| 1. | Brandon Donnelly | 14M |
| 2. | 0xdb8f...bcfd | 4.5M |
| 3. | jcandqc | 4.1M |
| 4. | 0x65de...c951 | 2.1M |
| 5. | kualta.eth | 869.1K |
| 6. | Ev Tchebotarev | 170.5K |
| 7. | stefan333 | 81.7K |
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| 9. | William Mougayar's Blog | 28.4K |
| 10. | Empress Trash | 19.8K |
| 1. | Brandon Donnelly | 14M |
| 2. | 0xdb8f...bcfd | 4.5M |
| 3. | jcandqc | 4.1M |
| 4. | 0x65de...c951 | 2.1M |
| 5. | kualta.eth | 869.1K |
| 6. | Ev Tchebotarev | 170.5K |
| 7. | stefan333 | 81.7K |
| 8. | voltron | 81.5K |
| 9. | William Mougayar's Blog | 28.4K |
| 10. | Empress Trash | 19.8K |
Remember my post from a few weeks ago about “planners on bikes getting coffee?” Well it happened. That’s the potential of blogging and Twitter. (I sold $TWTR too early.)
Here is the selfie to prove it:

Jason Thorne and I met up with Gil Meslin and Liam Hanebury (Liam needs Twitter) of Artscape and they toured us around a few of their projects, including one of their first artist live/work projects on Queen West.
I do, however, have to confess that we didn’t have any coffee. I can’t drink coffee in the evening because it keeps me up at night. I already have too many things on my mind.
Trying to hold a group conversation on a bike is also not as easy as talking in a car, but I would still label the inaugural session a success, even if I was posing as a planner without a bicycle helmet.
If any of you have any suggestions for the next meet-up or I would like to join, drop me/us a line on the Twitter machine.
Steven Johnson has a terrific piece in New York Times Magazine called: Beyond the Bitcoin Bubble. Here is a snippet:
The only blockchain project that has crossed over into mainstream recognition so far is Bitcoin, which is in the middle of a speculative bubble that makes the 1990s internet I.P.O. frenzy look like a neighborhood garage sale.
But the point of the article, as its title suggests, is to talk about what all of this craziness could mean for the future of the internet and how, in some ways, it could be a return to what the internet was always intended to be.
The real promise of these new technologies, many of their evangelists believe, lies not in displacing our currencies but in replacing much of what we now think of as the internet, while at the same time returning the online world to a more decentralized and egalitarian system. If you believe the evangelists, the blockchain is the future. But it is also a way of getting back to the internet’s roots.
Some are calling this new, decentralized internet version 3.0. We are currently living with internet 2.0. Practically speaking though, what could this shift really mean for us?
One example that is given in the article has to do with urban mobility – a topic that is particularly relevant to this audience.
Internet 2.0 has created a winner-take-most economic model. And in the case of mobility – at least in the world of apps – that winner is Uber. But with internet 3.0 and the blockchain, this could be possible:
Just as GPS gave us a way of discovering and sharing our location, this new protocol would define a simple request: I am here and would like to go there. A distributed ledger might record all its users’ past trips, credit cards, favorite locations — all the metadata that services like Uber or Amazon use to encourage lock-in. Call it, for the sake of argument, the Transit protocol. The standards for sending a Transit request out onto the internet would be entirely open; anyone who wanted to build an app to respond to that request would be free to do so. Cities could build Transit apps that allowed taxi drivers to field requests. But so could bike-share collectives, or rickshaw drivers.
I don’t know about you, but I find this perspective a lot more interesting. I recommend you read Steven’s article. It will help you cut through a lot of the Bitcoin noise.
Remember my post from a few weeks ago about “planners on bikes getting coffee?” Well it happened. That’s the potential of blogging and Twitter. (I sold $TWTR too early.)
Here is the selfie to prove it:

Jason Thorne and I met up with Gil Meslin and Liam Hanebury (Liam needs Twitter) of Artscape and they toured us around a few of their projects, including one of their first artist live/work projects on Queen West.
I do, however, have to confess that we didn’t have any coffee. I can’t drink coffee in the evening because it keeps me up at night. I already have too many things on my mind.
Trying to hold a group conversation on a bike is also not as easy as talking in a car, but I would still label the inaugural session a success, even if I was posing as a planner without a bicycle helmet.
If any of you have any suggestions for the next meet-up or I would like to join, drop me/us a line on the Twitter machine.
Steven Johnson has a terrific piece in New York Times Magazine called: Beyond the Bitcoin Bubble. Here is a snippet:
The only blockchain project that has crossed over into mainstream recognition so far is Bitcoin, which is in the middle of a speculative bubble that makes the 1990s internet I.P.O. frenzy look like a neighborhood garage sale.
