notes.husk.org

NYC Subway Atmosphere News

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 06:16:19 +0100

Today in subway atmosphere news, we learn from WNYC that the NYPD is partnering with Brookhaven National Laboratory to study how chemical weapons might disperse through the city’s underground tunnels. The researchers plan to release a “non-toxic, odorless gas that mimics how chemical, biological and radiological weapons would disperse” in twenty-one subway stations across the five boroughs in July, with 200 sampling devices deployed to monitor its spread.

“We want to be able to determine how toxic material can flow through the transit system, it’s one of the concerns that we’ve had for a while and how it flows on the streets of our city,” Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said in a statement.

The image at the start of this post comes from the invaluable 1908 classic,The Air and Ventilation of Subways, available to read online here. For more on New York City’s subway vents, check out this BLDGBLOG post.

"Bloomberg said essentially that drones are an inevitable part of our future (and maybe our present),..."

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 22:52:11 +0000

“Bloomberg said essentially that drones are an inevitable part of our future (and maybe our present), comparing them to the thousands of cameras already located around Manhattan. “What’s the difference whether the drone is up in the air or on the building?” he asked. “We’re going into a different world, uncharted… you can’t keep the tide from coming in.””

- Mayor Bloomberg says surveillance drones are inevitable in NYC: ‘get used to it’: The Verge (via onevisiblefuture)

"Who still uses pay phones anyway? New York City has announced a new plan to transform public pay..."

Wed, 21 Nov 2012 21:54:40 +0000

“Who still uses pay phones anyway? New York City has announced a new plan to transform public pay phones into giant 311 touchscreens. The new iPad-like screens will provide information, emergency alerts, and local business deals, including coupons that can be downloaded to smartphones.”

- NYC Replaces Pay Phones - The Daily Beast (via slavin)

Islington in London started something similar years ago, with a “technology mile” and iPlus kiosks. They still seem to be there, and I’m not sure if they’ve been spruced up recently, but my main memory of them is that they were terrible to use.

Partly it was the old-style touchscreens, which were unresponsive, and partly it was that I suspect they really didn’t have fast enough connections, but the kiosks themselves ended up being largely ignored, while the wifi wasn’t worth the hassle of connecting to when there was 3G around instead.

I also recall that BT converted a few of their telephone boxes to include keyboards so you could send SMS and emails from them, but I don’t think I ever saw anyone using one (and at £1 a shot, I can see why).

Obviously, technology moves on, and a new attempt with a new generation of hardware (hell, three or four cycles of Moore’s Law have passed) might well prove more usable and useful, but I thought it was worth adding a little historical perspective from another city.

An animated GIF composed from the New York MTA hurricane...

Mon, 05 Nov 2012 04:20:00 +0000

An animated GIF composed from the New York MTA hurricane recovery maps from the first to the fourth of November, most obviously showing the restoration of service in Lower Manhattan and across the East River to Brooklyn. Full size version (1.3MB).

The map format changed on the third to not include the parks or some other details, but I neither have the software nor skill to remove them from the first two PDFs. If you do and want to do better, please go ahead.

Source PDFs: Nov 1, Nov 2, Nov 3, Nov 4 (midday); Nov 4 (evening).

NYTimes.com: A Digital Manhattan in ‘The...

Wed, 09 May 2012 01:55:44 +0100

NYTimes.com: A Digital Manhattan in ‘The Avengers’ (via mappeal):

We also had a team doing something called LIDAR, which is being able to create geometry of the city by scanning it,” Mr. White said. “We take those spheres of photographs and we project them onto the geometry.

Everyone likes LIDAR and 3D flat-textured 3D renderings, right?

The Metrocard Project (via nevver, cesart): The Metrocard...

Mon, 07 May 2012 02:57:08 +0100

The Metrocard Project (via nevver, cesart):

The Metrocard Project is an ongoing project that aims to redesign the iconic New York City Metrocard in a fresh way. The project was created by Melanie Chernock, a graphic designer studying at the School of Visual Arts.

seanaes (via bopuc) Piggyback Space Shuttle Enterprise over...

Thu, 03 May 2012 21:27:01 +0100

seanaes (via bopuc)

Piggyback Space Shuttle Enterprise over NYC.

In 1983.

That’s probably the year the shuttle prototype came to Stansted. I remember it happening, and regret that, for some reason, when my dad got out of the car to take a photograph of it, I didn’t go with him.

Still, I expect I’ll finally get to see it Enterprise at USS Intrepid some time later this year.

(Photograph: Richard Drew / AP)

Viewfinder panorama from the Empire State Building, New York...

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 14:46:01 +0100

Viewfinder panorama from the Empire State Building, New York (via chriswoebken).

Housing in towers, a 1964 proposal by Buckminster Fuller and...

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 19:30:33 +0100

Housing in towers, a 1964 proposal by Buckminster Fuller and Shoji Sadao for Harlem in upper Manhattan.

(I’ve seen the proposal for a dome over Manhattan, but these cooling-tower like structures are new to me.)

"“Ne travaillez jamais!”—Never Work!— is as much about a resistance to the notion of productivity, of..."

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 15:37:05 +0100

“

“Ne travaillez jamais!”—Never Work!— is as much about a resistance to the notion of productivity, of participation in a capitalist enterprise that codes the idea of “good” activity as that which begets profit, as it is a utopian battlecry; likewise, the Situationist dérive is a mode of unproductive walking: traversing space for the sake of experiencing it rather than as a way to get from point A to point B, a rejoinder to the the capitalist city rather than a kind of updated flânerie.

The ethos of the High Line, on the other hand, is to take the unproductive spaces of the city and make them work—work in the sense of performing a function, imbuing them with productive life.

”

- Rachel Wetzler has some interesting Thoughts on the High Line, if only because it’s good to hear a contrary view.

I do like the High Line; I’ve visited now in spring, summer, and winter, and (coming from the seasonless West Coast) that’s definitely part of the appeal, as is the art and the people watching. However, it’s definitely not wild; it’s tamed, and nice, in the worst sense of the word. On balance I’m happy it’s there, but I hope it’s not the model for every park (and every reclamation of industrial heritage) to come.