I just submitted the above 3-D rendering to the Treasure Island Bike Rack Design contest. This concept is based on re-purposing old car parking meters to be used for bike parking.

This idea is particularly relevant to Treasure Island due to the redevelopment plan’s focus on sustainability, car independence, and pedestrian access. The out-of-context use of parking meters (i.e. in parks, on pedestrian walkways) serves as a constant reminder to Treasure Island’s residents and guests that we, as a society, need to get over our addiction to the automobile - and that biking is a viable option for transportation that is healthier and more environmentally conscious. Re-using our car parking infrastructure for bike parking makes an elegant statement about not only this shift in mindset about our mobility, but also about the potential to creatively re-use our waste.

As a San Franciscan who bikes everywhere, parking meters are already my preferred bike rack. I get frustrated with over-engineered bike parking solutions (i.e. the bike racks at GG Park’s Botanical Gardens and at the Legion of Honor) - so, with this contest, I didn’t want to reinvent the wheel too much. My original idea was simply to create a grid of parking meters. However, this does not meet the contest’s requirement of being able to secure bikes using all types of locks. If someone only had a loose cable lock, the bike could slip over the top of the meter.

I ended up with two complementary no-nonsense designs, both based on old parking meters and both designed to be functional/durable in demanding urban environments. The first is simply welding, or otherwise fastening, a cross-bar between two old parking meters to create a variation on the popular and functional U-rack design. This design allows both wheels to be securely locked to the rack. The second design is to fasten a closed metal loop to the parking meter pole, which allows a cable lock to be threaded through. While this design does not allow both wheels to be fastened directly to the rack (as the contest rules stipulate), most bikers don’t lock their bikes this way currently. From my observation, it’s more common to lock both wheels by running a cable through the front wheel and securing that cable with a single U-lock fastened to the frame/back wheel. These single meter/racks have a smaller footprint and could more easily stand-alone at various places throughout the island.

The 3-D rendering was created with Google Sketch-Up. The quality of this rendering was limited both by my novice Sketch-Up skills (first ever!) and my computer’s processing power - but I think it conveys the idea pretty well.

(Or, referencing the top-notch Treasure Island music festival, they could go with David Byrne’s sweet bike rack designs for NYC: http://www.davidbyrne.com/art/bike_racks/index.php)

Sensitive information about President Obama’s helicopter (Marine 1) was found on a hard drive in Tehran. Evidently, someone at “a defense contractor in Bethesda, Maryland” installed a file sharing program that comprised their hard drive.

Oh, the games we play. Some poor smuck wanted a Britney Spears song and ends up getting himself fired, maybe bringing his company down and possibly endangered the President.

Before we rush to judgement, a few more details would be nice.  For instance, what company was breached and what else was on that hard drive?  And how about the owner of the hard drive in Tehran? Did it belong to Khameni or some sixteen year old kid in that Internet savvy country?

Answers to those questions will help us decide on the level of this like particular breach, but it reminds us all how easily - and seriously - our systems can be corrupted.

Branding a city

Brian Lehrer had a fascinating piece today on how the public sector took on a private sector strategy to save New York during the 1970’s. The city invested in Branding. Faced with a failing economy, rising crimes rates and a bad reputation New York officials created the iconic campaign “I Love NY”.

My main takeaway from the piece was the comment Miriam Greenberg made about branding. She said that branding is a combination of both marketing and material, that you need more than just a great message. I completely agree.

There’s a lot of discussion about what companies and governments should invest in during these times. There’s healthcare, or education, or infrastructure. If anyone said branding, I bet the suggestion was widely dismissed.  But if you take Ms. Greenberg’s use of the term, its really not such a bad idea.  Branding helps people identify with products and if anything needs support of the people right now, its the economy. Its our cities and local businesses.  Its going to be the new products.

So for every project that we are launching, stimulus or not, lets make sure we put a solid branding effort into it too.

A lesson for the public and private sector alike.

There’s a lot of talk about how entrepreneurs can save the day.

Who will get us out of this economic mess? Entrepreneurs.

Who is going to lead us towards clean energy? Entrepreneurs.

Who is going to save the New York Times from Rupert Murdoch? Entrepreneurs?

