Enhancing Our Everyday Commute 10 case studies 12 worldwide examples by Wuhang Lin
Commü /kə'mju:/ verb 1. to have an engaging and interesting commute experience; 2. to connect commuters to people and places during their commuting example “I am getting off early today, so I will commü later..” “The station is really nice, it is easy to commü here.” noun 1. a community-based commuting environment; 2. a commute that involves pleasing interacting with people and places example “This bus stop is commü friendly.” “I had a very good commü today.”
This book is written and designed by design student Wuhang Lin for her MFA thesis project CommĂź at Academy of Art University. Thesis adviser: Carolina de Bartolo All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means without permission in writing from the autor. Editor: Ian Fleming Dunham Year published: 2016 Typeface: Alright Sans If you have any questions or advice, send an email to: lynnwhlin@gmail.com Visit our website at: commu.today
Enhancing Our Everyday Commute
Enhancing Our Everyday Commute 10 case studies 12 worldwide examples by Wuhang Lin
Contents
What if‌
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Case studies
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Why not
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1. What if…
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What if we built a movable neighborhood among commuters? Our goal is to develop a community-based environment for urban commuters to have an engaging commute experience. Such an environment and experience would allow commuters to connect in ways they seldom get to, and would make for a refreshing and unique experience during the everyday commute. We believe this kind of commute would benefit every level of society. The street is the river of life of the city, the place where we come together, the pathway to the center. —William H. Whyte, documentary film The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces
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The elephant in the room We are indeed aware of the unwritten rules on public transport: do not make unnecessary eye contact, stay away from other people, do not talk to anyone. These are some of the many “rules” that commuters use as excuses to stay in their personal bubbles. But what if the rules are wrong? We live in a world of strangers. Avoiding people requires quite a lot of effort, especially in confined spaces like public transport, and we may be making things harder on ourselves than we need to. “This phenomenon is troubling”, says Esther Kim, a sociologist from Yale University. Kim argues that in a healthy society, individuals do need to interact more often. “People don’t realize the benefits of connecting in a public space”, said a study conducted by professors Nicholas Epley and Juliana Schroeder from University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Epley and Schroeder found that commuters who socialized with each other not only underestimated others’ interest in connecting, but also had positive experiences. During the experiment, they approached commuters in a Chicago train station and asked them to interact with strangers on the train. In return for a $5 Starbucks gift card. And these commuters agreed to participate in a simple experiment. One group was asked to talk to whoever sat down next to them on the train that morning. The other was told not to talk to or make eye contact with those around them.
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At the end of the train ride, the commuters who talked to a stranger reported having a more positive experience than those in the other group who had sat in solitude. The great thing about talking to strangers is that we tend to put our best faces forward. Studies suggest that this sends positive signals to the brain, thereby boosting our mood. Who does not want a little bit more of it? Even fleeting glances could have this effect. Many of us have had the experience of what is called “looked at as though air.� This rule of avoiding eye contact seems harmless, but it might not be. It does not make people feel good about being disconnected from others. Acknowledging each others on our daily commute could reduce anxiety. The moment of happiness caused by connecting with others is contagious. Rather than fall back on our erroneous belief in the pleasures of solitude, we could reach out to our fellow commuters. While safety concerns likely play a role in decreased socialization among commuters. However, a community-based commute environment will in fact increase social safety, when, ideally, people watch for each other, and no one is by themselves. Civic planners and designers need to keep location-awareness and social interactivity in mind when designing our commute environments. We will talk about how to achieve this goal later on in this book with some case studies, along with some worldwide examples.
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This concept of “Placemaking” The initial idea of Placemaking is to “build our communities around places.” It refers to a collaborative process by which we can shape a public realm in order to maximize shared value. Placemaking facilitates creative patterns of use, paying particular attention to the physical, cultural, and social identities that define a location and support its ongoing evolution. With community-based participation at its core, an effective Placemaking process capitalizes on a local community’s assets and potential. It creates quality public spaces that contribute to people’s health, happiness, and well being. As both an overarching idea and hands-on approach for improving a neighborhood, city, or region, Placemaking inspires people to collectively re-imagine and reinvent public spaces at the heart of every community, and to strengthening the connection between people and the places they share. The term “Placemaking” emerged in the mid 1990s, but the thinking behind it can be traced to the 1960s when William H. Whyte and Jane Jacobs introduced groundbreaking ideas about designing cities for people, not just for cars or shopping centers. They focused on the social and cultural importance of lively neighborhoods and inviting public spaces. Jacobs approached cities as living beings and ecosystems. She explained how the elements of a city—sidewalks, bus stations, parks, neighborhoods—function together synergistically, much like a natural ecosystem.
