History 101:

where the civic design was extended covered

a span from the eastern seaboard to San Francisco

that laid out a path, that is a way or avenue

to extend even further,

but was put on pause

to invigorate the civic building throughout the lands

in between

photo: San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge construction 1933.

 

preliminary actions - "Planning" in real time

approaching organization

of concerned citizenry

and information

to prepare with communicable accounts

for a digital platform

 

community problem solving

communication beginning at different levels of city or region like peer to peer (degree of separation) discussion and records

- including comparative costs by vendor

- working towards a budget with multiple items

- make use of existing infrastructure like community center spaces and traditional modes of communication like everyday talking, posters, and newspaper classifieds

- continue to keep records in account and collect them to signal readiness for more comprehensive digital platform

- allow larger scale projects to emerge from elimination by practical difficulties like overall costs and competitive procurement

projective accounts to discover and recall desirables

- include items of upgrade or expansion of potential currently apparently beyond budget

- discover new possibilities through travel, periodicals, and internet search including image search

- catalog possibilities before investigating costs, which often are given as an overestimate as negotiation towards mutual and even common benefit is never out of the question

reworking city or regional budgets

to check off smaller doable projects

- prioritize projects by practical urgency or popular support

- include acquisition of tools like street maintenance machinary or tendering for expertise by same manner of prioritization

learning to quantitatively scale a project

- eg. one water fountain = very small; 2500 water fountains = small to medium

        remove asbestos (if many cases of related cancers found in an area compared to standards in other regions, then necessary ie. urgent) in 2000 dwellings and 150 public structures = medium to large

        new road to replace a commonly used dirt road extending 50 miles = medium

        replace all street lights in a region of a state with LED = medium to large

        solar panel power generation for a town of 15000 = large

        new highway system including several new segments and one new stretch = very large

- scale has to do with cost and viability

- but scale is not the same as urgency or importance; 

   therefore, comparing one town's needs and a city's calls is not appropriate - 

   using information about another locale's upgrades
   as a reference to search for new appropriate upgrades for one's own locale
   makes that data relevant and applicable

- some ways to qualify a project -   

   Urgent | Necessary | Required | ToDo

   Important | Relevant | Future-oriented

towards acquisition and or procurement

 locomotion : automobiles : road | highway | superhighway

 education

by making use of online resource and delivery

which are gaining in sophistication

to supplant regular curricula in public and private education

- consolidate into directory of indices and 

legitimize techniques and content, 

with the government bureau supporting private enterprises

coordinative capacity and services of the bureau

- to eventually arrive at accreditation of 

distributed content and

net-based programs and platforms 

- requires accounting of how online services and resources are 

currently being utilized and knowledge being gained

 infrastructure digital platform

[private] designs. projects

- needs > demand  (general to specific)

- survey and catalog possibilities > selection

- call | bids

database, content management:

- standard upgrades

- special upgrades

differential divergent upgrades from character and propensity of locales and focii

[list:

-

the tidying and identifying: refining the urban complexion - 

- the refinement of infrastructural layers and components

- hygiene maintenance and restoration of current and heritage buildings and infrastructure

    - local small scale projects: include in records on platform with citizen input

- diversification, care-cultivation and deepening sophistication of greenery: towards gardens as in towards Versailles and or towards nature reserves, or wild cultivated growth, or old gardens, or fruit trees scattered or in orchids, (... ) and towards secret gardens and towards botanical gardens and as well as urban niches

- reduction of old artificial material and or reanalysis of scale-width in path and trail planning

- mini artful and or environmental-future-oriented furnishings

 - old fashioned regular cleaning with leased or bulk purchase of machinery of streets and roads and public grounds

scale of the infrastructural component to be upgraded or installed 

- from 1 to 10

- determined at municipal scale, town locales, cities, beyond

- to furnish, to upgrade 

before  and  after  

during upgrading

accounting > public records, official record

-

-

-

 Arup published the Future of Highways  pdf

I.F. Robots | sqaudrons, swarms

 Robots and Automation

flagging requirements for maintenance of permanent or semi-permanent nature

detection of problems not visible to unaided eye, eg. electric wiring problems underground

general regular maintenance against weather such as snow

engagement interfaces for monitoring and adjustment, etc

novel configuration of workforce and crews with mobility and diverse expertise

I.F. Urban power grids

Power grids remain relevant

Return of excess electric energy into grid for collection and redistribution

Distributed input eg. home solar panels result in a feedforward grid   < req research

