Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space

"A community’s physical form, rather than its land uses, is its most intrinsic and enduring characteristic." [Katz, EPA] This blog focuses on place and placemaking and all that makes it work--historic preservation, urban design, transportation, asset-based community development, arts & cultural development, commercial district revitalization, tourism & destination development, and quality of life advocacy--along with doses of civic engagement and good governance watchdogging.

Sunday, May 27, 2018

Park benches as cultural information and wayfinding devices

https://www.fwdp.co.uk/recent-projects/providing-interactive-benches-along-monmouthshire-and-brecon-beacons-canalDesigned by FitzpatrickWoolmer on the Brecon Beacons Canal for the Canal And River Trust.

Often such benches are used to display advertising, but there are plenty of creative opportunities to utilize them differently.

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4 Comments:

At 7:05 PM, Anonymous charlie said...

Offtopic:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/28/world/europe/uk-austerity-poverty.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

When do you leave?


I really don't view what has happened in England as "austerity". Local funding sources have been cut. That isn't unknown.

What happened in Ireland, Greece and Portugal is austerity. 10x worse.

Again, we aren't precise on language here.


 
At 10:10 PM, Blogger Richard Layman said...

will read momentarily. Thanks.

Simon Wren-Lewis (mainly macro) is pretty adamant about the term austerity. (And Krugman.) It's more about classic Keynes. In a downturn the govt. is supposed to spend. Not cut. Not increase taxes. Etc.

The UK cut the national budget and viciously cut the local budgets. I don't know if before the Tories the local govts. were responsible for social care too. They are now.

Greece, Ireland, Iceland were more what Naomi Klein calls " shock doctrine." Again, in a downturn they needed govt. spending, instead they got catastrophic cuts. I'd call that devastation vs. austerity.

wrt your point about 10x and the need for more precision, I guess we need to think about this along the lines of the Richter Scale and logarythmic scales.


=====
am leaving tomorrow mid-afternoon. I haven't set up some appointments in London so I need to get those queries out before I leave, along with a couple job applications.

But I have my basic itinerary and lodging stuff. Have my train ticket to/from Liverpool and my London Oyster visitor pass!

Any recommendations on things I should try to see are welcome.

 
At 10:38 PM, Blogger Richard Layman said...

In the UK, benefits cuts too. We didn't do that, but are doing it now (work requirements, cutting subsidies for health care, eliminating CHIP program, at least for awhile, etc.).

===
speaking of reading, you really should read that Buehler et al. article I cited the other day on the German (and Austria and ZUrich) transport associations. A really great article. Great list of references, including a 2009 publication by the German association of transport assns. I downloaded the latter but haven't read it yet.

https://www.apta.com/resources/mobility/Documents/UJST_A_1431821_O%20FINAL%20correction.pdf

I'm embarrassed that I never did a Google Scholar search before, although the article is pretty fresh, but not the various cites.

 
At 9:34 AM, Anonymous Charlie said...

https://www.theguardian.com/business/ng-interactive/2015/apr/29/the-austerity-delusion

I’d agree with you and Krugman. Benefits cuts (like here) ins’t austerity, it is a policical choice.

In the US we don’t have a semblance of austerity; in the UK they used that as cover.


I do think Krugman is too Keynes and not enough on monetary issues. Given how Italy is the news today, lets remind us theat $6 trillion on Keynes inspired debt is going to be due at some point, and somebody is going to pay for it.

(Probably the Germans, as what it means it we need much higher inflation to pay for it)

Good luck on the trip. I made a small donation. Sometimes it takes 6 months before you realize the value of a trip like this. Save the Guardian article for the flight — very long.

 

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