Visual Representation in Science workshop

Aaron of  False Vacuum is organizing a workshop on Visual Representation to be held at IHPST in December. Here's the poster:

city streets

Via Kottke, Felix Salmon's diagnosis of the problematic status of bikes in New York:

Bikes can and should behave much more like cars than pedestrians. They should ride on the road, not the sidewalk. They should stop at lights, and pedestrians should be able to trust them to do so. They should use lights at night. And -- of course, duh -- they should ride in the right direction on one-way streets. None of this is a question of being polite; it's the law. But in stark contrast to motorists, nearly all of whom follow nearly all the rules, most cyclists seem to treat the rules of the road as strictly optional. They're still in the human-powered mindset of pedestrians, who feel pretty much completely unconstrained by rules. 

The result is decidedly suboptimal for all concerned, but mostly for the bicyclists themselves. New York needs to make a collective quantum leap, from treating bicyclists like pedestrians to treating bicyclists like motorists. And unless and until it does, bike relations will continue to be marked by hostility and mistrust.

I've been a huge fan of city cycling since I saw it working in Holland. But it just doesn't work without the infrastructure and social conventions to support it. New York clearly doesn't have it figured out yet. 

The problem in Toronto seems to be somewhat different. Cyclists usually stick to the roads, but automobile drivers aren't doing enough to accommodate cyclists, and that leads to a different, even more deadly kind of hostility and mistrust. As a result, I am not terribly comfortable cycling in the city (walking and TTC seem safer and more convenient, though that may be an illusion).

Mixed use streets aren't the culprit here. They work in Holland. North American cities are the culprit. We're too individualistic to be comfortable sharing anything, even public spaces like roads.

I've been the hostile jerk myself, occasionally. I'm a runner, and on a bad day it can be easy to externalize my frustrations on the pedestrians who are "in my way." Pedestrians are oblivious to their surroundings. I'm sure I'm no better when I'm walking: engrossed in conversation or with earphones in, I must miss most of what goes on around me. And then there are the walking clichés -- the four-abreast slow-walkers, the suit coming to a sudden halt to answer a text message, the woman walking out of a door without looking or slowing, the gentleman who meanders slowly to the left so that I don't know on which side to pass him, the dogs on leashes (and some without)... it's dangerous out there for a runner, let alone a cyclist.

Blogs of note

Blog fever has hit Toronto's HPS community, with the recent addition of The Bubble Chamber, there are at least half a dozen blogs written by my colleagues at IHPST.

Here are the Toronto blogs, in no particular order (I hope I haven't forgotten anyone):

• Mike Thicke, Curtis Forbes, Michelle Hoffman, Jonathan Turner, Andrew Munro, Ellie Louson, Michael Cournoyea, and Rebecca Moore are all contributors to The Bubble Chamber (as time goes on, the list will grow).
• Jaipreet Virdi discusses history of medicine, deafness, and quackery at From the Hands of Quacks.
• Ellie Louson muses about grad school at Productive (adj).
• Aaron Sidney Wright is a historian of physics who has been saying interesting things about scientific practice at his blog, False Vacuum.
• Jonathan Turner writes about grad school, teaching, and Cold War defence research in Canada over at Boffins and Cold Warriors.
• Sarah Kriger's Ramblings are more focused on writing, plays, and television than on her research, but it's still great stuff.
• Allan Olley occasionally discusses his work on the history of computing on 4ll4n0.

While I'm at it, here are a few of my favourite non-Toronto HPS blogs:

• Evolving Thoughts (John Wilkins)
• Ether Wave Propaganda (Will Thomas)
• Whewell's Ghost (group blog)
• Honest Toil (Chris Pincock)
• It's Only A Theory (group blog)

That makes for a lot of reading!

what would jane jacobs do?

