A little bit of this and that

Sharing inspiring and innovative stories about urban design, city planning, community engagement, travel, social media and public health.

[allthingseurope]

Swiss Alps (by  Frederic Huber)

[wvnderlst]

Lake Louise, Canada | Wan Mekwi

[kitchentableottawa]

Lake Louise is on the bucketlist.

[streetartglobal]

We’re not sure who the artist is but we love the idea. 

[kitchentableottawa]

Finding beauty in unexpected places.

[vacilandoelmundo]

Norway

[kitchentableottawa]

Takes your breath away.

[curaditing-deactivated20150119]

Anthony Bourdain: How to Travel

Because the man travels a lot

My favourite travel food writer, still.

[ottawahealth]

The 2014 Nutritious Food Basket Survey Results

The 2014 data from our Nutritious Food Basket Survey reveals that it costs a family of four $869 per month to eat a nutritious diet – this is up 10% from last year!   As a result, often families must choose between healthy food and other basic living expenses such as rent, child care and transportation. In Ottawa, 1 in 10 households are food insecure.  For more information, please visit OttawaPublicHealth.ca.

[kitchentableottawa]

New data about the cost of nutritious food coming out of Ottawa this week - up 10% from last year!

[kitchentableottawa]

Sharing this old Ted Talks from Ron Findley: A guerilla gardener in South Central LA. This talk is funny, passionate, honest and most of all, it made me want to start up my garden. Check it out.

"Food is the problem and food is the solution."

[kitchentableottawa]

[under-infinite-skies]

[urbanfunscape]

Learn about the technology behind Unnumbered Sparks, a monumental interactive sculpture in Vancouver, Canada created by artists Janet Echelman and Aaron Koblin for TED’s 30th anniversary. Choreographed by visitors in real time through their mobile devices, at night, the sculpture becomes a crowd-controlled visual artwork on a giant, floating canvas powered by Google.

[kitchentableottawa]

I wish this interactive sculpture was still up and running this May during my trip to Vancouver! Alas, it was only on exhibit from March 15-22, 2014. Looking like some kind of rainbow jellyfish, people passing by could connect to the Google Wi-Fi network to interact with floating sculpture in real time. Scroll to 1:55 to see the explanation of how Unnumbered Sparks works. 

[pubhealth]

The City of Chicago Department of Public Health’s ongoing awareness ad campaign “BURNED” aims to counter Big Tobacco’s message and empower Chicago youth to make healthier choices.   Residents can follow the “BURNED” movement on social media with hashtag #NoMoreMenthol

(From City of Chicago Department of Public Health)

[ravenswingottawa-deactivated202]

Mark your calendars! The 8th Annual Ravenswing Arts & Music Fair will be happening on Sunday, May 25 in Minto Park from 11am-5pm. Join our Facebook event so that it registers on your mobile devices!

[kitchentableottawa]

ravenswingottawa's Art and Music Fair is coming up in a few weeks, and I am excited to see that The Companion Tree will be one of the vendors there! 50% of all their profits are donated to the amazing Ontario-based dog rescue organization Sit With Me. 

[thisiscitylab]

If Savanna animals took the Paris Métro.

[Images: Clarisse Rebotier, Thomas Subtil]

[kitchentableottawa]

"Designer Alastair Parvin presents a simple but provocative idea: what if, instead of architects creating buildings for those who can afford to commission them, regular citizens could design and build their own houses? The concept is at the heart of WikiHouse, an open source construction kit that means just about anyone can build a house, anywhere." via Ted Talks. 

[kmackay]

How Google Earth Revealed Chicago’s Hidden Farms

[thiscitylife]

Lessons in More Engaging Citizen Engagement

By Brent Toderian and Jillian Glover

With cities seeking to involve diverse voices in city-making to get beyond “the usual suspects,” Vancouver urbanists Brent Toderian and Jillian Glover examine how cities in their region are finding new ways to increase civic participation.

Originally published on The Planetizen

Credit / West End Mural

As more people choose to live in cities, local governments find themselves facing increasingly complex issues in city-making. Demands for affordable housing and public transit, tensions around gentrification and density, even connecting the dots between city planning and climate change, are just some of the more high-profile critical conversations our cities need. Solutions can come from many places, but smart cities realize that engaging the broad public in the city-making process leads to better answers and a deeper public ownership of our future.

Faced with this knowledge, cities are struggling to develop new and innovative community engagement methods, including those that embrace new technologies, social media, and collaborative design methods, to better bring the public into conversations on the future of city life. Let’s face it—not all of our engagement in recent decades has been very engaging!

This article’s authors have looked across Metro Vancouver (a region known internationally for its public consultation) for recent best practices and lessons in better community engagement. While some new methods are bringing key services online, others are as simple as changing the location of council meetings or getting people walking and talking in their neighbourhoods. All of these lessons involve moving beyond traditional consultation practices that cities have relied on for decades.

Although lessons can come in many forms, and these don’t necessarily represent the “best,” here are ten lessons from Metro Vancouver that we found particularly worth sharing.

Read More

[kitchentableottawa]

Some innovative ideas, which would be cool to see play out in Ottawa.

[atlasobscura]

Cappadocia - Nevşehir Province, Turkey

Located in the Central Anatolian region of Turkey, Cappadocia is an area where entire cities have been carved into rock.

An area with history so abundant and far reaching as to render entire centuries as footnotes at first glance, the landscape appears as an abandoned alien desert with fields that look like waves frozen in time, and rocky spikes and spires protruding from the landscape like some sort of meringue set in stone.

However on further exploration through small, winding paths, beautifully-carved homes and churches are waiting to be discovered.

The rock formations that make up Cappadocia were created by volcanic eruptions, erosion, and wind. Over three million years ago a volcanic eruption deposited a blanket of ash across the 1500 square mile landscape which formed into a soft rock. This rock, slowly eaten away by wind and time, has created some spectacular forms. But the human history of the area is as compelling as the geological one.

For so much more on Cappadocia, keep reading on Atlas Obscura…