gobierno (administración local) de la ciudad de Nueva York se reinventa utilizando estrategias digitales. En este caso convoca un hackathon [en] en un fin de semana para trabajar e innovar en la presencia de NYC en la web (nyc.gov +30M de visitas por año actualmente). En estos dos días quieren reunir a individuos y empresas para generar una comunidad que se enganche con otras ya existentes y generalmente asociadas a servicios privados. “‘Reinvent NYC.gov provides a unique chance for government to engage in a meaningful and creative way with private companies who want to show off their talents and skills to New York City,” said Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment Commissioner Katherine Oliver. “We want them to show off and show us the best that they can do. This is a terrific example of NYC Digital being able to coordinate the private sector with the public sector and work across agencies to bring a new and innovative concept to City government.”  Más información: http://reinventnycgov.com/ Original: Reinvent NYC.gov, @nycgov’s first hackathon, invites the tech community to re-imagine nyc.gov. Apply: http://reinventnycgov.com/ /via nycdigital
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radarqnet: El gobierno (administración local) de la ciudad de Nueva York se reinventa utilizando estrategias digitales. En este caso convoca un hackathon [en] en un fin de semana para trabajar e innovar en la presencia de NYC en la web (nyc.gov +30M de visitas por año actualmente). En estos dos días quieren reunir a individuos y empresas para generar una comunidad que se enganche con otras ya existentes y generalmente asociadas a servicios privados.

“‘Reinvent NYC.gov provides a unique chance for government to engage in a meaningful and creative way with private companies who want to show off their talents and skills to New York City,” said Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment Commissioner Katherine Oliver. “We want them to show off and show us the best that they can do. This is a terrific example of NYC Digital being able to coordinate the private sector with the public sector and work across agencies to bring a new and innovative concept to City government.” 

Más información: http://reinventnycgov.com/

Original:

Reinvent NYC.gov, @nycgov’s first hackathon, invites the tech community to re-imagine nyc.gov. Apply: http://reinventnycgov.com/

/via nycdigital

Source: nycdigital

Open Source Ecology | Global Village Construction Set

Open Source Ecology is a network of farmers, engineers, and supporters that for the last two years has been creating the Global Village Construction Set, an open source, low-cost, high performance technological platform that allows for the easy, DIY fabrication of the 50 different Industrial Machines that it takes to build a sustainable civilization with modern comforts. The GVCS lowers the barriers to entry into farming, building, and manufacturing and can be seen as a life-size lego-like set of modular tools that can create entire economies, whether in rural Missouri, where the project was founded, in urban redevelopment, or in the developing world.

The ideas that guide the GVCS are:

Open Source - we freely publish our 3d designs, schematics, instructional videos, budgets, and product manuals on our open source wiki and we harness open collaboration with technical contributors.

Low-Cost - The cost of making or buying our machines are, on average, 8x cheaper than buying from an Industrial Manufacturer, including an average labor cost of $15 hour for a GVCS fabricator.

Modular - Motors, parts, assemblies, and power units can interchange, where units can be grouped together to diversify the functionality that is achievable from a small set of units.

User-Serviceable - Design-for-disassembly allows the user to take apart, maintain, and fix tools readily without the need to rely on expensive repairmen.

DIY - (do-it-yourself) The user gains control of designing, producing, and modifying the GVCS tool set.

Closed Loop Manufacturing - Metal is an essential component of advanced civilization, and our platform allows for recycling metal into virgin feedstock for producing further GVCS technologies - thereby allowing for cradle-to-cradle manufacturing cycles

High Performance - Performance standards must match or exceed those of industrial counterparts for the GVCS to be viable.

Flexible Fabrication - It has been demonstrated that the flexible use of generalized machinery in appropriate-scale production is a viable alternative to centralized production.

Distributive Economics - We encourage the replication of enterprises that derive from the GVCS platform as a route to truly free enterprise - along the ideals of Jeffersonian democracy.

Industrial Efficiency - In order to provide a viable choice for a resilient lifestyle, the GVCS platform matches or exceeds productivity standards of industrial counterparts.

/via: newleft

Source: newleft