Canals ~ Early Disruptive & -ted Infrastructure!

Bill Warner spotlights how Before the Internet, There Was the Middlesex Canal...

"When you take a look at the history of the Middlesex Canal, built from 1794 to 1802, you’ll find a surprising similarity between the issues facing technology investors today, with those over 200 years ago. [...] The technology of moving goods at great scale and at low cost started with the Middlesex Canal. Then the railroads took over. Now containerization [...] Like all technology change, those in control of the current technology fight hard to hold on [...] But the march of technology is relentless when new approaches cut costs and increase speed."

Be especially sure as you read Bill's story to check out his MapJunction tool to visualize the historic pathway overlaid over contemporary photo-map!

K V Switzer 261 ~ 50 Years of Women's Marathon!

Today marks 50 years of women racing in the Marathon. It's a great story...

Mini Independence Day ~ Hung's Boston 'Works!

A City Upon a Hill ~ Beautiful Boston Timelapse!

Sean Collins, Julian Tryba, and colleagues share A City Upon a Hill...

Dudley Square ~ Time for Neighborhood Revival...

In her Globe piece Developer reflects Dudley Square’s renaissance, Meghan Irons writes of long-time developer Kenneth Guscott who...

"Came of age when Dudley Square was still at its peak [...] At its prime, Dudley Square was the second-busiest commercial district in Boston, after downtown. And it was the epicenter of the black community. But as Guscott turned 15, the 1940s swept in a period of uncertainty, leaving Dudley’s residents clinging to a prosperity that would dissipate. Now, as Guscott enters his 90s, his deep connection to Dudley Square offers a glimpse of the triumphs, demise, and promised resurgence that consumed Roxbury’s main commercial district and the people living nearby."

Fascinating arc of transformation over time.

Sawyer ~ Rethink's Latest Manufacturing Bot...

Snow More ~ Boston Weather Records Buried...

We need to normalize snowfall by a "persistence factor" because otherwise any old flake counts, even if it instamelts. Enduring snowy shit, that's the real deal, and the only thing worth counting...

R.I.P. Leonard Nimoy ~ Live Long and Prosper...

Alas Leonard Nimoy has passed away at 83 of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which he attributed to years of smoking cigs. Born and raised in Boston's West End by immigrant Jews from Soviet Ukraine, he's perhaps best remembered for his enduring portrayal of the mostly logical half-Vulcan Mr Spock on Star Trek, where his signature hand-gesture emerged and also the tagline which inspired me and so many others -- "Live Long and Prosper"

True T Map ~ @SaraMorrison on Boston's BS...

@SaraMorrison true-maps the Boston MBTA...

Snow Pros ~ Competent Removal vs Shitshow

Watching the local yokels here in Boston keep pushing snow around from street to sidewalk (and then back again) and dealing with it in what is surely the most incompetent possible fashion, inspires our visit to places that actually know what they're doing. First, Montreal... (But don't Get Plowed by the Canuck Mob while you're at it!-)

Next, Helsinki... Norway... Netherlands... Italy... Japan... Finally, stop your excuses, here's Hokkaido, Japan...

Snowzilla ~ Clearance Technologies Over Time!

The Globe spotlights the history of snow clearance technology over time, including my favorite -- Snowzilla!

"A powerful but homely creature, Snowzilla sounds like 10,000 hair dryers running at once and resembles a cross between an aardvark and a tollbooth. It sits on railroad wheels, weighs 26,000 pounds, and measures 8 by 12 by 27 feet -- though most of that length is taken up by its elongated snout. Its thirst for fuel is so great -- it guzzles 900 gallons in a single run -- that a tanker truck must follow it from station to station."

And here's it is in full blow!

Resilience Dividend ~ Boston's Prep, Readiness...

The Guardian excerpts Judith Rodin's The Resilience Dividend: Managing Disruption, Avoiding Disaster and Growing Stronger in an Unpredictable World...

"The city of Boston proved it had developed an exceptional state of readiness for a citywide disruption when, on the afternoon of 15 April, 2013 -- Marathon Monday, as it’s known there -- two improvised explosive devices detonated on Boylston Street. Although the attack was unanticipated and unpredictable, Boston had been getting ready for just such an event for more than a decade -- through network building and streamlining communications to improve awareness, undertaking situational drills and exercises to fine-­tune integration, and finding and adapting best practices from colleagues worldwide to bring in a broad range of ideas and solutions. [...] Being prepared is not a matter of luck [...] It was a matter of carefully and methodically building the char­acteristics of resilience that enable an effective response to crisis. Resilience is not only about responding to shock and stress. It is also about learning and continuing to adapt and grow because of the ex­perience. This process of “revitalisation” can further increase your readiness for sub­sequent disruptions, find opportunities that emerge from what you have learned, affect positive changes, and build even greater resilience (“the resilience dividend”)."

Waterfront Cities ~ Blending Beauty & Business!

Waterfront Cities series, starting with Singapore... Copenhagen... San Francisco... Boston... Melbourne... Tokyo... Bangkok... Vancouver...

Innovation Village ~ Kirsner Spots Ames Biz Park

The Globe's Scott Kirsner spotlights the revitalized Somerville, MA Ames Business Park and its many creative tenants in his Innovation Economy column this Sunday...