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This understanding helps us discern how cities work, how things are related, and how they could be better structured. Civic planners and designers need to pay close attention to the myriad ways in which the physical, social, ecological, and cultural qualities of a place are intertwined. The process of planning belongs to everyone. Whoever understand the idea of a community-driven and bottom-up approach will have a particularly special role. In The Social Life of Public Spaces, Whyte often reminds us that the social life in public spaces contributes to the quality of life of individuals and society as a whole. Whyte believes that we have a moral responsibility to create places that facilitate civic engagement and community interaction. However, most civic planners seem to forget about this responsibility, especially when they design public transports, sidewalks, or when they put public installations in an open space. Commute matters. It’s not just a route between point A and point B. It’s an experience that will affect the quality of our days.
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2. Case studies 10 suggestions, questions, and observations to civic planners and urban designers
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1. Triangulate strategy Triangulation‌some external stimulus provides a linkage between people and prompts strangers to talk to other strangers as if they knew each other. —William H. Whyte, The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, p. 94
In his book, Whyte wrote about how street artists, musicians and entertainers draw people together. It’s possible that this scenario may not work well in San Francisco, because we are mostly immune to these street performances. But what Whyte really suggested is that we need some common activity, some excuses to start a conversation. The stimulus can be a physical object or an event, as long as it helps people break the ice. Since 2015, San Francisco has hosted an annual festival in October called the Market Street Prototyping Festival. Each year, the festival turns Market Street into an active, vibrant, and engaging public space with some awe-inspiring street attractions. One of my favorites from the 2016 festival is Glimmer (image on the left), designed by Variable Projects, an Oakland-based design and research studio. Glimmer is dynamic and vivid. It allows passersby to enter, touch, and interact with a plush thicket of colorful suspended filaments. The vibrant pattern created by Glimmer changes with the position of the sun, the wind, and the passersby, making it a pleasing, interactive and sustainable Triangulation. One of the best things about Glimmer was that it was a sidewalk installation, so it did not block or slow traffic. People could walk right through it and enjoy the pleasing scenes it offered.
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2. Lighter, quicker, cheaper These three words sum up a low-cost, highimpact strategy to build a community-based public space. It is a small spatial development model that requires less risk and less money. This strategy could be applied to community pop-up activities. Compared with permanent street installations, pop-up activities bring surprises to urban commuters, and they work the best during holidays or sport seasons. Yerba Buena Community Benefit District hosts pop-up activities regularly on Annie street, a small lane links Market Street and Mission Street in the financial district in San Francisco. In 2016, two days before Valentine’s Day, the community hosted a pop-up activity, Almost Valentine’s (photos on the right). There were three panels of spatial graphics designed and set up by design student Lynn Lin, from the Academy of Art University. The graphics in each panel represent different attitudes people might have toward this holiday. It was Friday, many people who work in nearby offices stopped by and participated before they headed home. Simply taking photos of, or with, the graphics indeed brought them some moments of happiness. Delightful moments are contagious, one group of people attracts more groups of people, and a community is coming into existence.
