Walkable City, A New Book, By Jeff Speck
South Park, Aerial View Nearby Brannan Street, San Francisco Here are several views of the South Park neighborhood in San Francisco where PUBLIC is headquartered. Depending on one’s point of view, it can be seen as an urban oasis in the industrial SOMA area, or an unaesthetic parking lot. The neighborhood has an amazing history, having morphed from a snooty residential community in 1855, to a center for the Japanese American community in the early 20th century. It later became a manufacturing center and then a destination for vagrants and drug addicts until the dotcom boom helped turn it into what it is today: an elegant and eclectic meeting place for the community (via Studio Forbes - Blog)
YEARS FROM NOW they may regard this film as a useful, wry documentation of our era’s enthusiasm at the victory of glamour over elegance. Unless the future is Thunderdome, in which case we will look like amateurs.
THE LONG TRADITION OF DETROIT WATCHMAKING HAS JUST BEGUN
‘Made in the USA’ Still Matters
Consumers around the world will pay more for products that are manufactured in America - Businessweek
Korean trams and buses are moving away from overhead power wires and high-voltage third rails—literally.
Researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) have made major advances in wireless power transfer for mass transit systems. The fruits of their labor, systems called On-line Electric Vehicles (OLEV), are already being road tested around Korea.
At it’s heart, the technology uses inductive coupling to wirelessly transmit electricity from power cables embedded in roadways to pick-up coils installed under the floor of electric vehicles.