irishboyinlondon

An interesting piece comparing successful cities to start up businesses

On stage at last month’s Le Web conferenceShervin Pishevar, a Managing Director at Menlo Ventures, stated “The World is a Startup.” It’s an interesting perspective, and I think what’s true for the world is also true for countries, states and municipalities. With developments like last month’sannouncement that Cornell was selected to build a new tech campus in New York City, it seems to follow that if “a city is a startup,” then the best mayors are the ones who are looking at their cities in much the same way as entrepreneurs look at the companies they have founded.

The ingredients for a successful startup and a successful city are remarkably similar. You need to build stuff that people want. You need to attract quality talent. You have to have enough capital to get your fledgling ideas to a point of sustainability. And you need to create a world-class culture that not only attracts the best possible people, but encourages them to stick around even when things aren’t going so great.

Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters

The Guardian report on the findings of a new study entitled “Understanding Walking & Cycling” produced collaboration between Lancaster University, the University of Leeds and Oxford Brookes University. Worth reading if initially dispiriting (some extracts below)!

The debate is ongoing continually - segregated cycle lanes or mixed traffic cycling…the answer in my opinion has to be segregated cycling lanes on main roads.  Pedestrians have a footpath for a reason, cyclists should also get protection. We urgently need to commit to a strategy soon…for every week we delay and debate, street lights, traffic lights, bins, railings, bike racks and parking spaces etc are being misplaced and making any improvements more expensive.

Large scale infrastructural improvements will always be expensive initially but the benefits can far outweigh the initial investment and last indefinitely in some instances…reduced carbon emissions, improvements in societal health and well being, increased mobility and access to employment and other opportunities and more pleasant and livable cities overall.

The public are usually skeptical until a point is proved. Take pedestrianisation schemes, any time a road gets pedestrianised businesses worry and complain that they will lose business..in most instances foot fall usually increases upon implementation and business improves!!

Also we need to loose the current London cycle look (lycra and dust masks) and become cycle chic like these nice people! If cycling looks like its only for the uberfit many people will be intimidated! 

More on the study can be read here!

“Many people barely recognise the bicycle as a legitimate mode of transport; it is either a toy for children or a vehicle fit only for the poor and/or strange,” Dave Horton, of Lancaster University, wrote in an interim assessment of the Understanding Walking and Cycling study.

 ”For them, cycling is a bit embarrassing, they fail to see its purpose, and have no interest in integrating it into their lives, certainly on a regular basis.”…..

 A key finding was that the small numbers of people who do try cycling tend to be intimidated by overwhelmingly car-oriented urban layouts…..

….”The hardy, Lycra-clad cyclists confirm that cycling is a very skilled practice, from which most people immediately distance themselves. So far, cycling promotion still reaches mainly that smallish part of the population that does not really need that much convincing.”

Interesting article from Arch Daily by Kelly Miner on Portland discussing the relationships between neighbourhoods, districts and cities and how neighbourhoods are the building blocks of sustainable, successful and robust cities !

Neighborhoods are the building blocks of cities — semi-autonomous areas where people build their lives and root their identities. Neighborhoods are also the right scale to accelerate sustainability — small enough to innovate quickly and big enough to have a meaningful impact. This link between people and scale makes neighborhoods the most critical “intervention points” within cities to identify and develop sustainability strategies. Called EcoDistricts, they provide the very ingredients needed in a resource-constrained world: the harvesting of water and energy, the production of food, the ability to move freely and affordably without a car, and careful stewardship and reprocessing of materials.

Yet in a city, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. While neighborhoods provide the right scale to accelerate sustainability, they regularly behave differently from each other and display unique characteristics. These unique traits can be an asset, providing a set of resources to share across a city. A neighborhood prone to flooding can supply fresh water to neighborhoods that run dry. Or a district with ample sun exposure can fuel a downtown that consumes more than its solar potential. Between them, districts create balance — the yin and yang of urban resources. The result is a city in symbiosis with its districts giving and taking resources from one another to maximize the performance of the whole.