I.F.: The Highway

 New Highways:

solar energy collection via friction and weather resistant disks where electricity is collected and fed back into the linear grid to be collected and redistributed or used to power features as tolling stations

irrigative management of rain and snow where runoffs are managed through processing possible 

accommodation for autonomous vehicles including large cross-country trucks as well as augmented vehicles and segtors of performance highways for high-performance vehicles

scaled and regular charging stations (towards commercial, requiring public-private coalition) or in-motion charging roads (see Stockholm)

material of greater endurance and being smoother with less friction: varied material in spirit of prototypical ventures: novel or enhanced material or material combination

highly efficient overhead lighting with configurations w/ motion sensitivity where appropriate (and or possibly backlit lane partitioning) and intelligent lighting systems incorporating such as wi-fi, notification loudspeakers, weather monitoring, emergency incident monitoring and transmission

advancement of wireless transmitting signage, suitable for transmitting to receivers in human driving cars and to self driving vehicles; also adaptable for traffic and violations monitoring

support V2V, V2N, V2X transmissibility across new vehicles to speed communicability of incidents and conditions on highways

call for new designs for roadway waystations and lookout-observatory microports

new forms of roadways forming new types of connections between new types of nodes

greenaries to be cultivated at locations like vicinity into townships

campsites are possible for observing the dark sky

ev charging lots with amenities

various attributes:

    smart systems: flooding detection and adjustment, driver wrong side detection, etc

    kiosks: emergency or roadside assistance dispatch signaling, vending, waste disposal and recycling etc. 

    locii: weather and condition monitors

    motion-sensitive lighting: for less used segments of roadway

points for consideration:

vicinity to urban places - eg. transfer of energy from solar energy collection

 

commercial or private enterprises offering vehicles on sharing-economic principles 

  

From Office of Infrastructure: History of Highways link

after a century: “Secretary Gallatin urged, ‘shorten distances, facilitate commercial and personal intercourse, and unite, by a still more intimate community of interests, the remote quarters of the United States.’”

-

“…spectacular transcontinental trip made by Dr H. Nelson, a prominent surgeon, from Burlington, Vermont, in a 20-horse power Winton touring car, which he purchased from a private owner in San Francisco… the first to complete the cross-country journey in a motor car, Dr Jackson left the Golden Gate City on May 23, 1903, accompanied by…”

“In 1913 no State, nor probably any county, could boast a complete highway system. As the motor vehicles rolled from the assembly lines and out into towns and through the countryside in growing numbers… The Lincoln Highway.”

-

1893 Good Roads Movement > Office of Road Inquiry, Dept of Ag, from Statute: “To enable the Secretary of Agriculture to make inquiries in regard to the systems of road management throughout the United States, to make investigations in regards to the best systems of road-making, and to enable him to assist the agricultural college and experiment stations in disseminating information on this subject, ten thousand dollars.”

Federal Aid Road Act, Woodrow Wilson, 19160711

at scale - "Planning" in real time

   (the capital could stand in reserve as held by the federal government)

in the case of a dynamic and organized effort at scale

for infrastructure upgrades 

in America

it's apparent that digital systems and administrative personnel could augment existing levels of government

-to collect proposals for consideration ie. where seed monies are to be placed... where federal funds are warranted

-for community dialog towards decisions - ie. municipal, city, state, regional 

-to support organization of fund raising where federal funds are not warranted

-mediation where appropriate to businesses providing services

also, for the imagination of how infrastructure may be upgraded in a future looking orientation:

-fundamentals on what comprises infrastructure

-outline of expectations in what qualify for federal funding and what needs to be arranged for locally

