#urban prototyping

[hirshberg]

Makers Remaking the American Dream

If the American dream is being remade, it is in our cities that we find the experiments in education, urban manufacturing, and civic innovation that suggest the contours of our next, and surprisingly hopeful economy. In this media-rich presentation with examples from the forthcoming “Maker City Playbook,” Hirshberg will show how the maker movement is leading to advances in manufacturing and economic development in U.S. cities (NY, Louisville, San Francisco, Pittsburgh), reimagining urban planning as a participatory prototype process with citizens (San Francisco, Dallas), and engaging kids and unleashing their potential in ways unimaginable just a few years ago (Boston, Pittsburgh). Artists play a surprisingly catalytic role as innovators in this new urban form— the San Francisco Bay Lights, Urban Prototyping, and Burning Man are all part of this July 4th session!

Transcription

[buildwith]

MARKET STREET PROTOTYPING FESTIVAL: “DESIGNING WITH AND FOR COMMUNITIES”.

A collaborative competition to design new ways of using public space in San Fransisco. April 2015. Their website notes their “with and for” approach and includes the following:

As a placemaking project, the Festival is driven by community needs and desires – we looked for project designs that do the same. Selected projects depended on the ability to listen to and respond to the community’s feedback, the inventiveness of the design, and the team’s ability to prototype and execute the proposed project.

[hirshberg]

The Engaged City

[girleatmachine]

Whose streets?

It's one thing to declare, "Whose streets? Our streets!" while in the heart of a city, spilling over the sidewalk into the flow of traffic that intertwines with the hub and hive of human life, restoring, for a moment, our claim and connection to our Commons.

It's something else, entirely, something more powerful, more cosmic, more paradigm shifting, explosive, when we choose walk on earth -- reclaim the pavement -- that is ours, by right and by dollar, but which no longer belongs to us: America's highways and freeways and parkways and suburban streets. Sidewalkless places and spaces designed for automatons, not animals. The in-between, no[hu]manzones where technology has trumped humanity in the name of convenience. Those "streets" are not ours, never were...Those "streets" belong to governments and companies, the workers who labor over their care. They barely exist, are barely felt, a simple patch on the distance between Here and There.

When we took the FDR last night, we chanted, "Whose streets!?" as we streamed up the onramp to the highway. I kept tripping over the feeling that we were crossing a  bridge -- the closest approximation to my body/brain, so foreign was the idea that we could be where we were, a place I've only visited without steal guard maybe two or three times in my life, thanks to a few traffic jams and popped tires. 

Over 1,200 people took the highway last night. As we chanted, "Our streets!" that's what the freeway became -- for the first time in a long time. Maybe ever. 

The urbanist, commons steward in me is buzzing, purring, electrified. 

[marketstreetpf-blog]

Making music with a bike. Cool prototype by Alvin Shiu from aviocollective.com ybca Disctotech.

[marketstreetpf-blog]

Check out what your neighbors want in the hood with  neighborland . Getting thoughts at ybca Discotech!

[marketstreetpf-blog]

Dan danparham and Tom @klbck from neighborland wants to know what you want...in your neighborhood. Getting what you want at ybca Disctotech! 

[marketstreetpf-blog]

Jake - @civicinnovation from @marketstreetpf strikes a pose with this make a new emotion prototype. Golden wings!