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3. Thin and invisible One of the greatest problems in existing communities is the fact that the available public life in them is spread so thin that it has no impact on the community. —Christopher Alexander, A Pattern Language, p. 164
The density of a group of public objects will affect their social impact. When they are located at different spots in a large space, they tend to become unnoticeable and have little impact. Here is an extremely “thin” example to demonstrate this argument. In 1996, the Waterfront Transportation Project Historic and Interpretive Signage Program was created and covered 2.5 miles of the waterfront along Embarcadero street. The project included 22 thirteen-foot-high posts, vertical history stations, and bronze inlays. These black-andwhite-striped metal pylons are imprinted with photographs, stories, and poetry in several languages and drawings commemorating the waterfront’s historical events. However, these 22 posts were spread so far away from each other that the density of the whole project became so thin that it had zero impact. We once spent 25 minutes at one of the locations and observed passersby. During this time nobody noticed, or even looked, at the post (photos on the left). This project was funded by a grant from Americans for the Arts and California State’s Transportation Enhancement Activities. Unfortunately, the efforts have been in vain because they are “thin and invisible”, and leave no impact to people.
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4. Spatial arrangement—the everyday isolated bus stations One felicity leads to another. Good places tend to be all of a piece. —William, H. Whyte
In a public space, the choice and arrangement of different objects affects people’s experience of them. For instance, if a bench and a wastebasket are placed with no connection to each other, these items may not be used as much as they otherwise would had be. But when they are arranged together along with other amenities such as a coffee cart, they will naturally bring more activity than when they were located separately. We often see isolated civic facilities and amenities all around the city. Mini bus stops are the best example. Most of them are isolated, standing all alone on the sidewalk, or in the middle of traffic. They are not an inviting place for people to linger. Instead, they give people no choice except to stare at their phone screen while waiting for the bus. Some people hang out in nearby stores and are cautious about the possibility that they may miss the bus. The process of planning a public space as one organic piece needs civic planners, community members, and business owners to make decisions together. They need to understand that a bus stop is more than a transit junction. If it is designed properly, it could make our commute more pleasant.
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5. Sitting space at public transit: subway In his documentary film The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, Whyte focused on public sitting spaces and how people would use them. This inspired us to observe the sitting spaces near public transit centers. Most of the seats at the subway are one large piece round concrete where people sit side by side at the edge, facing different directions. The design of this space is confusing and awkward. It seems to send commuters a signal that they should sit tight together but avoid eye contact or talk. The empty space in the middle of the concrete is not useful to people, either, making the sitting space a wasteful area. In Whyte’s documentary film, he shows how people enjoy sitting on movable chairs that allow them to move around and decide what position they would like to sit in. Movable chairs are not practical at subways, but what Whyte is really suggesting is that people prefer choices. Instead of forced-choice sitting areas, what if we replace them with smaller individual seats— seats with different shapes and size, and these are placed in a random fashion on the platform? Besides, small sitting areas make it easier for people to reach from one side of the platform to another. More importantly, commuters are able to decide where and how to sit. Seating choice makes social interaction among commuters more likely.
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6. Sitting space at public transit: bus stop Another interesting public sitting behavior Whyte mentions in The Social Life of Small Urban Space is “socially comfortable.” Physically comfortable is important, socially comfortable is even more so. It means, again, choices—sitting up front, in back, to the side, in the sun, in the shade, in groups, off alone, etc (p. 28). This explains why commuters usually choose to stand while waiting for their buses, leaving the seats unused. These sitting spaces are not socially comfortable. We often see commuters lean on a bus stop pole, or a street lamp pole, or sit on the ledge of a nearby office building. And if there are some steps close by, they’ll sit on the steps. Whyte said “people tend to sit most where there are places to sit”, except for the seats at the bus stop, apparently. In a public space, infrastructure is not always used as it was meant to be. Part of the reason for this is that, instead of designing it for people’s behavior, urban planners and designers often try to decide people’s behavior. As we mentioned earlier, a bus stop should not be an isolated awkward object. It should be designed as a pleasing community center for commuters to feel comfortable to sit, to linger, and to interact with others.
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7. Cobblestones tell stories Cobblestone…mediate between past and present, they carry hidden lyrical accents that reveal other geographic and temporal associations… link between city and human, past and present. With a little imagination, one can read bygone times in their features and read the text of a city under their surfaces. —Urban Code, p. 94
Living in cities like San Francisco, New York, and Chicago, people are surrounded by “cobblestones” of all kinds—historical buildings, vintage streetcars, corner stores that have had the same businesses for decades, the doorman who works for the hotel and like greeting to the passersby, the bus driver who has droved you to work every day for years, etc. The San Francisco municipal railway operates one of the largest and most diverse fleets of vintage streetcars in the world. It owns more than 50 streetcars built before 1955 that are currently in service or actively being restored (photos on the left). These streetcars run in and out daily around the city, each one with a unique story that, sadly, unknown to most of the people they service. Unlike tourists, we tend to take our everyday surroundings for granted. We don’t pay attention to them, nor appreciate them enough. Part of the reason could be that we are in the “commuting mood” and are soaking in our “personal bubbles”. It would help if our civic planners promoted stories that places have. People feel better about a place if they know more about it.
