Adopt A City ~ Forbes Spots Romer on Charters

Forbes video Adopt a City spotlights Paul Romer and his Charter Cities idea...

Rising Cain ~ On Reading US Constitution...

Watch here rising US Presidential candidate Herman Cain back in mid-2010 encouraging everyone in DC to actually read the American Declaration of Independence and US Constitution -- and maybe learn! FYI, Cain's surely the only serious candidate with math and CS degrees and who has actually successfully run multiple entrepreneurial ventures! And here's Cain in WSJ Big Interview... Finally, here's 21 Things I didn't know about Cain.

Hieroglyph ~ SF Inspiring Big Stuff Getting Done

Neil Stephenson writes Innovation Starvation in the World Policy Journal where he writes...

"I worry that our inability to match the achievements of the 1960s space program might be symptomatic of a general failure of our society to get big things done. [...] “You’re the ones who’ve been slacking off!” proclaims Michael Crow, president of Arizona State University [...] He refers, of course, to SF writers. The scientists and engineers, he seems to be saying, are ready and looking for things to do. Time for the SF writers to start pulling their weight and supplying big visions that make sense. Hence the Hieroglyph project, an effort to produce an anthology of new SF that will be in some ways a conscious throwback to the practical techno-optimism of the Golden Age."

Hieroglyph = a project of science fiction writers to depict future worlds in which BSGD (Big Stuff Gets Done).

Roofhouse ~ Urban Residences Plopped Up Top!

Learned about this Boston roofhouse just now!

Cycle-Friendly Bus Stops ~ High-Safety Bikelanes

Cycle Pathologist David Hembrow shares practical design tips for making bicycle-friendly bus stops instead of US-style deathtraps... This has been Dutch cycling sensibility for decades...

R.I.P. Jobs ~ Resilient & Inspired Giant Laid Low

Robo Pool ~ Queen's RCVLab Does Shot Calc's!

Deep Green & Augmented Reality Pool via robot & computer vision...

"The RCVLab at Queen's University demonstrates Deep Green, a pool playing robot, and ARPool, an augmented reality system for teaching the science of pool."

New London Bus ~ More Iconic Design Promo!

I wrote earlier about the new London bus design -- the Routemaster 2.0 -- and it's glorious and iconic. So here's a nice bit of visual promo to savor!

Greenroofs Movement ~ Towards Vital Cities...

There's a growing greenroofs movement, with cities such as Copenhagen mandating greenery on new flatroofs... And with Chicago showing the way right from the top at City Hall... They help us imagine better futures... We can even dream of Greening Gotham... And here envisioning greenroofs over Boston... This means, of course, building more real structures, just like these...

Covering Up ~ Greenroofs On Rails, Roads, Plus

Bridgette Meinhold from Inhabitat spots a Green-Roofed Urban Park Atop a Railway Deck in Munich... This got me thinking about other examples of resurfacing our 'ways. Here's Harvard's somewhat delayed 2050 plan for their Allston campus including depressing Storrow Drive near HBS... Plus I've pointed at Habitat Highways earlier... And here's Critter Crossings... There's far more to be done, though, and many opportunities for further reclaiming space from 'ways and for covering up parking lots, such as here the beautiful Post Office Square... And here's the epic Kaiser parking structure roof garden...

Inhabitat Greenery ~ Dose of Delightful Designs!

Another dose of green designs via Inhabitat! Click-on these...

Changing Forests ~ NYT on Planetary Lungs...

Justin Gillis writes in the NYTimes that With Deaths of Forests, a Loss of Key Climate Protectors...

"Scientists have figured out -- with the precise numbers deduced only recently -- that forests have been absorbing more than a quarter of the carbon dioxide that people are putting into the air by burning fossil fuels and other activities. It is an amount so large that trees are effectively absorbing the emissions from all the world’s cars and trucks. Without that disposal service, the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would be rising faster. The gas traps heat from the sun, and human emissions are causing the planet to warm. Yet the forests have only been able to restrain the increase, not halt it. And some scientists are increasingly worried that as the warming accelerates, trees themselves could become climate-change victims on a massive scale."

