Moving Sidewalks: Back to the Future?

There's a great article on the history of moving sidewalks in New Scientist Magazine (thanks to Planetizen).

I think moving sidewalks, or some other type of continuous transport system, would be a great feeder system for regional (US: commuter) rail systems. This would enable the stations to be located a bit further apart in urban areas than in a 'normal' subway system - reducing operating costs and making service on the regional system more attractive (fewer stations = faster). Regional rail systems build with this model could follow the Zürich S-Bahn model, many lines operating through a central section that branch to different suburbs when they leave the center.

An interesting compliment to the moving sidewalk/continuous transport system would be combining it with attractive urban design, in other words give the people traveling on the system something interesting to look at while traveling. I recently had the idea of creating such a system in Abu Dhabi as part of their new Metro project. In this case the continuous system could travel through a traditional Arab linear market street setting. The market street would be protected from the weather in traditional ways, thus reducing energy use. The project would combine 'new' urban development with the transport system. More on this idea later.

More on Eine Strasse als Museum

Yesterday I wrote about attending a workshop given in conjunction with the Wien Museum's Eine Strasse als Museum exhibition.

In the discussion we had following our attempt to develop ideas for exhibits/programs similar to those developed by Hong Kong's Community Museum Project, I suggested that the Naschmarkt was not a good place to do this. My point was that the Naschmarkt is too touristy and atypical of Vienna.

On the other hand, as several others argued, the Naschmarkt changes over time: Monday at 10 am is quite different from Saturday at 1 pm in terms of locals versus tourists, and in other ways as well. Also, there's probably a lot to learn from the mixture of foreign people working and products sold at the Naschmarkt. Good points.

I still, however, believe that another site might have been better for us to use in developing a concept. Not because the Naschmarkt is not worthy of such an analysis, but rather because it's too complex a place to start with.

Although, when I explained the day to my wife, she came up with a great idea: doing a survey of what shoppers purchase at the Naschmarkt. Sort by time of day/day of week ... compare to other markets in Vienna ...

Street as Museum - Wien Museum

Today I attended an extremely interesting conference titled: Museum as a Method. Eine Strasse als Museum organized by the Wien Museum and Museumsakademie Joanneum.

Three members of Hong Kong's Community Museum Project (Howard Chan, Siu King-Chung and Tse Pak-Chai) made a presentation on several of their projects including documentation of protest 'props', a major project they did documenting the demise of Lee Tung Street (Hong Kong) as the area was redeveloped by the city (the subject of the Wien Museum exhibition) and a 'refrigerator project' that consisted of analyzing the contents of 24 households' refrigerators. They described their methods and techniques they have used and what they have learned.

Then we broke into groups and attempted to develop ideas for creating a similar project in Vienna. We focused on Vienna's Naschmarkt, a market for fresh food quite nearby the Wien Museum. The two groups identified several different ideas, the common thread seemed to be learning more about what goes on 'behind' both literally and figuratively at the market. This includes everything from social relationships between the shop keepers (it's one of the most diverse places in Vienna) to how they haul the garbage. We did not really come to any conclusion, but the discussion was quite interesting. Here are my Naschmarkt photos from Flickr.

My own hope is to develop some sort of infrastructure museum where people can learn how different urban infrastructure systems work, about the people who built and operate them, about the social life that takes place in and around these systems ... somewhat similar to the Heathrow Airport class I took last fall. I got lots of good ideas from today's conference.

Brûlé: Rail Transport Quality and Market Streets

Tyler Brûlé's weekly column in the Financial Times today World-class city or grim ghost town? addresses two of my favorite subjects: quality in rail transport and vacant storefronts on shopping streets.


First, transport. Brûlé is right-on in his questions about EuroStar and Belgium's rail stations. My favorite Belgium railway story is that in the International Airport - picture thousands of people coming from all over Europe every day to do EU business - the automated ticket machines don't take credit cards (photo above is of the ticket machine, photo on right is of the lines waiting to buy tickets - note they don't even use customer-friendly queuing system).

You can use your VISA card to buy gasoline at every gas station in the world ... when will railways learn?

By the way, I've written a song about the railway ticket machines, music video coming soon!

Second, empty storefronts. Again, Brûlé raises some interesting questions as he praises the large number of home-grown businesses on Lisbon's shopping streets. I have always thought that landlords are short-sited when they throw out solid local businesses in favour of chain stores.

But, crisis brings opportunities. We need to develop business models, call them market 2.0 streets. These streets would be managed using a cooperative approach: say one chain store, five local businesses with the six landlords sharing the profits. Add-in ideas like locally-based programming, extra cleaning and more safety - paid for jointly by the cooperative and we may be on to something.

Better yet, cheap storefronts on these streets for local businesses would be incubators - helping creative people to develop new ideas and products ... real products and services that people need. Could these market 2.0 streets be a path out of today's economic problems?