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8. Every day is different People said you have to travel to see the world. Sometimes I think that if you just stay in one place and keep you eyes open, you are gonna see about just all you can handle —Smoke, directed by Paul Auster, Wayne Wang
As we mentioned in the previous case study, we tend to ignore our everyday surroundings. It is understandable, though—life is tough, work is stressful, and time flies. However, being stressed while on our commute will not improve the situation. What if we take a retreat from these everyday worries and spend a moment to enjoy our surroundings; to unwind and see things differently. There is a new app, Commü, being developed. It will help urban commuters discover close by places that they normally would not go to, and it will lead them to things that they normally do not see. Commü will also provide locationbased audio to tell stories about these new places. It will transform an everyday commute into an experience similar to one that people will have in a museum. Besides that, Commü FM, a public podcast that comes within the app, is a podcast that belongs to commuters. Everyone can contribute to the live stream. Commü is the first of its kind. It understands the importance of an engaging commute. We walk on the same streets, pass by the same buildings, see the same familiar strangers, and yet, every day is different.
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9. Food If you want to seed a place with activity, put out food… a food vendor at the corner and a knot of people around him—eating, shmoozing, or just standing. —William H. Whyte, The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, p. 50
Food is part of our everyday commuting life. We like to enjoy a cup of coffee when we jump off the bus, or maybe grab a pastry before we head to the office. After work, refreshments are always welcome. Food is a harmless topic for people to talk about, even with strangers. We have food trucks around the city, but they usually block the traffic, especially during commuting hours. Sidewalk food vending carts, on the other hand, are flexible and more friendly. What if the old-fashioned sidewalk food carts are factored in on a urban designer’s blueprint? Sidewalk food carts do not take up as much space as food trucks do. The vendors are at the same height as pedestrians, so it’s easier to have a conversation. And, most of all, they provide a friendly environment for strangers to talk and interact in. However, they do cause some problems. People run these businesses without a license, street hygiene is a nightmare, there are food poisoning issues, and they can block street flow. But these problems can be solved. Our urban planners cannot simply take away what people enjoy only because they cause some solvable problems. “Human-centered” design is not just a fancy term. It’s a necessity.
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10. Between point A to point B, there are multi-destinations A city is only truly lively and attractive when its streets offer spaces for stopping and lingering, in addition to their fundamental access role —Urban Code, p. 76
Instead of hopping on a bus right after work, only to be stuck on it when the traffic is bad, why not get off the bus somewhere between home and work, take a stroll, and wander for a bit before getting back on board? Our daily commuting should not just be about getting from one point to the other. It includes many destinations along the route that provide people a sense of community and belonging. A good destination is an inviting outdoor space with clear shapes and boundaries. The shapes and boundaries make it a positive space (Christopher Alexander, A Pattern Language, p. 518). Although these destinations have their own shapes and boundaries, they also should provide easy access for people to get around. This will prevent “left over” spaces—spaces that are in between positive spaces. They usually are unused and make people walk faster. People attract people. We all like to stay where other people gather because we feel safe that way. A good range of destinations improves a community for passersby. We need more of this kind of open community space. Again, urban planners need to keep in mind that a community is an ecosystem, and they need to work with community members and local business owners. We are all in it together.