Jane Jacobs was a champion of the neighborhood and enemy of the car. In the last half of the twentieth century, highway systems literally sliced apart neighborhoods, diverted traffic around cities and away from downtown districts. City planning increasingly centered on cars, until Jacobs urged us to "look, listen, linger and think" in neighborhoods - in other words, to remember what we had forgotten while we were driving our cars: neighborhoods are pretty cool places to be.

Today's ecological pressures seem to be pressing for increasing density in cities, and taller buildings mean fewer neighborhoods. As I walk the streets of Toronto, I see the change all around me. Half a dozen such structures have sprung up within sight of the University of Toronto campus, each tearing down a medium-density neighborhood and replacing it with a twenty-story condominium.

"We are wedging ourselves between a rock and a hard place: between the pleasures of medium-density living (Greenwich Village, Park Slope, Toronto’s Annex) and the ecological necessity of even more density," explains Andrew Blum. He goes on to cite historian William Cronon: "idealizing a distant wilderness too often means not idealizing the environment in which we actually live." Blum's point is that "thinking of cities this way means seeing their density and grit not as the destruction of the environment but as part of its preservation."

The key is to bring together these two apparently discordant senses of "environment": the ecological and the social. Cities need to be proactive and encourage development of mixed-use structures that support inclusion in neighborhoods. I shouldn't think it difficult to reserve the first floor of a condominium for neighborhood shops--a baker, grocer, laundromat, pub, gym, or barber, all accessible from out of doors.

Related: maps of Toronto's high rises and an urban design contest called thinkToronto on spacing.ca.

how to shoot yourself in the foot -- UPDATE

As expected, the government ordered the TTC back to work yesterday, and today everything is fine and dandy, except that no one really gets why the union went on strike in the first place. To clarify matters, here's what was going on:

molecular gastronomy

Hat tip Torontoist:

Start with the caviar and hazelnut foam. Next, try the bacon-stuffed tangerine segment appetizer, and follow with a palate-cleansing sorbet of kiwi and heirloom tomato purée. You'd be a fool to miss the rock lobster meatloaf, which is served atop an oasis of fig and cucumber gelée. Finish with a candied beet root custard and a tassé of chipotle-scented espresso. Bon Appétit!

Haute cuisine fans will descend on Isabel Bader Theatre (93 Charles Street West) this Tuesday, April 29 at 7:00 p.m. to meet Hervé This, the renowned chemist who is credited with coining the term molecular gastronomy and discovering the perfect temperature for cooking an egg (around 65°C). This will be signing copies of his book, Kitchen Mysteries, and giving a lecture on meat glue, liquid nitrogen baths, and other innovations in food science.

More posts about food.

... and furthermore

While I'm on the subject of how unions can be annoying, I should mention that I'm a member of a union, too. It represents the teaching assistants at the U of T, and it does a pretty good job of it, at by anecdotal comparison to a few of the US institutions where I have friends. But I do have one big beef with CUPE, and it's that the leadership seem to think international affairs are their business. Social justice is important, but it just isn't appropriate for my local union to make pronouncements about Israel's attitude toward Palestinians. Especially since some of CUPEs membership are Israeli. It puts us all in a bad position. I want my union to devote its energies toward protecting my high pay and keeping up with rising tuition. I care about the plight of Palestinians (and the plight of Israelis generally), but CUPE is just the wrong venue for that discussion.

Social justice is a hard thing to say no to these days, because when you say no you look like a big meanie (or a Republican!). Devotees take disagreements personally, and it can be dangerous to express a dissenting opinion in academia (it's not as bad as David Horowitz makes it out to be, but liberals can be just as petty as conservatives).

Easily Distracted has some good things to say about the sort of no answer that should always be valid:

No, this is the wrong institution or place for us to be doing that.
No, you (or I or we) are the wrong people to be doing that.
No, I know more than you do about what those ideas mean, so don’t try to tell me what to do. You should be listening to me instead.
No, this is an elitist institution that is just appropriating the language of social change for its own ends.
No. Is there a keg anywhere at this meeting?

