Congratulations certainly go to Christchurch City Council for the plan produced so quickly. It includes some great ideas, but overall it's bland, conservative and 10+ years behind the level of creativity and innovation for which I would hope, to which I think we kiwis aspire. It appears that the plan largely copies good practice from around the world. This is not bad, in itself. Implementing principles that work, makes sense. But we should be doing it better.
If implemented, I think the plan would result in a nice place to live and be, but only that. It is certainly not world leading or innovative, and would be something a city might have aspired to over 10 years ago. Christchurch won't become a destination with this proposal, rather, just another nice city to pass through while on the way to somewhere else.
One of my key concerns is that there is no unifying theme. The plan contains many good individual goals, such as pocket parks and neighborhoods, but nothing ties it together, nor does anything stand out. If we really wanted to be true to our "garden city" name, for example, then we should be ensuring all new buildings have a green roof or green wall, as well as maintaining a high green rating, rather than encouraging a small percentage to do so. Or better still, employing NZ creative talent to conjure an even greener garden-ier vision.
The plan also appears to be weak in connecting the inner city to the rest of the city, particularly in the light of global trends such as peak oil. In this context we should be aiming at a city wide reduction in the need for, or reliance upon, individual car usage. This might be implemented through the expansion of the bus network, supporting car sharing schemes, and by increasing the number and quality of cycle lanes.
And finally, we shouldn't be limiting our imaginations to the size of our wallets. Perhaps we should consider more creative financing options, such as becoming a carbon neutral city and trading that for carbon $.
17/08/2011
I've just started a plan to share my car with a neighbour. After trawling the web and being unable to find how one calculates the per km cost, I put my rusty high school math to the test and came up with a model. Here it is, in case anyone finds it useful. You'll no doubt have to change the figures, but that's an easy substitute:
Annual Running Costs:
registration/year: $431
WOF/year: $70
2 * car serviced: $200
minor repairs/year: $400
insurance(full)/year: $470
Total running costs = $1571
Petrol and Mileage
Current petrol cost: $1.93/litre
Car does (city km): 500km per 40 litre tank
which equals 12.5km/litre
Estimated Usage
femke: 20,000km/year
neighbour: 10,000km/year
total: 30,000km/year
Cost/km Calculation
30,000 km/year divided by 12.5km/ltr = 2400 litres/year
2400 * 1.93 = $4632/year cost of petrol
annual cost of car = $4632 + $1571 = $6203
Cost/km = $6203/30,000 = 21 cents/km
We actually ended up settling on 25 cents/km, which is probably more realistic given the number of kilometers travelled. In terms of how we actually do the sharing, there is a notebook in the car for my neighbour to log his miles. Each month we do a tally based on the average cost of petrol, and any petrol he puts into the car is subtracted from that tally.
I'm planning on setting up a google calender so that we can manage the sharing bit.
I hope that's of use!
12/12/10
In order to describe and provide geographic information functions or operations over the web with formal semantics, functions such as buffer, point in polygon, or line generalisation, I think we have two options: (1) we can callout to a black box function, or (2) we can describe that function in something akin to an ontology, which I will call an epistemology.
(1) In calling out to a black box, we might simply have some kind of pointer in our ontology that directs one to a function. For example, in calculating a qualitative spatial relation such as overlap, we might have the concept described in our ontology and a pointer to a web service that calculates overlap. We wrap up our web service with some ontology paper (e.g. OWL-S or WSDL), which defines what the service does and the type of inputs needed and outputs produced by our service, such that any semantically aware software might automatically use or connect these services together (e.g. see work done by these people: http://www.envision-project.eu)
(2) If we take the definition of ontology from Philosophy as the categories of reality and epistemology as how we come to know and reason about that reality, we can perhaps build an AI definition of epistemology. Given Grubers classic AI definition of an ontology as a specification of a conceptualisation, an epistemology might be defined as a specification of a function that provides us with concepts in our conceptualisation, i.e. a specification of how we come to know what we know. This epistemology for our overlap function might be expressed in some kind of pseudo code or declarative language with formal semantics, such that any software might be able to run it. The advantage of this approach over the former is that our functions are no longer black boxes, they might perhaps support new kinds of reasoning such as the comparison of epistemologies.
10/12/2010
Europeans really know how to run a research retreat. From a stunning location (high in the Swiss Alps) to excellent food, they had it covered. And sandwiched between intense work sessions, a hike from 2000 to 3000m, replete with Swiss cows and jangling bells. And they're rather dangerous, those cows, liable to lick you to pieces if you're not careful.
Thanks to Werner Kuhn and all the folk at musil for an intellectually stimulating weekend, not to mention a gastronomic experience and a chance to stretch my legs.
13/09/2010
Sometimes it's the little bits of information that are so handy. Given I couldn't find this floating about on the web, nor a list of all SRIDs, I thought others might appreciate it.
