Pasadena Pictures
a blog by my recent stuff
Zach Urbina
[bio]
stuff I found
personal passions
more of my published writing
write me sometime
I'd love to hear from you
Search
Loading Tweet...
In like with you.
-
-
Jessica Paré - New York Magazine by Zachary Scott, May 2012
Paré laughs easily and often, despite a case of extreme jet lag. Bali is fifteen hours...
-
-
-
-
-
“MARLBORO” by:Dylan Silva on Flickr
-
-
-
breadfast: the world’s coolest future toaster.
Tag Results
3 posts tagged bukowski
This is Free, Take it, and Feel Better | Charles Bukowski
thanks, henrycharlesbukowski
“Trees, green-ness can be deadening. Give me the cities, give me smog.” - Charles Bukowski
“ Over half of the world’s population lives in cities. There are more, and bigger, cities than ever before. Why, then, are we so wary of them?
Alastair Donald and Austin Williams are two architecture critics who wanted to respond to critics of urbanisation. Their book, “The Lure of the City”, is a collection of essays that seeks to explore the role cities play as engines of social change and creativity. Their work celebrates cities as places of uncertainty where great things can, and often do, happen. “Seldom is there an unabashed hymn of praise to the progress, development and transformational dynamics that urbanisation brings,” says Mr Williams. “Even those who nominally assume that cities are good or efficient places to live and work are somewhat troubled by the pace of change, the numbers involved, the ‘damage’ caused to the environment.”
Here Austin Williams explains some common misconceptions about cities and looks to the future.
In your book you argue that instead of worrying about the unsustainable growth of cities we should embrace urbanisation. Why?
People are not the problem, they are the solution, but sadly we seem to have conceded that humans are the cause of the planet’s imminent demise. Sustainability has become a cloak for this misanthropic attitude. It suggests that we are a drain on resources, a harmful influence.
Our book merely reclaims cities as places of efficiency, productivity, dynamism and as drivers of social improvement. If you read reports about Nairobi or Lagos then you are likely to come across jargon last used to describe the Victorian slum. However, the British Victorian slum was improved by planned urbanisation, investment and construction workwhereas, all too often, the African slum is romanticised as a place of long-lost community values.” continue reading | Prospero
“The freeway always reminds you of what most people are. It´s a competitive society. They want you to lose so they can win.” - Charles Bukowski
“ If cars broadcast their speeds to other vehicles, a simple in-car algorithm could help dissolve traffic jams as soon as they occur, say computer scientists.
In recent years, various mathematical models and experimental measurements of traffic patterns have led to a consensus about the general kinds of traffic flows that can occur. There are three types.
First is free flow in which the density of traffic is low enough to allow vehicles to travel at the maximum speed allowed. Then there is synchronised flow when a higher traffic density forces cars to travel at similar slow speeds but without stop-start motion. Finally, there is the jam in which the speed drops to zero when the traffic density rises above some threshold.
The way the flow transitions from one regime to another is hugely complex but a number of models, in particular those using cellular automaton, have become useful in studying how it occurs.
One interesting question is how best to dissolve jams once they form. Most traffic experts agree that the basic idea is to ensure that cars leave the jam more quickly than they arrive, so that the jam dissolves.
Now Hyun Keun Lee and Beom Jun Kim at the University of Seoul in South Korea have a come up with a simple idea to automate and improve this dissolving process. They define two types of drivers: optimistic and defensive. Defensive drivers leave more room to the vehicle ahead than required by safety. Optimistic drivers leave too little.” continue reading | Technology Review
[image: source]