There are more. Go read them.

how to shoot yourself in the foot

Last week, there was talk of a TTC strike. The city's mayor threatened to declare public transit an essential service (like firefighters and police) so that they couldn't strike. So the TTC agreed to give 48-hours notice before walking out. Last Friday, they gave their notice, leaving everyone (well, me anyway) worried over the weekend. Fortunately, at the eleventh hour the city reached a deal with the TTC Union bargaining team, and the strike was averted. All that was left was for the union membership to ratify the agreement, which included upgraded medical coverage and a 6% raise over the next two years.

Last night, at 10pm, the membership voted by a 2/3 margin to reject the agreement, releaseing a statement at 11 that as of midnight, public transit was on strike. Small piece of advice to transit workers: don't strike without warning on a Friday night. For better or worse, drunken revelers have a lot to say about public opinion, and stranding them to grab a cab ride home just isn't going to help your case.

Though the discussions are not public, and no statements have been made as to the basis for the strike. Rumor has it that the grievance involves the outsourcing of TTC maintenance work, which if true is a valid enough worry. But why destroy whatever public support they had by stranding riders?

More:
• commentary from transit advocate Steve Munro
• Globe and Mail blog coverage
• Toronto Star coverage
• National Post coverage
• Toronto Sun coverage
• Torontoist coverage
• Blog TO coverage

I've kept my strongest views about the TTC to myself, mostly because I am not used to being in a place so heavily unionized, and these views are decidedly anti-union. Whether officially designated as an essential service or not, the TTC is certainly essential to me, though rising costs are making year-round cycling a more and more attractive alternative. Subway trains each have at least two employees on board during operations--a driver and a watcher (she's the one who sticks her head out a window to make sure no one has their foot stuck in the gap before the train leaves a station). I'd eliminate them both, in favor of computerized trains. I'd also change the cash-ticket-token-daypass-weeklypass-monthlypass system to a single card system, where riders could buy single fares, lots of fares at discounted rates, or term-limited unlimited passage. They could purchase cards or add fares to cards at any subway stop (at automated machines that would take cash, debit, or credit), and they could also add fares online. The new card system would involve adding card swipes to buses and streetcars and would allow for the elimination of some of the ticket counter personnel. Also, there would be no advertising anywhere on the TTC. Not on the sides of buses, not in subway stations, and not in subway cars. That's my TTC.

subway shenanigans

To change or not to change? Toronto subway station heritage is being threatened. The 69 stations are stylistically linked with symmetric alternating tile colors, but the TTC recently decided to allow changes to 64 of those stations. Some renovations are already underway, including those at Museum station (before, above; after, below).

Some Torontonians are upset that "Museum station, a tidy, intact model of TTC subway design that will be tarted up with Egyptian caryatids."

I have to disagree. What "tarts up" the TTC are ads (revenues from which by the way cover less than 5% of operating costs).

The original subway design (minus the ads) had two virtues: simplicity and homogeneity. The design had little visual clutter and added visual cues (standard fonts and a colored band corresponding to the subway line) to help passengers orient themselves.

As long as the new designs tie in to their geographic surroundings--as the Museum Station redesign does--I see it as an improvement.

winter wonderland

Toronto doesn't have a good handle on snow. I took this picture about four days after a storm. You can see that most of the snow has melted from rooftops, and the intersections are clear of their usual slush. The giant pile of snow in the lower left partially blocks a driveway, and the snow piles narrow both the roads and sidewalks by half. No space at all is left for the cyclists. Melt-off collects in giant pools at every intersection, which is especially harrowing for parents pushing strollers--they can choose to plow through four to six inches of water, or skirt the puddles by taking to the street. (for better pictures and better analysis, see Spacing.ca)

Whereas many Canadian cities have invested in equipment and policies that work together to allow the city to quickly recover from a snowstorm, Toronto's approach seems half-baked and strikingly inefficient. It's as though it hasn't snowed here in Toronto annually for the past, oh, forever. The unfortunate bit is that much of the problem could be solved at a policy level, without any significant cash outlays for new equipment.