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3. Why not? 12 worldwide inspiring ideas for connecting people to people, and people to places
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1. Union Station augmented reality app Kansas City’s Union Station leveraged several different types of technology to create an app that allows visitors to step into the station’s most important historical moments and live in the history. Union Station in Kansas City is one of America’s most historic train stations, but there has been a significant decline in foot traffic. About to celebrate its 100th anniversary, Union Station needed a way to remind people why it was worth celebrating. They created a proximityaware augmented reality app that allowed visitors to travel back in time and experience the station’s history. They could put themselves in the middle of historical events and share them on social media, inviting others to visit. Union Station was able to measure foot traffic inside the venue, as well as segment users to selectively send messages for future events. Union Station filmed reenactments of 11 of the most important historic events that took place there, and then leveraged Google maps, Gimbal Beacons, and Metaio special augmented reality technology to provide in-situation video at the exact spot where the event occurred in the Station.
↓ key words → location-awareness → history → augmented reality → innovation → interactive app
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Cucalu: it’s not an app Discover a new reality through your phone. When you’re not familiar with a place, you look around and spot new and interesting things. But the better you know a place, the less tempted you are to look around. That’s why Cucalu was created. It gives you a new pair of eyes that make you looking anew at the everyday. With Cucalu, you look for shapes in your environment. You start with circles. Once you’ve found one, you hold Cucalu in front of it and a picture is taken. Other players will see what and where you’ve captured that circle. They reward your work with a golden or silver medal. The other way around, you praise what others see to sharpen your perspective. The second challenge is to not look on your phone. Cucalu contains missions on finding circles, squares and triangles. Each mission can bring another challenge: sometimes a clock ticks, and other times you’re bound to explore a specific area.
↓ key words → location-awareness → discovery → interactive app
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Coca-Cola friendship machine For everyone to enjoy a Coke with their friends and take advantage of the special 2 for 1 Coke offer, friends had to cooperate with each other to insert the money into the machine slot. This awesome idea is nothing but the Open Happiness campaign initiated by the manufacturing company. This campaign has been created and designed to celebrate International Friendship Day. Coca-Cola planted a 12 feet tall vending machines firstly in Argentina. This machine requires people to ask a friend, or a random passersby for a leg-up in order to climb up this giant machine and reach the slot, where they will insert the coins in. For their trouble, they would get two bottles of coke for the price of one. One for themselves, and one for a friend. This campaign is reminiscent of the previous Coca-Cola campaigns where they spread happiness by random acts of kindness in various cities.
↓ key words → triangulation → interactivity → connection → vending machine → friendship → goofy → happiness
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Coca-Cola Small World Machines A vending machine that brings India & Pakistan together with joy. In March 2013, Coca-Cola set out to break down barriers and create a simple moment of connection between two nations—India and Pakistan. The initiative “Small World Machines” provided a live communications portal between people in India and Pakistan and showed that what unites us is stronger than what sets us apart. The key to engaging with each other through the machines was simple: people in India and Pakistan could complete a task, like touching hands, drawing peace, love, and happiness symbols—together.
↓ key words → triangulation → interactivity → connection → long distance interaction → vending machine → humanity → friendship
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Coca-Cola friendly twist A friendly bottle that can only be opened with the help of another person. College freshmen around the world are setting foot on campus for the first time this month, bringing with them an eagerness to embrace their new-found independence and quench their thirst for knowledge and new experiences. While the initial days of class are mainly filled with excitement, making new friends can be a bit intimidating. To solve this problem and break the awkward atmosphere, Coca-Cola came up with a unique way—the “Friendly Twist” bottle. This bottle can only be opened with the help of another person. Its interlocking caps can only be twisted open by a matching top. After reaching into a cooler and pulling out what appeared to be a regular bottle of Coca-Cola, the students realized they needed to first make a new friend before enjoying the ice-cold beverage.
↓ key words → triangulation → interactivity → vending machine → friendship → innovation → happiness
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Knock Stop Music Traffic lights for humans. The invention of traffic lights was the first indicator that cities were to be ruled by cars. For the Market Street Prototyping Festival in San Francisco, Daily tous les jours studio invited humans to take over, with music. Knock Stop Music re-appropriates traffic lights to invite passersby to play with their environment, creating melodic soundscapes that brings awareness to one another. Amidst the constant rumble of the street, the simple gesture of knocking amazingly transforms the raw fabric of the city into an interface for creative collaboration.