There is an enormous amount of truth to this idea, but its a bit incomplete. Sramana Mitra recently posted an article for Forbes as part of a running series that is exploring a variety of topics related to the economy and entrepreneurs. One article in particular, Barriers to Innovation, reminded me something that I think a lot of people need to bear in mind: We cannot rely on entrepreneurs alone. We need to value the solid research and technical skills that come from academia, science and engineering. Its when they intersect that real value is generated. Read the rest of this entry »

I was catching up on old episodes of marketplace and heard a piece on the cotton industry and the subsidies they receive in order to keep up with China.  That’s usually enough to send me foaming at the mouth. Subsidies hurt small businesses,  and distort our expectations.  However, the end of the interview brought some insight from Blanton Godfrey (College of Textiles at N.C. State) that gave me hope for the American entrepreneur.

Historically, the US textile industry has been subsidized through import caps.  This helps limit supply and artificially float the price so that American Producers and Chinese producers are roughly at the same price. In the short run this might seem like a good thing, but in the long run there are significant costs.

Although textile production in the US has long been shrinking, it’s also been getting more specialized. Instead of socks and underwear, our producers now make specialized fabrics that are used in fire retardant tents for the US Airforce. Read the rest of this entry »

Salvage Communication is working with They Say Nothing to spearhead a community-based local water network that will reduce waste, provide clean water at affordable price, invest in global water systems and create a new form of direct democracy.

We want to build a local water network using existing technologies that offers pure water at a quarter of the price of bottled water.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Environmental Protection Agency is looking to recognize environmental leaders in New York, New Jersey, Puerto Rico, “U.S. Virgin Islands and tribal nations within the region’s jurisdiction.”  I am not making this up. EPA Region 1 somehow covers these dis-contiguous areas but the award is real.  You only get a plaque but it will be presented during this years Earth Day celebration.  There is no cash but the publicizing the achievements will spread the awareness of the new knowledge.

If you know of a company or individual in New York, New Jersey, Puerto Rico or the tribal nations who should be recognized, submit their name to the EPA.

For instance, we submitted ioby.org for their efforts to support independent, locally-based community efforts that will change the environment. The site connects people to the projects that are happening right next door. People can take part in real projects that will positively affect their own neighborhoods.  Neighborhoods will also be connected to other neighborhoods to pools resources and best pratices. ioby uses the power of social networks to connect people to each so they can make change together.

The Baseline Scenario had a somewhat snarky post this morning about the Annual World Economic Forum at Davos. Unfortunately, the sarcasm isn’t far from the truth. Davos is a joke. Current models for global coordination just aren’t effective. As Simon puts it, the important people are “stuck at home, doing real work.”

The last thing I remember hearing about Davos was something about various celebrities asking for pledges to combat AIDS and poverty. The UN can’t do much besides pass a series of resolutions that are usually ignored. And the WTO managed to let the Doha rounds collapse.

That isn’t to say that we should do away with all global agencies. Read the rest of this entry »

That our greatest challenges are our best opportunities for a sustainable future, if we all work together.

There are enough blogs today commenting on the beginning of a new era and the renewal of the American spirit. It’s enough to say that I by and large agree with them.

However, for Salvage this is a particularly poignant time.  Salvage is about harnessing the power of the diverse units that make up a community under a common purpose- a unity of purpose, as some have put it. We have been circling around this topic for sometime with our network of partners as a way to innovate and grow despite limited resources. Our network must now turn this conversation into a mandate and combine our collective efforts.

Salvage Research will be continuing to produce content, broad and deep, that covers how communities are able to come together and create new social capital. The next four years are sure to produce many chances for us to test and prove our hypothesis. We hope you all join us.

The rules for energy are changing. The past few years have highlighted how our natural resources are growing scarce and, despite recent investments, infrastructure to produce and deliver energy remains insufficient. Addressing either issue has significant financial and environmental costs. It’s no surprise then that there’s been an increasing amount of attention in the media and in boardrooms to “green” solutions.

Green energy capabilities can grow to meet our national needs but it will take more than technology to get it done.  A sustainable energy reality can be built through a novel application of smart technology investments combined with innovative partnerships across the public/private divide. Communities and individuals working with government and business can move beyond the role of passive consumers of energy, and become active participants engaged in sustainable and affordable practices at the local level.

The Fourth Arts Block’s (FAB) Distributed Photovoltaic Generation (DPG) project is a perfect example of this new process. It allows FAB members and their neighbors to pool their resources for energy production, and to monitor their energy use to help shape their choices and promote community wide conservation.

The significance of this project extends beyond empowering a neighborhood to be energy self-sufficient. The 20 contiguous rooftops that make up the FAB DPG project will be a testing ground for solar technologies, (at least) two new business models for energy consumption based on production and conservation. The project will also experiment in new forms of public/private partnership. The on-going documentation will capture the numerous lessons learned and make them available to help other communities achieve energy independence through common effort.

Read the rest of this entry »