Smogr

Monument of the open hand - Punjab governmental complex, Chandigarh 1951-65

India_Chandigarh_24_bw, originally uploaded by weyerdk

Happy Birthday Jane Jacobs!

To celebrate Jane Jacobs birthday, why don’t you go on a Jane’s Walk?

Grand Central Terminal’s Iconic Incandescent Light Bulbs Switched to Compact Fluorescents

Grand Central Terminal - New York City, originally uploaded by Chalky Lives

Illustrating just how easy it is for organizations to save both money and reduce carbon footprint, MetroNorth switched a majority of their lamps to CFL’s:

In time for Earth Day, MTA Metro-North Railroad has completed the conversion from bare, incandescent light bulbs to environmentally sustainable compact fluorescent light bulbs.

With more than 1,700 CFLs installed throughout the public areas of the terminal, the railroad expects to save more than $100,000 a year on utility bills and more than 100,000 kilowatt hours in electricity. And because these bulbs last up to 10 times longer than incandescent bulbs, the railroad will save thousands of dollars on replacement costs.

Because of the need to maintain the aesthetic standards of the landmarked terminal, the switch to CFLs in public areas of the terminal was not possible until the introduction of bulbs that closely mimicked the shape of incandescent bulbs.

So not only are the bridges of New York becoming more energy efficient but also major historical buildings as well. Golf clap.

Energy-efficient LED Lighting to Shine at Verrazano-Narrows Bridge

Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, originally uploaded by Rick Elkins

From the press office:

At the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge today, a maintenance worker suspended in a bucket truck replaced the first of 262 fifty-pound conventional light fixtures and necklace lights with a new lighter fixture and an energy-saving light-emitting diode (LED) bulb.

The Verrazano-Narrows is slated to be the first among the agency’s seven bridges to have hundreds of LED necklace lights installed in the next year as part of the authority’s environmental program.

These lights will cut necklace light electricity use by 73% and, because they have an estimated 5-to-10-year usage expectancy, the move increases worker safety by minimizing the need to change lights or “re-lamp”, high above traffic, which would require lane closures below and cause delays.

It is admirable that the MTA is working on ways to both save taxpayers money and reduce its carbon footprint. Yet I can’t help but worry that the new lights will be inferior to what is existing. Just look at the Empire State Building’s new LED lighting which lacks some of the drama of the older (and more wasteful) high pressure sodium vapor lights. Nonetheless, LED technology will only improve and I wouldn’t be surprised if in the near-future LED lamps will match and exceed both color rendering and dynamic range of the lamps they are replacing.

Herbert Bayer, 1925

Herbert Bayer, 1925, originally uploaded by louis_no_0119

Thursday Links

Deindustrialization Sorting
Paulville: [its stated goal is to] establish gated communities containing 100% Ron Paul supporters and or people that live by the ideals of freedom and liberty - and they are going to build in West Texas
Interview with Matthew Dent designer of the new Coinage of the United Kingdom
Why do New Yorkers seem rude? A noted critic and essayist has a few ideas (we aren’t rude; we are busy and don’t take anyone’s BS)
Port Authority to develop Moynihan Station
125th Street Harlem Zoning Proposal
May Day: Istanbul

The history of New York City in video games
Gehry’s Santa Monica Place to be Demolished
FLARE turns the building facade into a penetrable kinetic membrane
The number of NYC residential permits issued in the city dropped 46% to 558 from 1,038
Victorian Land Use lead to the agglomeration economies required for the Industrial Revolution say Nick Crafts and Tim Leunig
Google Transit Gets Smarter and Smarter
Lot 40s workwear pants buttons

The Uncanny Valley on 30 Rock

The Uncanny Valley was on this week’s episode of 30 Rock:

What’s the uncanny valley?

…a hypothesis that when robots and other facsimiles of humans look and act almost, but not entirely, like actual humans, it causes a response of revulsion among human observers. The “valley” in question is a dip in a proposed graph of the positivity of human reaction as a function of a robot’s lifelikeness.

Which is a reason why so many urban and city simulations are unconvincing, no matter how interesting digital urban experiments are at recreating urbanity. The life of urban life is often busy.