-expanse of timetable to reach ultimate goal of upgrade at scale

>>>catalog of novel and or recommended infrastructure components

-identification of localities experiencing highest demand

> towards prototypal programs

consideration should be further given to things that support not only economies and life quality but also the environment 

prototype digital system/platform at Detroit (?)a

"the energy internet" | utne.com | sept-oct-2008 /p41 "toorrowland" by E.B.Boyd, from Conscious Choice
"
energy intelligence... refers to a system that manages power generation and use in a more efficient, responsive manner - 'the energy equivalent of the Internet," as Fred Krupp and Miriam Horn describe it in Earth: The Sequel (Norton, 2008). This web would draw electricity from where it is abundant and send it to where it is needed, reducing the demand for new power plants and offering more flexibility for incorporating renewable sources like wind and sun.
"... more than $434 million into energy intelligence in 2007... Virginia-based GridPoint, has developed a device - a refri[d]gerator/sic -sized 'smart battery' that utilities can install in customers' basement... stores and releases energy based on various factors, including cost and demand, which saves the user money by avoiding the power peaks that can tax the power grid.
"Other innovations give consumers information about how much power they're using at any given time... according to California (jan-feb 2008), people who had this information at their fingertips cut their energy use by a whopping 40 percent.
"Most important of all, concludes Mother Jones (May-June 2008), is the notion of decentralized power generation. Unlike coal and nuclear power, next-generation energy sources don't require any massive central investment. You can have your own power plant in a solar panel or flat-profile wind turbine on your roof. Linking illions of these power sources into regional networks will make our energy cleaner, safer, and steadier."

in related news...
"scientists iat the Atomic Energy Commission in France... reports Plenty... Piezoelectricity... thought that the pressure[of squeezing certain substances that let out a tiny burst electricity] of just 5000 large raindrops could produce enough power to fire up a 60-watt lightbulb."

- - -

utne magazine , july-august 2009 / p19
"Who you pay is what you get"
"Pepperine University researchers... find 'Firms exhibit higher profitability when heir top executives make smart decisions. One of the smart decisions those executives have consistently made at successful Fortune 500 firms is to include women in the executive suite - so that regardless of gender, the best brains are available to continue making smart, profitable, decisions."

same tools different use

> observe conditions -
People who have many active connections have them due to an inclination to meet others and, more importantly, an approach to do so. The approach is unique to each individual and develops over a series of interactions with others. It evolves in accordance to one's self-perception (and presentation) and response to the surrounding social conditions. Over a duration in which an individual is actively presenting herself and engaging with others, she develops a style of interaction that is particular to her. The "style" emerges as a unique method that belongs to the individual; this style, like the individual, may be undergoing continuous evolution.

> projective observation -
Users use and configure the same net-based communication tools in different ways, cultivating their own personal styles in presenting themselves and interacting with others, leading to their assuming qualitatively various positions and social relations.

/folksonomy/

Folksonomy, or free keyword tags, engages in a demography extended in numbers and diversity for the communities to cultivate common interests and related resources upon concentrations as marked by words. It is a pooling of many perspectives on some common resource that, through clustering phenomena, reveals the general inclination.

note - The averaging that occurs boils down to singularities as represented by the tag networks. There is a similarity between this active process that includes large participating groups and the research discovery activities that rely on taking large samples as the dataset to analyze and establish trends and arguments supporting a stated hypothesis.

[rel:
getluky.net : open source free-tag module for php/mysql apps ;
]

[uncurated links (wikipedia):
Gene Smith on folksonomy
Clay Shirky on folksonomy
Vanderwal on folksonomy
Alex Wright on folksonomy
Mob indexing? Folk categorization? Social tagging?
Jordan Willms on Gardened hierarchical folksonomy
Folksonomies - Cooperative Classification and Communication Through Shared Metadata by Adam Mathes Widely praised paper on folksonomy
Peter Van Dijck on Emergent i18n effects in folksonomies
Salon.com's popular introduction to Folksonomy
Bruce Sterling article on folksonomy from Wired
'Folksonomies: Power to the People'
Flickr and "folksonomies"
Folksonomizer: generic folksonomy service
Anthropology News article on folksonomy.
Panel from ETech 2005 - With Joshua Schachter (del.icio.us),
Stewart Butterfield (Flickr), Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia) and Clay Shirky.
UGWiki entry for Folksonomy
]