But the point of the article, as its title suggests, is to talk about what all of this craziness could mean for the future of the internet and how, in some ways, it could be a return to what the internet was always intended to be.
The real promise of these new technologies, many of their evangelists believe, lies not in displacing our currencies but in replacing much of what we now think of as the internet, while at the same time returning the online world to a more decentralized and egalitarian system. If you believe the evangelists, the blockchain is the future. But it is also a way of getting back to the internet’s roots.
Some are calling this new, decentralized internet version 3.0. We are currently living with internet 2.0. Practically speaking though, what could this shift really mean for us?
One example that is given in the article has to do with urban mobility – a topic that is particularly relevant to this audience.
Internet 2.0 has created a winner-take-most economic model. And in the case of mobility – at least in the world of apps – that winner is Uber. But with internet 3.0 and the blockchain, this could be possible:
Just as GPS gave us a way of discovering and sharing our location, this new protocol would define a simple request: I am here and would like to go there. A distributed ledger might record all its users’ past trips, credit cards, favorite locations — all the metadata that services like Uber or Amazon use to encourage lock-in. Call it, for the sake of argument, the Transit protocol. The standards for sending a Transit request out onto the internet would be entirely open; anyone who wanted to build an app to respond to that request would be free to do so. Cities could build Transit apps that allowed taxi drivers to field requests. But so could bike-share collectives, or rickshaw drivers.
I don’t know about you, but I find this perspective a lot more interesting. I recommend you read Steven’s article. It will help you cut through a lot of the Bitcoin noise.
“Form follows function” is a famous axiom of 20th century Modern architecture. It is based on the rational notion that architecture and its associated shapes, geometries, and spaces should be a direct result of their function.
It was a way of trying to eliminate the arbitrary ornament that had adorned previous architectural movements. In this case, if it had no function, then it should be stripped away.
There have been many bastardizations of this pithy statement over time, but one of my favorites is: “form follows parking.” Obviously derogatory, it is this idea that much of the built environment is a result of parking requirements, rather than of more human factors.
We see this in suburban building typologies (large surface parking lots), but also in urban infill projects where the below grade parking begins to dictate the structural grid and layout of the upper floors. It is, of course, necessary in many cases, but there’s also something subversive about parking having such a lasting impact on the spaces we occupy.
That said, we know where the trend line is headed when it comes to parking. Streetblogs recently posted an article about the scarcity of parking in Manhattan and cited number of interesting stats.
Because of the city’s bike-share program (introduced in 2013) and because of all of the bike lanes that have been added in recent years, the city has (rightly) removed approximately 2,330 on-street parking spaces in Manhattan south of 125th Street.
Here’s another set of stats:
In 1998, New York City had about 810 parking lots and garages south of 60th street. Together, they accounted for approximately 112,826 parking spaces. As of last year (2016), the number of lots and garages had dropped to about 643 and the number of parking spaces to approximately 95,000. That’s a decline of about 16%, during a period of when the population of Manhattan grew by more than 100,000 people.
I would also imagine that these pressures are increasing. So it is quite possible that “form follows parking” could be on its way toward obsolescence. I certainly feel it waning.
“Form follows function” is a famous axiom of 20th century Modern architecture. It is based on the rational notion that architecture and its associated shapes, geometries, and spaces should be a direct result of their function.
It was a way of trying to eliminate the arbitrary ornament that had adorned previous architectural movements. In this case, if it had no function, then it should be stripped away.
There have been many bastardizations of this pithy statement over time, but one of my favorites is: “form follows parking.” Obviously derogatory, it is this idea that much of the built environment is a result of parking requirements, rather than of more human factors.
We see this in suburban building typologies (large surface parking lots), but also in urban infill projects where the below grade parking begins to dictate the structural grid and layout of the upper floors. It is, of course, necessary in many cases, but there’s also something subversive about parking having such a lasting impact on the spaces we occupy.
That said, we know where the trend line is headed when it comes to parking. Streetblogs recently posted an article about the scarcity of parking in Manhattan and cited number of interesting stats.
Because of the city’s bike-share program (introduced in 2013) and because of all of the bike lanes that have been added in recent years, the city has (rightly) removed approximately 2,330 on-street parking spaces in Manhattan south of 125th Street.
Here’s another set of stats:
In 1998, New York City had about 810 parking lots and garages south of 60th street. Together, they accounted for approximately 112,826 parking spaces. As of last year (2016), the number of lots and garages had dropped to about 643 and the number of parking spaces to approximately 95,000. That’s a decline of about 16%, during a period of when the population of Manhattan grew by more than 100,000 people.
I would also imagine that these pressures are increasing. So it is quite possible that “form follows parking” could be on its way toward obsolescence. I certainly feel it waning.
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