Connecting the circuit

Screen capture from Duracell's moments of warmth Youtube

Following stories of terrorist hate-mongers in Paris, and as if on cue, my urban design and transport planner friend Megan Carr sent this fabulous video. It shows how transport design can connect people together even in the dead of winter. It is a candle in the dark news of late.

Montreal and Duracell Canada have a plan to warm bus stops in Canada's cold winter months. Imagine a bus shelter heater that only works if people waiting for a bus hold hands to connect the electrical circuit that activates the heater.

As with Lisbon's dancing traffic lights and New York's say-something-nice, this shows yet again that given the opportunity people will put their fear aside and reach out to each other in new and wonderful ways.

This is not opportunity-based crime prevention. Rather it's opportunity-based connection - warming our social circuits by charging our electrical ones.

Soundscapes for street safety

I just finished the latest edits to the upcoming CPTED Perspective newsletter and there is a fantastic UK article about soundscapes to prevent crime. How creative!

Whenever I hear theories about defensible space I am struck by how shackled we are to obsolete design doctrines. Activating public spaces need not be doctrinaire. Yet everywhere we act otherwise; we treat setbacks like they were written in stone and we keep homeless off park benches with dividers. We light streets up like stadiums and we argue over parallel parking spots, yet provide zero for bicycles.

Creative design means none of those things. Creativity has a quality all its own.  Creative design has made appearances in this blog. Consider intersection art,  parking lots, tech gizmos, and laneways.

The Montreal swings in the video above are another great example.

Culture jamming from Montreal to Mexico City

Montreal or Mexico City? Who can tell?

From the streets of Mexico City to the streets of Montreal. A modern megalopolis sprawling on the plain of an ancient volcano that, a millennia ago, held a population larger than Imperial Rome. A beautiful island city larger than Manhattan and nestled in the St. Lawrence River, re-settled by Samuel de Champlain in 1611 from the original native inhabitants.

There's nothing quite so jarring as culture-jamming from one country to another, the biggest shock being the weather; cool, mild evenings in one, winter's first snow in the other.

One day I watched 1,000 demonstrators protesting working conditions in Mexico City. A few days later I watched 20,000 students protesting tuition hikes in Montreal. They are a world apart in sensibility and logic.

Then there's crime. Both cities have pernicious corruption epidemics, though lately Montreal's mob penetration of the construction industry probably tops Mexico City. Murder rates are similar, slightly higher in Mexico City with over 2 per 100,000 compared to just under 2 in Montreal. Taxis are riskier and poverty much more prevalent in Mexico City. Drivers, in both, are crazy.

In spite of the differences these cities prove that vast differences in demographics and urban form cannot determine, or prevent, success. Both have lively, exciting and safe downtowns, streets teeming with young and attractive fashionistas, cell phones growing from their ears as they bleat Spanish or French versions of "what...ever".

City culture, it seems, can pacify and amuse even the most skeptical observer - me being the perfect example.

Water, not ice. Dead give-away for Mexico City's traffic circles

Community Activators in Montreal

Hiring graffiti artists?


Timely news from Montreal. Just as I blog about graffiti problems and solutions in recent months, a success story emerges in MacLean's, Canada's national magazine.

Prevention NDG is a community organization in Montreal working to prevent crime, especially graffiti. While tackling tagging, they have struck a balance between paint-outs, murals, and education. Among other strategies, they also hire graffiti artists to paint murals to deter graffiti tags. Taggers will seldom, if ever, tag a mural. The Montreal Gazette article (and photo above) says it all.

Says one of the community workers at NDG: We also believe that it takes a multi-pronged approach to deal with this issue: removal, sensitization and prevention. We try to sensitize citizens on the importance of cleaning it quickly themselves (if they are able), however many home and apartment owners feel that it is the City's responsibility.

And therein lies the crux of the problem. Getting local folks to take responsibility. Getting them to shake off their dependency habits. Depending on someone else to solve their own problem.

That is why the work of community organizers like Wendy Sarkissian (scroll down), Jim Rough, and Mark Lakeman is so important. They are the activators. Activators of neighbor action. Activators of local ownership.

The activators, their skill-set, and their toolbox! That's where we must begin.