↓ key words → triangulation → passersby → engagement → crosswalk → interactivity → innovation
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Amateur Intelligence Radio I am the building and this is my radio show. Amateur Intelligence Radio (AIR) is a radio station hosted by a building, St. Paul’s Union Depot. It allows people to connect to this historic setting and to each other. As they come and go, AIR narrates activities within its walls and stages little interventions on the site. For on-site listening, five interactive stations (Clock, Door, Social, Waiting, and River) allow passersby to plug in and listen to the voice of the building. Each listening station offers a different vantage point of the space, connects to the stories being told, and can be discreet or bold to discover.
↓ key words → triangulation → location-awareness → podcast → story → interactivity → connection → innovation
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Mesa Musical Shadows A colorful singing pavement that serenades passersby shadows. Mesa Musical Shadows is a interactive piece by Montréal’s venerable Daily tous les jours studio. Musical Shadows is an interactive pavement that reacts to the shadows of passersby by playing sounds of singing voices. The piece was created for the Mesa Arts Centre, Arizona, known to be the sunniest state. Custom tiles in the pavement play singing voices when shadows are cast upon them. When visitors explore different soundscapes with their shadows, they become part of a collective sound and body performance. This new scenario for public space engages strangers to bump up against one another and share a moment of magic igniting in them.
↓ key words → triangulation → interactivity → engagement → passersby → innovation
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ActiWait Transform waiting time to an awesome experience at a crosswalk. The ActiWait is a new generation of traffic light buttons. Installed at a pedestrian traffic light with long red phases, it offers pedestrians the possibility to convert boring waiting times into positive experiences. Through a touch screen which is installed in the upper shell of the button, people can interact with others across the street.
↓ key words → triangulation → interactivity → engagement → passersby → crosswalk → innovation
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Subway Therapy When people are overflowing with energy, emotion and fire we need to channel it into something that helps one another. In March 2016, artist Matthew Chavez started Subway Therapy with a table and chairs. He sat with a book that people could write secrets in and talked with people. Matthew believes that it is important that “when people are overflowing with energy, emotion and fire, we need to channel it into something that helps one another”. Matthew’s Subway Therapy did not get much media coverage until November 9th, 2016, the day after Donald Trump was elected to be the 45th President of the United States. Then thousands of people went to his therapy station and posted their thoughts on the subway wall where Matthew was sitting. The wall then became one of New York’s most significant public forums. Even New York Governor Andrew Cuomo joined in. The MTA (Metropolitan Transportation Authority) put aside their law of banning political advertising, and let Matthew’s subway post-it wall continue.
↓ key words → interactivity → pop-up activity → community → public transport → therapy → humanity
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Man-eater mind game A goofy, and yet brilliant vehicle-based Head Eating Monster game. Daniel Disselkoen commuted for 4 years during his time at the Royal Academy of Art in Netherlands by tram. Then, he decided to add a little something to change his and his fellow commuters’ daily commute. He created a mind game called the “man-eater”. The objective of the activity is to make the cartoon sticker eat as many heads of people passing by into ‘the man-eaters’ mouth.
↓ key words → interactivity → commuter → public transport → goofy
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TRUE life instructions Pranked commuters—fake signs on the New York subway. An artist named TRUE replaced official signs on New York subway trains with his own versions between 1994-1999. He and his friends rode subways all night to install them. He called his stickers “life instructions” because he hoped that the philosophy they told would help others as it helped him. In a TED talk by designer Stefan Sagmeister, he mentioned these fake signs as one of the designed things that has made him happy.
↓ key words → commute → subway → goofy → happiness
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Two public space pioneers
William Hollingsworth Whyte Whyte was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, in 1917. He joined the staff of Fortune magazine in 1946. After his book The Organization Man, which was based on his articles about corporate culture and the suburban middle class, sold over two million copies, Whyte turned to issues of sprawl and urban revitalization, which laid the ground for his distinguished career as a sage of sane development and an advocate of cities. In 1969, Whyte assisted the New York City Planning Commission in drafting a comprehensive plan for the city. He received a grant to study the street life of New York and other cities in what became known as the Street Life Project. Along with a group of young research assistants, and with camera and notebook in hand, he conducted pioneering research on pedestrian behavior and city dynamics. While the core of Whyte’s work was predicated on the years he spent on direct observation, he authored several texts about urban planning, design, and human behavior in various urban settings, including: The Exploding Metropolis (1958); Cluster Development (1964); The Last Landscape (1968); The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces (1980); and City: Rediscovery of the Center (1988). Whyte served as an advisor on environmental issues and as a key planning consultant for major US cities, traveling and lecturing widely. Whyte believes that the social life in public spaces contributes fundamentally to the quality of life of individuals and society as a whole. Design should start with a thorough understanding of the way people use spaces, and the way they would like to use spaces.
