Writing about cities
More Park Avenue Motorist Mayhem
Originally uploaded by bicyclesonly
Transportation for America reports 400 pedestrians killed each month. Thankfully, no pedestrians were hurt in the collision you see here.
More of you need to carry cameras around to document this travesty. You’ve seen my photos. Where’re yours?
Watch for my article on pedestrian safety coming on Friday (I wrote it a month ago, but the information and message isn’t late).
Automobile congestion on the Kennedy Expressway* (I-90/94), taken from the L tracks above Lake Street in Chicago, Illinois.
Other things that never end (a roundup of sorts):
Do you recognize this building?
This building doesn’t have a memorable name so I often forget it. The 105-foot crown lights up at night making it the most visible building in Chicago, competing with the Sears Tower in the colored lights spectacle throughout the year.
According to Emporis, “311 South Wacker Drive is the tallest building in the world known only by its street address.”
I don’t think it’s known very well, though. Perhaps if the tenants gave it a name, more people would know what to call it – civic buffs, budding planners, and longtime residents love to show they’re up to snuff when it comes to talking about their city, but they usually take a pass on this one, opting instead to call attention to the UBS Tower three blocks away on Madison, with its eye-catching lobby. (Architecture and design students around the world will know this concrete skyscraper before the average Chicago learns its “name.”)
I bet, though, that you’re more likely to find 311 S Wacker before you find the Chicago Board of Trade building.
Earlier this year, Google Maps added a feature to the common maps interface that allows users to identify problems* with map data or presentation. Click on the “Report A Problem” link in the lower right corner of the current map view. Then drag the marker on top of the error, categorize it, then write a description of the problem.
I reported several problems soon after the feature was released. I checked up on the results of one problem I reported. The situation was the lakefront multi-use path along Lake Michigan in Chicago, Illinois. The screenshots below show the map before I reported the problem and the repaired map.
With this addition, Google Maps seems to be encroaching on the territory of Open Street Map (OSM) that uses ONLY public domain (not the same as free) and user-contributed data. But the data users contribute to Google Maps (in the form of reporting problems on the map) become the property of Google and its data providers.
From the OSM Wiki, “The copyright of the whole data set is scattered among all contributors. Some contributors release their contributions to the public domain.” Readers interested in learning more about maps in the public domain should read this Guardian article about the UK’s Ordnance Survey heavy grip on its data.
Disclaimer: I felt prompted to write this post because James Fee on his blog often (1st) writes (2nd) about the (low) quality of the data Google puts in its Maps.
*Users have long been able to report problems, but never in such an easy way or one that tracks reports and notifies the user when Google fixes the error.
I went to the top floor of UIC’s University Hall and took a few hundred shots with my Olympus E-500 digital SLR. That was 3 years. I came across them while switching photo libraries, iPhoto to Aperture. From this high up vantage point that’s removed from the skyscraper core, you can see different spaces, shapes, and interactions.