Monday, January 24, 2011

Time Magazine Special: Intelligent Cities

Link to the Time Magazine Site
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/0,28757,2026474,00.html



Intelligent Cities from National Building Museum on Vimeo.




I took the community poll (only 5 questions).  http://www.nbm.org/intelligentcities/topics/community/poll-3.html  After you take the poll, you can look at the answers so far. 

One of the interesting things I noticed is based on Question #2, which reads:  What do you consider to the be center of your town or city?  The possible answers are (1) a civic building, such as town hall, library, or post office, or (2) a cultural facility such as a museum, or performance space, or (3) a green space such as a park, community garden or, playing fields, or (4) Shopping, or (5) There doesn't seem to be a center.

Sadly, out of the 498 responses so far, 22.7% of the respondents said that there doesn't seem to be a center. 

Once you get past the survey, I thought this link was ineresting too.  http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,2026653,00.html

3 comments:

Kirby Carespodi said...

You're right--no center. Perhaps we are too spread out.

Jason Thiel - Downtown Winston-Salem Blog said...

Thanks for your comment. My comments referred to the nationwide responses, not W-S. It made me think that many people live in automobile oriented places with little or no distinction. My favorite term for this is "Generica". I forget who coined that term, but I have been partial to it.

Anonymous said...

Does it really matter if a city has one place that is its center? To me, Manhattan doesn't have a center, neither does DC (I don't consider the Capitol a center for the city). They both have neighborhoods spread around that are vibrant.

Charlotte on the other hand has a center and you go a few blocks away and its dead.