Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s space shuttle Enterprise!
Friday morning, OpenPlans-ers gathered on the roof to watch Enterprise riding piggyback up the Hudson. Continue reading
Donate to Streetsblog & Streetfilms: Help Us Raise $30,000 by June 1
Streetsblog and Streetfilms have launched their spring pledge drive with a goal is to raise $30,000 by June 1. Give to Streetsblog, give to Streefilms, or give to ‘em both. Your giving ensures that your online voice for livable, safe and complete streets stays heard within the public conversation. Thanks to previous support from readers:
- Streetsblog has produced in-depth coverage of NYPD’s traffic fatality investigations, exposing the shoddy underpinnings of the department’s victim-blaming crash reports. Your gift will help us sustain this reporting and hold elected officials to their promises to get NYPD to reform its ways.
- Streetfilms produced the highly acclaimed and groundbreaking Moving Beyond the Automobile series, which had nearly 150,000 views. This year we’d like to continue to break new ground in the transportation debate by making three new chapters in the Fixing the Great Mistake series. One of the films will focus directly on the drawbacks of the effect of surface parking on a city and the damage it does.
- Streetsblog and Streetfilms will be able to cover what promises to be the biggest livable streets story of the year: 10,000 bikes at 600 stations will be on the streets in July. We will report on the preparation, launch, and day-to-day use of North America’s largest public bike system. Don’t let Andrea Peyser get the last word.
Anyone who contributes $50 or more to Streetsblog NYC or Streetfilms by June 1 will be eligible to win one of these handsome new Schwinns courtesy of Ride Brooklyn bike shop.
Donate at leat $50 and be entered to win this Schwinn Jenny 7 or Schwinn Willy 7
You can also enter the drawing by signing up to make a recurring monthly gift of just $4 or more — think of it as a subscription to the fine reporting and commentary you read on Streetsblog. But wait, there’s more: give by April 30 and be also be eligible to win a one-year subscription to Yes! magazine.
Your support keeps Streetsblog and Streetfilms going. Please give and contribute to the high impact reporting and films that Streetsblog and Streetfilms produce.
Choosing Open Source?…Be Not Afraid, says OpenGeo’s Paul Ramsey
Why is the shift towards open source smart, cost-effective and just plain evolutionary correct? OpenGeo’s Paul Ramsey points out why open source software is the better choice over proprietary software in his presentation “Be Not Afraid .. A Manager’s Guide to Open Source Software.” It covers the who’s, the how’s, and the why’s of the GIS software industry and the rapid and stable progress being made with open solutions.
Venn diagrams, maps, and historical anecdotes abound, its a great and entertaining read for those needing to talk up open source efforts and adoption within their agencies or companies.
Opening access to scenario planning tools
Can open source tools and approaches change how we do scenario planning? The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and the Sonoran Institute today launched a new report, Opening Access to Scenario Planning Tools.
The report emerges from a series of workshops and conversations convened by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and the Sonoran Institute in 2010 and 2011. Participants included professional and citizen planners who practice scenario planning, academics researching scenario planning, and experts who develop tools to support scenario planning. OpenPlans has been engaged in those conversations and is proud to be part of the report writing team.
Opening Access to Scenario Planning Tools examines the current state of scenario planning, the promise of scenario planning tools to help us prepare for the future, the challenges to expanding their use, and their potential to open access to the planning process. It makes specific recommendations to advance the use of scenarios and scenario planning tools, including development of an online platform to facilitate collaboration, capacity building, and open source activities among scenario tool developers, urban planners, and other tools users.
What is scenario planning? To ensure community support for decisions about development and other land-related policies — and public investments — broader and more effective civic engagement is needed. Scenario planning uses inputs such as density, mixed-use development, and transportation nodes, together with population estimates, to predict and visualize different outcomes.
To accompany the report, the Lincoln Institute created a website to host the current and future conversations around scenario planning, ScenarioPlanningTools.org. Over time, the site will include links to resources and a gathering point for future collaborations.
So how do we increase access to scenario planning tools?
The report recommends the following actions – get involved in bringing these to reality!
• Creating an online platform to foster collaboration in the development and application of scenario planning tools.
• Developing a curriculum on scenario planning for the next generation of professional and citizen planners.
• Establishing a model process for conducting scenario planning and show how it can be used with existing community planning processes.
• Illustrating different uses of scenario planning tools in various stages of the planning process to facilitate increased use of scenario planning.
• Establishing data standards to improve information sharing, starting with development and place types for land use patterns.
• Creating a model collaborative project to demonstrate the potential for integrated tools, models, and modules.
• Advancing new concepts of anticipatory governance by using foresight and anticipation to address uncertainty and future challenges.
The other team members include leaders in the burgeoning field of visioning and visualization and public participation:
- C.J. Gabbe, an urban planner with Fregonese Associates, Inc.
- Jason Lally, director of the Decision Lab at PlaceMatters
- Robert Matthews, project director for the Decision Commons initiative
- Ray Quay, research professional at the Decision Center for a Desert City
The Scenario Planning Tools team will be at the 2012 APA Conference in Los Angeles, April 14-17, 2012. Meetup with them on Saturday, April 14 5:30-7pm. More event info can be found here.
Why Open Source?
via The Linux Foundation
Just what is open source software and how does the open source development process work? This video explains why the development approach for Linux is better, faster and produces a more stable kernel and operating system. There are some pretty eye-opening statistics for the sheer amount of code that is written for Linux, highlighting the blazing speed of development that a non-proprietary and truly collaborative approach can produce.