The SRID number for the NZGD2000 = 4167
Otherwise, in postgis you can always create a spatial database using their template, then:
> psql my_spatial_db
> \d spatial_ref_system
> select * from spatial_ref_sys where srtext ILIKE '%NZ%';
It makes for a fun thought experiment to think what a geographic knowledge system might look like, in the sense of richly blending semantic web technologies with geographic information technologies, or better still, knowledge models with spatial data models, which might give us spatial knowledge models. Take any of your GIScience topics, and convert the I for Information to K for Knowledge to get Exploratory Spatial Knowledge Analysis and Spatial Knowledgebases or extend other GIScience topics to get Spatial Knowledge Analysis, Visualising Geographic Knowledge, Semantic Cartography, Geospatial Knowledge Mining ....
29/02/2010
Crossing disciplines is on the whole fun, but can be a pain when you are communicating between communities with different tools, terms and ...emmm...can't think of another nice t word for alliteration.
Anywho, given the Word and LaTeX communities/software don't talk, I've finally gotten round to learning latex. And in support of those having to review student work or collaborate in latex, here are some simple steps to installing and using latex diff for reviewing documents, which might prove useful.
1. Download StrawberryPerl (http://strawberryperl.com/)
2. Assuming you installed it in the recommended place with a link to the start menu, hit Start/All Programs/Strawberry Perl/CPAN Client
3. Type "install Algorithm::Diff" in the CPAN Client (without the quotes)
4. Open a command window by hitting Start/Run/ . Type "cmd" (Without the quotes)
5. Navigate to the folder in which you have your latex documents (cd ../../.)
6. enter at the prompt:
latexdiff old.tex new.tex > diff.tex
happy latex-ing
Organic or emergent are probably the best adjectives to describe public transport in Guatemala. Then again, they'd be useful descriptors of many things in Guatemala ;). There are buses (aka chicken buses), minivans and pickup trucks. The buses seem to be the most structured, with known schedules that are generally followed, except when your driver is sleeping off a hangover from the previous day's festival. Minivans seem to be semi-structured, where a number of drivers compete for clients on routes between smaller towns, but seem to do so in a known or regular fashion. And pickup trucks appear to be the least structured, randomly providing rides depending on need or a driver having other reasons to go from place to place. Despite the seeming chaos, particularly of your average bus station, it works. It works surprisingly well. It seems to be a mix of top-down organised structure in the form of semi-regular schedules for the buses, and bottom up entrepreneurialism with seemingly unregulated minivans and random pickup trucks plying for trade on less frequented routes.
Is this the mark of a complex system? A resilient system (a la C.S. Holling)? This mix of bottom up versus top-down organisation.
In the context of semantics and ontologies, it's an intriguing question given the increasing interest in emergent ontologies, those that are created by users from the bottom up rather than imposed by some governing body. But as with so many other things (e.g. Wikipedia) the optimal position seems to be somewhere in between, a certain mix of bottom-up and top-down. Perhaps there is a golden ratio between the two at which a system becomes complex or resilient. Too much top-down regulation might result in a stagnating system that does not respond well to change. Too much bottom-up emergence might result in chaos.
To end these vague ramblings, a Guatemala travellers joke for you: "how many people can you fit on a chicken bus?" ....one more! Now chicken buses, while originally named as such because chickens would sometimes be passengers, would probably better refer to whether or not foreigners were too chicken to catch them. Imagine your average row in a bus: two double seats separated by an aisle would typically be occupied by a total of four people. In Guatemala you usually get 3 people per seat and then two wedged into the imaginary seat that is normally considered an aisle ....then there is the guy that has to collect the money and who literally climbs over heads and between various body parts to get to people. But I love it. And Guatemalans all take it in their stride, with nary a complaint. And then there were minivans, my maximum count was 28 people in a minivan at one time (i.e. in one of these ) !
01/09/08
The street art in Montreal is brilliant. Turn a corner or take a shortcut down an alley and you're sure to stumble upon something.
So what's the alternative to death by cubicle? The openplan office? Telecommuting? Personally it was death by an isolated office in the bowels of a 15th Century stone building.
This metaphor of the geography of the human body isn't altogether off. My office was in the former morgue, so I'm sure there were some bowels about. So what would be the optimal academic working environment? An environment where one engages in meaningful research that answers relevant questions. How might the physical working environment encourage such research?
For me it's gotta be a mix of quiet space and spaces that encourage interaction, collaboration and the cross-fertilisation of ideas. Now if only they could build universities with such thoughts in mind rather than your average collection of long corridors.
03/07/08
flower
13/10/07
Sailing is an unusual sport. Unlike most others, you can't hurry it. It's a very tempo giusto kind of thing, where your speed depends entirely on the wind (or the tide or paddle if you're unlucky). The kind of notions of space it evokes are very relative, or better still, process oriented. If you took an absolute view of space, and in contrast to your average GIS spaces (e.g. Euclidean, Topographic or Network etc), you might imagine a surface of wind as the space upon which you tack and gybe at each instant of time. From a relative perspective, perhaps that confluence of wind and sea processes create a space for me to sail.
I've just passed my RYC level 2 certificate in dinghy sailing, so beware if you're floating about the Firth of Forth...I'm a terrible sailor ;)
10/08/07