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Jane Jacobs Jacobs was born in 1916 in the coal mining town of Scranton, Pennsylvania. In the middle of the Depression, she left Scranton for New York City. During her first several years in the city she held a variety of jobs, working mainly as a stenographer and freelance writer, often writing about working districts in the city. These experiences, she explains, “gave me more of a notion of what was going on in the city and what business was like, what work was like.� Jacobs had no professional training in the field of city planning, nor did she hold the title of planner. Instead, she relied on her observations and common sense to show why certain places work, and what can be done to improve those that do not. Together with Whyte, Jacobs had led the way in advocating for a place-based, community-centered approach to urban planning, decades before such approaches were considered sensible. Her 1961 treatise, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, became one of the most influential American texts about the inner workings and failings of cities, inspiring generations of urban planners and activists. Jacobs contested the traditional public space planning approach that relies on the judgment of outside experts, proposing that local expertise is better suited to guiding community development. She approached cities as living beings and ecosystems and suggested that buildings, streets and neighborhoods function as dynamic organisms, changing in response to how people interact with them.
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Bibliography
Urban Code Authors: Moritz PĂźrckhauer, Anne Mikoleit
A collection of 100 observations on New York City’s SoHo neighborhood. It helps us understand the language of urban streets. The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces Author: William H. Whyte
Both the book and the accompanying film has become classics since 1980, when it first published. It launched a revolution in the planning and study of public spaces. Smoke Directors: Paul Auster, Wayne Wang (1995)
A story between a writer, a smoke shop owner and a run-away teenage boy. For more than three decades, Auggie the smoke shop owner took a photo of the street every day, outside his shop at the exact same spot and time. This non significant part of the film has then been an inspiration to me. Project for public spaces http://www.pps.org/ Others http://www.livescience.com/22030-howcommuters-avoid-each-other.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/26/opinion/ sunday/hello-stranger.html?_r=0 https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/ 2014/07/140717141851.htm https://www.chicagobooth.edu/capideas/blog/ 2014/september/for-a-happier-commutetry-talking-to-strangers http://www.artandarchitecture-sf.com/tag/ interpretive-signage 83
Credits
3.1. Union Station augmented reality app (p. 51) http://www.unionstation.org/ 3.2. Cucalu (p. 52) https://cuca.lu 3.3. Coca-Cola friendship machine (p. 54) 3.4. Coca-Cola Small World Machines (p. 57) 3.5. Coca-Cola friendly twist (p. 59) http://www.coca-colacompany.com 3. 6. Knock Stop Music (p. 60) 3. 7. Amateur Intelligence Radio (p. 62) 3. 8. Mesa Musical Shadows (p. 65) http://www.dailytouslesjours.com/ 3. 9. ActiWait (p. 67) http://urban-invention.com/ 3. 10. Subway Therapy (p. 68) http://www.subwaytherapy.com/ 3. 11. Man-eater Mind Game (p. 71) http://danieldisselkoen.nl/ 3. 12. TRUE life instructions (p. 72) http://www.trueart.biz/cityarts/ life_instructions.html
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Commute matters, and this little book e xplains why it does and how to enhance it. With 10 local case studies and 12 global examples, it urges civic planners to focus on human-centered design, and to build a community-driven commute environment. This book is also a tribute to Urban Code, the book that inspired the ideation and fruition of this book. Lastly, many thanks to two public space pioneers and urban activists, William Hollingsworth Whyte and Jane Jacobs. Their philosophies and findings have made this book possible.
www.commu.today