Snow removal parking bans are one simple and obvious policy change the city can make. The idea is simple: on the day of the storm, street parking on major thoroughfares closes at some specified time, those streets and sidewalks are completely cleared, and on subsequent evenings, parking on residential streets alternates from one side to the other.

The city is already starting to get into the game--its reaction to the second and third storms of the year were significantly better than to the first.

And yet, when I went for my run today, I found myself skating down hills, leaping large puddles, and treading a clear path inches narrow.

lots of parking

For some months, I've been mulling the strange phenomenon of parking in cities. On one hand, street parking is often tough to find. On the other, parking is vastly underutilized. As Katharine Mieszkowski puts it in an October essay for Salon,

there are few frustrations like driving around looking for a parking space, which has its own environmental impacts. Shoup studied a 15-block district in Los Angeles and found that drivers spent an average of 3.3 minutes looking for parking, driving about half a mile each. Over the course of a year, Shoup calculated the cruising in that small area would amount to 950,000 excess miles traveled, equal to 38 trips around the earth, wasting about 47,000 gallons of gas, and producing 730 tons of carbon dioxide that contribute to global warming.

Typically, though “parking lots a few blocks away stood half empty.” The situation is often worse in suburban or rural areas, where vast tracts are dedicated to single-story malls and their parking lots.

Wonder why the mall parking lot is half empty most of the time? Developers build parking lots to accommodate shoppers on the busiest shopping day of the year -- the day after Thanksgiving -- so that shoppers need never, ever park on the street. Similarly, the church parking lot is designed to accommodate Christmas and Easter services. So a whole lot of land gets paved over that doesn't have to be, transportation planners argue.

So what to do? Make parking free? No. Make it more expensive. "Free" parking is effectively a car-subsidy. It masks the true costs--in real-estate, congestion, fuel, and pollution. Higher prices, on the other hand, should discourage drivers from seeking to park streetside downtown.

For more on parking:

• Spacing.ca talks to Gina Laurel about the invisible aspects of city infrastructure: underground water mains, sewer lines, and the 'empty spaces' we devote to parking.
• Spacing.ca again, this time with a piece on greening parking lots--making surfaces water permeable, including greenery at the periphery, and separating walkways.
• Toronto's city planning board nearly incited a riot when it decided to reclaim the Matador, a dive in Little Italy, and turn it into a twenty-car parking lot. The price tag? Over $800,000, or $40,000 per space.
• Detroit has reclaimed some space of its own, but they're maintaining the unique architecture of the original structure: the ornate Michigan Theater is now a parking garage.
• Congestion pricing seems not to be as regressive as critics charge: although the burden falls more heavily on poor drivers than rich, lowered congestion adds value in the form of newly efficient public transportation--making buses a more viable choice for all.
• New transit hubs may eschew the old model (build a rail station in the middle of a giant parking lot adjacent to a highway interchange) for something new: mobility hubs, enticing cyclists and walkers with lockers, showers, and tree-lined, groomed paths. Giant lots of old would be replaced with paid parking structures and mixed use real-estate.
  

irony

Yesterday, I said our built environment

usually fades into the background. Or, better, it seeps into our subconscious.

That's not entirely true. This happened today, just down the street from my house:Yikes.

From Torontoist.

the built environment

The built environment--the buildings and streets and parks that form the background of our daily activities--usually fades into the background. Or, better, it seeps into our subconscious. It nevertheless shapes our movements, alters our mood, and becomes a part of our identity. This is my beautiful building.

