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“As a young man more than 35 years ago, Jean-Claude Decaux made a living posting bills on buildings around Paris. His modest livelihood came to an abrupt halt after the local government declared this practice illegal. That’s when Decaux came up with a better idea — one that would allow him to continue posting bills and do it in a way that would contribute to the quality of life and beauty ofthe city. Decaux’s inspiration came one stormy day when he noticed people getting soaked while waiting for a city bus to come by. Why not offer to build bus shelters for free in exchange for the right to sell advertising on them, Decaux thought. He took his proposal to the Mayor of Lyon and got permission to go ahead. That rainy day marked the start of the world’s largest street furniture company.... Over the years, the company has expanded its street furniture offerings from bus shelters and kiosks to news racks, traffic signage, light posts, litterbins, benches, interactive information panels and automatic public toilets.”

Through growth and aquisiton, the company now reached 31 countries and more than 11,000 cities in 1999. Driven by advertising sales, its revenues are in the billions.

“JCDecaux sees its role as designing what French architect Jean-Michel Wilmotte calls a city’s ‘interior architecture,’ deserving of ‘as much thought as that given to private spaces.’ It believes that bus shelters, kiosks and other street furniture are too integral to the urban landscape to be built without attention to aesthetics.”

The company adapts its designs to the character of each city and has recruited several blue ribbon designers and architects to contribute designs.

“JCDecaux has even adapted Paris’ renowned Morris kiosk [picture] into a variety of historic and contemporary styles.... Through technological innovations developed by the company’s extensive R&D arm, many JCDecaux advertising kiosks now integrate newsstands, bottle banks, water fountains, telephone booths, clocks, automatic public toilets, ticket dispensers, interactive information terminals and even automatic vending machines.... Another company signature is the scrupulous servicing of its facilities, which provides premium value to advertisers who don’t want their messages desecrated by vandals.... More than 3,500 service employees maintain the company’s street furniture worldwide. Any broken glass is replaced within 24 hours. Graffiti is scoured clean. In places like Amsterdam where graffiti has become a public art form, JCDecaux has equipped its maintenance workers with motorbikes so they can remove it all the faster.”

From @issue, Volume 5, Number 2.

San Francisco’s Boeddeker Park was “designed with safety and security in mind, but in all the wrong ways.” The 2.6-acre park is cut off from the streets by fences and walls, thouch “meant to provide safety instead make the place feel like a cage.” “The main, bench-lined walkway through the park became known as ‘the Gauntlet’ after it was colonized by drug dealers a year or so after the park’s 1985 opening.” In contrast, Harlem’s El Sitio Feliz incorporates “water play, swings, slides and a small picnic pavilion with community gardens, [the site] has become well-known for its creative combination of activities for children and adults. The most popular play equipment is a simple garden hose, which kids use to spray each other and keep the slide slippery. The playground is flanked by community gardens, tended regularly by local residents who seem to enjoy the frequent interaction with children.” Check out Great Public Spaces and the Hall of Shame at Public Buildings & Civic Design, a site with lots of bite-sized case studies brought to you by the Project for Public Spaces, “helping people to grow their public space into vital community places.”

“The Israel—Palestine war is not simply a struggle over territory between two national entities. It is driven by Israel’s systematic denial of modern urban life to the Palestinians. One of the lessons of the battle of Jenin is that the bulldozer that demolishes houses is also a weapon in the wider strategy to prevent the Palestinians from creating a modern, normal, urban society.”

See ‘Clean territory’: urbicide in the West Bank by Stephen Graham on OpenDemocracy.

“13 months ago [Sugata Mitra] launched something he calls ‘the hole in the wall experiment.’ He took a PC connected to a high-speed data connection and imbedded it in a concrete wall next to NIIT’s headquarters in the south end of New Delhi. The wall separates the company’s grounds from a garbage-strewn empty lot used by the poor as a public bathroom. Mitra simply left the computer on, connected to the Internet, and allowed any passerby to play with it. He monitored activity on the PC using a remote computer and a video camera mounted in a nearby tree. What he discovered was that the most avid users of the machine were ghetto kids aged 6 to 12, most of whom have only the most rudimentary education and little knowledge of English. Yet within days, the kids had taught themselves to draw on the computer and to browse the Net. The physicist has since installed a computer in a rural neighborhood with similar results.”

“Straw is a viable building alternative, plentiful and inexpensive. Straw-bale buildings boast superinsulated walls, simple construction, low costs, and the conversion of an agricultural byproduct into a valued building material. Properly constructed and maintained, the straw-bale walls, stucco exterior and plaster interior remain water proof, fire resistant, and pest free. Because only limited skill is required, a community house-raising effort can build most of a straw-bale house in a single day. This effort yields a low-cost, elegant, and energy-efficient living space for the owners, a graceful addition to the community, and a desirable boost to local farm income. This booklet offers an in-depth look at one such community house-raising, in addition to a general overview of straw-bale construction.”

Published by the U.S. Department of Energy Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. Check this site for lots of straw building resources.

Pilot projects in Fife, Scotland and on the South Downs outside Brighton, UK are building low-cost housing from old tires. 40 million tires are discarded each year in Britain alone “enough free building material to construct 20,000 low-cost homes a year.” Known as “earthships” The new houses are “capable of functioning entirely independent of mains services such as electricity, water and sewage.” Read more from the Low Carbon Network and the Craigencalt Farm Ecology Centre, the organizations working the projects.

Found via Also Not Found in Nature.

Warchalking is a graffitti language to indiciate open 802.11b wireless networking. It’s derived from the visual marks used by hobos to communicate about the social landscape. There’s an ongoing battle though, between those who want to share their networks and those who don’t.

According to the 2000 Census, Eldorado, New Mexico has the nation’s highest percentage of homes heated mainly by solar power: 13.2 percent. The numbers are pretty dismal: “According to the census, the number of U.S. homes heated primarily by solar energy fell from 54,536 in 1990 to 47,069 a decade later. Federal and many state tax credits for solar homes have long since dried up.” As of 2000, Eldorado had 317 solar homes. Also of note, 8 of the 10 cities are in Hawaii.

“Windmills may finally be ready to compete with fossil-fuel generators. The technology trick: turn them backwards and put hinges on their blades.” According to this article in the MIT Technology Review, a cheap, lightweight turbine may be here. Check out their list of players in the Wind Industry, too.

“Beijing Organising Committee of the 2008 Olympic Games (BOCOG) opened a two-day Olympic Design Conference in Beijing on Tuesday in a bid to find the most appropriate ways to impress the world visually. Beijing Mayor Liu Qi said in the opening address that through the magnificent and unique ‘Olympic look’, Beijing will unfold the great charm of this global sporting event and the history of China. Meanwhile, Beijing will also ‘promote the concept of “New Beijing, Great Olympics”, and demonstrate and elevate the image of Beijing and China in the world’, added Liu, who is also BOCOG president.”

From the People’s Daily.