"The obituary of the Ames Safety Envelope Company was written in February 2010. [...] Most of the equipment was sold at auction, and the factory went dark. [...] The descendants of Ames’ founder considered selling the property, but weren’t sure they could find a buyer. And they fretted over filling the 290,000-square-foot complex with tenants. “I thought it was an almost impossible task,” says Arthur Fitzgerald, grandson of the company’s founder, John W. Fitzgerald. Skip ahead four years: The final chunk of space in the Ames complex was leased this month. And what is now known as the Ames Business Park is not only fully occupied, it also has become the entrepreneurial epicenter of Somerville, home to a brewery, dozens of start-ups, [etc.] It’s a more diverse blend of people and ideas than you’d find in Kendall Square -- in part because rent is cheaper -- and it’s more densely-packed than Boston’s Innovation District. [...] Now, the question for Somerville is how to encourage similar “innovation villages” to spring up. What happened at the Ames complex was a rare confluence of empty industrial space, entities eager to fill it, and a light touch when it came to planning and marketing. [...] Ames, says [Somerville] Mayor Curtatone, “has really had an impact on our thinking as policy-makers about how to preserve such spaces, to allow for more startups and ideas to flourish in Somerville, and to grow that new economy in our city.” Magic can be hard to replicate -- but it’s worth trying."

Soofa.co ~ Solar-Powered Benches in Boston!

Sandra Richter co-founder of MIT Media Lab spinoff company Changing Environments reveals their latest solar-powered bench which charges your smartphone -- Soofa.co -- to Boston Mayor Marty Walsh! And just last week, Sandra was hanging with US President Obama (who doesn't need help keeping things charged;-)

Expanding MBTA ~ Boston's Metro System Anime

MapPorn spots Vanshnookenraggen's lovely timelapse anime of Boston's MBTA's expansion rendered in modern map format!

Future of Play ~ Sand Garden Born in Boston!

Ruth Graham writes in the Globe about the future of play, How the American playground was born in Boston...

"As children’s play spaces evolve, the spirit behind the original 19th-century “sand garden” is on the rise again. [...] in 1885, one charitable group decided to offer something of an experiment to the local children: a pile of sand, deposited for the summer in the yard of a chapel on Parmenter Street. Little did any of them know how much it would change the experience of childhood in America. [...] The spot -- across the street from what is now the North End public library branch -- was an immediate hit with children, who spent long afternoons digging with small shovels and making sand pies. [...] Today, playgrounds look nothing like that simple sandpile. Over the next century, playgrounds were filled in with dangerous but thrilling monkey bars, swings, see-saws, and metal carousels, all on beds of dirt or asphalt. Then, starting in the 1980s, a new trend began, in which these sometimes rusty and risky structures were replaced by standardized plastic structures, the asphalt giving way to rubber matting. Modern playgrounds have become so predictable, cushioned, and programmed that they are now coming under attack as a symptom of everything that’s wrong with contemporary childhood. [...] The most ambitious play thinkers argue that the ultimate goal should be returning the places we live -- or at least neighborhoods -- to kids. [...] Not all opportunities for play, in other words, need to be look like playgrounds. They don’t necessarily need to be permanent, expensive, or complicated. As Johnson puts it, “We ought to have play that comes and goes. We ought to dump some sand piles in the summer.” What people thought children wanted in the 1880s, it turns out, might be the same thing they want today."

Here's just a couple of the Globe's archival playground pictures!

Boston Cluster ~ On BBC's Next Silicon Valleys...

The BBC's Richard Taylor reports in the Next Silicon Valleys series that Boston breaks through: Speed reading and life-size robots making a lot of noise over the supposed east vs west coast rivalry...

"What grates here is that Mark Zuckerberg famously started Facebook from his Harvard dorm room, but before long took the social network to the other side of the country [...] all too often Boston start-ups end up being snapped up by their bigger, West Coast brethren; witness Google's recent purchase of another local robotic success story, Boston Dynamics. The challenge for Boston, it seems, is not just to develop the talent, but to hold on to it too."

Sorry, what most grates is that Taylor entirely missed the real story which is that Boston has intentionally been exporting innovation -- i.e. successfully distributing the enabling pieces, processes, and philosophy of progress and prosperity -- for over a century.  MIT people, for instance, went out to co-found Stanford University and then later Stanford's Research Park, Hewlett-Packard, Watkins-Johnson, Shockley Semiconductor, Fairchild Semi, Intel, Kleiner-Perkins, and dozens more essential elements which actually made Silicon Valley possible in the first place.  The problems of our planet are too many for us to be geographically parochial and not spread the innovation ethos everywhere.

Sweet Science ~ Reinventing Maple Harvesting!

The Globe sez in A jolt for the science behind harvesting maple sap...

"Scientists find way to harvest without taps or buckets or, even, what you’d call trees. Cutting-edge maple syrup production experiments at the University of Vermont show that maple sap can be vacuumed from the slashed-off trunks of saplings."

Urban Farming ~ Imagining Future Boston Food...

The Globe's Leon Neyfakh asks If urban farming took off, what would Boston look like?

"Not every farm looks like a farm any more. A new type of agriculture has been sprouting up in urban centers [...] and Boston’s new ordinance opens the city up to a whole range of ideas about how to integrate food production into city life. [...] On the more inventive side, entrepreneurs are trying to reimagine the traditional mechanics of agriculture so that it might be woven into the built landscape of a dense and busy city. Now that Boston has officially signaled its interest, the possibilities are vast -- maybe Boston can even become home to North America’s first skyscraper farm"

Neyfakh goes on to spotlight several specific ideas...

• A-Frame Conveyors ~ Ferris wheels for plants
• High-Rise Farming ~ Greenhouse skyscrapers
• Rooftop Greenhouses ~ Available empty acres
• Hydroponic Trays ~ Stacked veggie growing
• Shipping Container Mini-Farms ~ LED-litups
• Tilapia Ecosystems ~ Fish-fertilized gardens
• Shopping Cart Gardens ~ Guerrilla agriculture
• Corner Fields ~ Using vacant land parcels
• Undersea Edibles ~ Shellfish and seaweed
• Green Basements ~ LED-lit underused areas
• Bees ~ Urban healthy insect husbandry
• Chickens ~ Non-rooster urban coops