It's just down the street from this monstrosity, the Royal Ontario Museum.
Don't get me wrong; I'm not against modern architecture. I rather like this bit of Wright-inspired tastefulness, the Gardiner Museum, also just down the street.
I'm not against glass, either, as I'm quite fond of Apple's Fifth Avenue retail store:I like the idea of preserving our heritage (top) and building the new and exciting (bottom). But mixing the two can be very dangerous (the ROM). A progressive alien crystalline form engulfing our very heritage may not have been quite the effect the architects intended.

Progress is a funny thing.

In Maine, we pay dairy farmers money to keep them in business. We do it so that we continue to have a dairy industry in Maine. It's a part of our heritage we want to hold on to, even if it isn't self-sustaining. At the same time, we want to be a part of the global economy. So we give tax breaks to high-tech companies in the hopes that the old can live alongside the new. It would be easy to say that every time we change our built environment, we're giving up a piece of our culture. Every time we cut down a 200 year old oak to widen a street, we're selling our very soul. Would greening Trafalgar have the same effect? More to the point, there was a day Old Vic was new--a great mass of stone thrust up out of farm lands, a manifestation of the siren call of progress ushering in a new economy of opportunity--and inequality. To avoid change is to stagnate, to become irrelevant. The challenge is to make each change our own, to incorporate it into our environment so that it, too, can seep beneath our consciousness and become a part of us. Toronto has a long history of architectural creativity, as much evidenced by what it has chosen not to do as by its current distinctive skyline.

I am by no means settled on this question. Perhaps knowing something about architecture might help. Likely not. Although knowing something would surely accelerate my ruminations and perhaps allow me fuller expression of them, I suspect that the question of heritage and progress will remain forever a very personal and troubled one.

observations on the changing climate

I grew up in Maine. My hometown has two thousand people, many square miles of farmland, and many more of forest. In my youth I wandered for hours in the woods behind my house without ever seeing another person—though there were signs. Mossy old stone walls, rutted tracks overgrown with birch saplings, the occasional rusted bit of barbed wire with a tree growing around it. The people there mostly work in offices now, but their childhoods were like mine. They have a deep connection with the land, and understanding of how things change over the years.

I live in Toronto now. The juxtaposition is jarring. I probably walk past two thousand people on my way to class each day. Neighborhoods stretch for miles, office buildings scrape the sky. Torontonians are much more easily convinced that human beings are causing climate change. Why? Because human beings make up so much of their environment. Buildings come down and new ones go up. People see the crush of humanity, the grime of city streets. They see the lush green of the parks trampled to mud. In my hometown, there’s a lot of dirt, but none of it is grime. In my hometown, people see the power of nature, and those among us who still farm rely on it for their livelihoods. Nature is still majestic in my hometown. The sublime lives. The eighteenth century is present in the attitudes of the people. In Toronto, the eighteenth century is present in the stone buildings now dwarfed by steel towers.

No wonder people in cities tend toward liberalism, humanism, and climate change more easily than folks who work the land for their very lives.

city life

As I fly over Toronto, I sometimes wonder how much of it—this city—is devoted to its own maintenance. Feeding the people here, repairing the infrastructure, removing waste and supplying replacements for broken items. What else goes on here in Toronto?

Steve Johnson has written books exploiting the trope of the city as an organism. But new research suggests this is a false metaphor. When organisms get larger, they use less energy (by mass), and move slower. On the other hand, “as cities get larger they create more wealth and they are more innovative at a faster rate.” In other words, as compared to growth in size, energy requirements grow more slowly while wealth grows more quickly. Bigger cities are 'smarter' cities. That's not to say things are perfect:

Large cities generate considerable wealth, they are home to many high paying jobs and are seen as engines of innovation. But cities also generate pollution, crime and poor social structures that lead to the urban blight that plagues their very existence.

This research suggests that more resources should go toward solving pollution, crime, and social problems—not toward suburbanization. I agree; suburbs are a great evil. I suppose that if cities handled pollution, crime, and social problems better, fewer people would flee to the burbs.

But I sure wouldn't trade in my childhood of running around in the woods of Maine.