Location: Laurentian Mountains, Quebec // Camera: DJI Mavic Mini
Tag: new year’s eve
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Tweet of the Week: The Creation of Manchester
I may never do another “Tweet of the Week” on ATC, but I couldn’t resist sharing this one of New Year’s Eve on Well Street in Manchester’s city centre.
So much going on this pic of New Year in Manchester by the Evening News. Like a beautiful painting. pic.twitter.com/szKKRM4U4i
— Roland Hughes (@hughesroland) January 1, 2016
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The photo was taken by Joel Goodman and first appeared in this online picture gallery.
But then Roland Hughes of the BBC remarked that its composition was similar to a Renaissance painting and that the guy in blue laying in the middle of the street, reaching for his beer, could be thought of as a parody of the reaching God in Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam. So he tweeted it out. Since then it has gone viral.
For those of us who weren’t in Manchester on New Year’s Eve, we clearly missed one epic party.
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That’s a wrap
Today is the last day of 2014.
It felt like a frenetic year for me, and so I have to say that I’ve been really enjoying this holiday break. I needed the downtime. I needed the time to think and strategize. And I got all of that this holiday. (The only thing that would make this break even better would be some more snow on the mountains.)
I’m super excited for the new year and what’s ahead, but before getting into that, I thought it would be worthwhile to look back at what happened in 2014.
I was initially going to list out some of my thoughts, but then I figured that a better way would be to simply list out the most read Architect This City posts. That way it’s my (daily) thoughts, but curated according to what readers cared about most this past year.
Click here for the top 15 most read Architect This City posts of 2014. I’ve listed them on a “topics” page that I plan to update every year.
If you’re looking for some other 2014 themed reading material, I recommend also checking out the best #cityreads of 2014 by CityLab; the best articles of 2014 from ArchDaily; and what just happened? by venture capitalist Fred Wilson.
Happy new year everyone! Thanks for reading. See you in 2015.
Image: Family and friends lunch at Pizzeria Libretto, University
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Measuring urban form
Last night the Toronto Transit Commission offered free service starting at 7pm. This is typical of Toronto on New Year’s Eve, as it is with many other cities. I think it’s great thing to do and I love seeing so many people taking transit to get around. I took it everywhere last night.
Since I knew I would be doing a lot of walking, I charged up my Fitbit Flex and strapped it on around lunch time. Here is my New Year’s Eve according to Fitbit. I took 11,239 steps yesterday afternoon/evening.
Activity tracking and health monitoring devices have really taken off over the past year. And I absolutely do think they help motivate. But beyond an individual level, I also think this data could be really interesting in aggregate and overlaid with other data points, such as where people live, where they work, how they travel/commute, and so on.
Many have speculated that urban sprawl makes people fat since it privileges driving over walking. But with all the data that companies such as Fitbit and Nike are collecting, it would be interesting to see some hard data on how much more urbanites really walk compared to suburbanites.
One idea would be to use Walk Score and examine the correlation between the walkability of a person’s neighbourhood and the average number of steps they take everyday. Intuitively, it seems like there would be a strong one. But it would be cool to see it quantified. I’d happily share my data if somebody would like to take this on.
Happy New Year, everyone. Welcome to 2014.
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Why New Year’s resolutions suck
It’s nearly 2014. And I suspect many of you are about to begin pursuing your New Year’s resolutions (or are at least contemplating the idea). Unfortunately, I’m here to deliver some bad news: they don’t work. Statistically, the odds are against you. In fact, a 2007 survey done in the UK found that 88% of all resolutions end in failure!
So why do we keep making them? Well, old habits die hard.
But to be perfectly honest with you, I’ve never been a fan of New Year’s resolutions. They strike me as silly. If I smoked (which I don’t), why would I wait until the New Year to “quit”? Because I don’t really want to quit and this prolongs it. It’s a form of procrastination.
If you really want to do something, do it right now—whether it’s May or October. It’s that simple. And if you’re not willing to do it right now, then, to be honest, you probably don’t want it that bad. And if you wait until the New Year, you’ll almost certainly fail.
But I will say that I do enjoy and believe in goal setting. I keep lots of lists (using apps like Clear and Evernote). In particular, I like to actively manage two sets of goals. I call them “My Progressive Goals” and “My Disciplines.”
Progressive goals are things, like the name suggests, that grow and evolve over time. For example, completing my MBA, ahead of schedule, was one of my progressive goals for 2013. Check.
My Disciplines, on the other hand, are activities that in and of themselves don’t change. They’re just things I’ve committed to doing and I use the list as both a reminder and as a way of ensuring I don’t take on too much (which I have a tendency of doing).
These are things like blogging here everyday, going to the gym regularly, and doing one big snowboard trip with the guys from Penn every year. I’ll still set progressive goals within each discipline, but the disciplines themselves stay the same. They are, after all, disciplines.
So as much as I scoff at New Year’s resolutions, I have been tuning up my goals and disciplines for 2014. Blogging became a big part of my life in 2013 and I look forward to getting better at it in the New Year. Thanks for reading Architect This City. Don’t forget to subscribe to my newsletter.
Onwards my friends!