Earthrise ~ Al Jaz on Uplifting the World...

Al Jazeera has a new series Earthrise...

"...exploring solutions to today's environmental challenges, taking an upbeat look at ecological, scientific, technological and design projects the world over. Our reporters will meet inspiring individuals and communities leading the way in a field no one can afford to ignore."

Here's two segments to give a taste. First, the Great Green Wall... Next, Six-Legged Meat...

Meltdown ~ Al Jaz on Crashing the World...

Al Jazeera casts forth Meltdown, a continuing multi-part investigation of the 2008 global financial collapse and consequences, asking...

"...how did it all go so wrong? Lack of government regulation; easy lending in the US housing market meant anyone could qualify for a home loan with no government regulations in place. Also, London was competing with New York as the banking capital of the world. Gordon Brown, the British finance minister at the time, introduced 'light touch regulation' -- giving bankers a free hand in the marketplace. All this, and with key players making the wrong financial decisions, saw the world's biggest financial collapse."

Part One, the men who crashed the world... Part Two, a global financial tsunami... Still to come are Paying the Price and After the Fall.

Smashing Parade ~ My Kind of Guinness Record!

The women of Australia's Gold Coast are smashing, reports the Telegraph! Of Guinness Records, that is...

Prohibition ~ Unjust US Alcohol Criminalization

It's excellent to see PBS spotlight a sordid period in US history when liberty and freedom of choice were criminalized: alcohol was prohibited and forbidden for everyone! (Vestiges of this era continue today with the unconstitutional and discriminatory 18-21 year old drinking age laws -- i.e. voting age citizens unequally treated under law and denied their right to imbibe.) The new documentary Prohibition by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick premiers October 2nd, 3rd & 4th, 2011 at 8pm on PBS and...

"...tells the story of the rise, rule, and fall of the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the entire era it encompassed. The culmination of nearly a century of activism, Prohibition was intended to improve, even to ennoble, the lives of all Americans, to protect individuals, families, and society at large from the devastating effects of alcohol abuse. But the enshrining of a faith-driven moral code in the Constitution paradoxically caused millions of Americans to rethink their definition of morality. Thugs became celebrities, responsible authority was rendered impotent. Social mores in place for a century were obliterated."

Sound familiar? Lessons have not been learned: the same is happening today with the ongoing and insane War on Drugs. Check out the extended promo trailer for Prohibition (and watch tonight!)...

Back to Normal ~ Amputee Gets iWalk Prosthetic

Deena Centrofanti from WJBK Detroit reports Michigan Amputee Gets Fitted with iWalk Bionic Limb...

"In 1999, a Hartland Township firefighter fell and broke his leg in a way that doctors couldn't fix it. [...] "I got the amputation in July of 2003 and started to get my life back little by little," said Dave Dunville. [... He's now] getting fitted with what's being called a bionic prosthesis, the iWalk [created by MIT Media Lab Professor Hugh Herr and colleagues at their spinoff company...] A typical prosthesis works with a stiff system of springs, which means just walking can be exhausting and next to impossible, but robotics in the iWalk act like tendons and muscles in your foot and ankle. [...] At his final fitting, Dunville was overwhelmed as the foot was powered up with a smart phone. "The feeling was, it was 12 years ago," he said. It's modern day science and technology that is taking him back in time. "I'm back to normal. I'm back to whole. When it's all said and done, I'm going to feel like I have a leg again," Dunville said."

Action Timelapse ~ Construction, Cities, Streets

Nice timelapse videos of construction projects and urban scenes! Or in this first case, destruction, thanks to Kuriositas... An old favorite again, the Sandpit in NYC... London/UK... Abu Dhabi...

Orbit ~ Swiveling Smartphone Suction Mount

Thanks to our MIT Imaging Ventures alumco Cinetics founder Justin Jensen -- creator of the CineSkates -- for spotting another Kickstarter project, the Orbit, a Swiveling Smartphone Suction Mount!

Social Life of Small Urban Spaces ~ Whyte's Docu

Thanks to Copenhagen Cycle Chic for spotting The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces by William H Whyte from 1979...