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LimeWire's Mark Gorton Brings Open-Source To Urban Planning
mytrip writes to tell us that Mark Gorton of LimeWire fame is translating his knowledge from moving bits to moving people. Taking profits earned from his software business, Gorton is applying them to projects aimed at making urban transportation safer, faster, and more sustainable. "That's not the only connection between open-source software and Gorton's vision for livable cities. The top-down culture of public planning stands to benefit by employing methods he's lifting from the world of open-source software: crowdsourced development, freely-accessible data libraries, and web forums, as well as actual open-source software with which city planners can map transportation designs to people's needs. Such modeling software and data existed in the past, but it was closed to citizens. Gorton's open-source model would have a positive impact on urban planning by opening up the process to a wider audience, says Thomas K. Wright, executive director of the Regional Plan Association, an organization that deals with urban planning issues in the New York metropolitan area."
Strange how running LimeWire on Linux doesn't cause any of that.
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Increasing the size of a basketball team from 5 to 40 would not make it a better game.
Even increasing the size of the court 5-8 times would not make it a better game.
Of course, increasing the maximum roster from 15 or so to say 40 might have beneficial impact. If you can get the benchwarmers to accept their roles as rarely playing. then you have to ask, what *is* their role?
TFA seems to imply that more people involved in the planning process is better. I doubt it much.
While it sounds all nice and open-source-cozy-and-warm, too many chefs spoil the soup. In the input end, more opinions, points of view, and unique ideas could yield some interesting options and maybe a new and better way. But as the planning process goes on, sooner or later decisions have to be made. The crowd is not necessarily better at making these decisions, nor does it make better decisions. Even the smaller group doesn't necessarily make better decisions when you increase the size of the group.
And opening up the planning process to all comers doesn't even guarantee you get good and talented people involved. You just get more. More is not always better. Knowing when it is and is not is key.
Some things might benefit, but the reality is that injecting an open-source solution into the urban planning process presupposes that urban planning is failing because of lack of involvement. Maybe it's failing because of acceptance. Or lack of adequate funding. Or a flawed vision.
Packing us into cities may be more effecient, but as a lifestyle it is not univerally admired.
Saying we should not be commuting so far to our jobs doesn't change the fact that many of us just don't want to live near where we work. And sometimes our jobs can't be relocated closer to our homes.
Way it is. Duh.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
I prefer to discourage car use if possible. The roads need to be big enough to handle taxis, buses, deliveries, emergency crews, trash, etc... personal cars should be last on priority and limited when possible. Of course this means leaving provisions for mass transit, even if they are not actively planned.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Urban planning can be good and bad. Certainly Central Park is a win, but highways largely suck when they are run through existing cities. New York's mass transit is a combination of free market and planned routes...
The reason why highways and cities seem to clash so violently has to do with how the routes were "planned," or actually, that they were not really planned at all.
The US Highway Plan went through three phases. The first time, it was going to be a smaller network of mostly toll roads. With each phase, the number of miles grew, and the tolls lowered, until the 1956 plan had a large network of free roads. Each iteration was an attempt to address objections of Congresscritters.
But the last plan, when it was first introduced, left the major urban areas blank on the proposed map. The Federal highway planners thought, strangely enough, that the urban routes should be planned at the local level, based on local knowledge and needs.
What Congressional representatives saw, though, was a bunch of rural roads and "nothing" for their cities. They didn't want to vote for a plan that left them off the map.
So... the Feds drew in lines in the cities, and the routes were now a matter of Federal law, whether they "worked" or not. :-/
Personally, one of my favorite little projects that demonstrates how a lack of planning is sometimes best is at University of Maryland. They have this center mall. Basically, the kept having to re-sod it because no one would stay on the paths. During a renovation it occurred to them to just pave the deer-paths... it looks crazy but now they don't have the same sod problems.
This illustrates a really general principle of usability, though. Any system or resource has to account for how it will be used. If it doesn't, then it will be misused. This is not just a feature of urban planning, but of computer software, library books, school desks... anything you can name. If you supply a classroom with only right-handed half-desks, and the chairs are movable, then left-handed students will probably pick up their desks and turn them sideways. If you make it require five clicks to log your input correctly, but you can do it "wrong" in only three, it's going to be done wrong over and over again. And so on.
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
You could easily remove all zoning ordinances (and do everything zoning ordinances are supposed to) by going to a pure land value tax, coupled with payment for all net societal costs. People sitting on vacant lots would be encouraged to develop them, or to transfer title to someone who would. Those whose activities lower the value of the surrounding land would pay higher taxes to compensate, while those who increase the value of the surrounding land -- say, by putting in a park -- could receive a portion of the increase as a rebate.
That way, people could put a pig farm next to a condo, but the pig farmer would pay for the decrease in land value to the community. The who thing would be self-organizing, without the need for zoning ordinances at all
You could easily remove all zoning ordinances (and do everything zoning ordinances are supposed to) by going to a pure land value tax, coupled with payment for all net societal costs.
That sounds like a fabulous idea, but I'm wondering how feasible it is to evaluate net societal costs? What about situations where some elements would see a particular development as a gain, while others see it as a loss? Do you just tally up the subjective dollar values each individual places on a particular development? If some judgments are weighted differently, how do you arbitrate that?
For example, if you live in a community that is largely young singles, but with a few families here and there. There's only one elementary school, because there's not that many children. Someone decides to open a 24-hour uh, "club" where people can meet up for uh, "private moments" or somesuch, right next door to the school. They want to serve alcohol at a communal bar, and offer private rooms for hourly rental. Maybe *most* of the community thinks this sounds like a GRAND idea, but the parents of the school kids are not so excited about it. They're in the minority, though. How do you calculate the social cost of this plan?
The who thing would be self-organizing, without the need for zoning ordinances at all
It would be an economic system of regulation rather than a command-and-control system, which I agree is usually more desirable... but it would hardly be "self-organizing." On the contrary, it would require an ENORMOUS amount of data collection and number crunching, with not a little subjective judgment, to create such a system.
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?