Spin da News

Taking a news item/story/whatever and taking a persepective that argues its goodness.

Cameras Capture How Safely Cyclists Cruise

- Adam Clare 2 Comments

It’s clear that car drivers don’t comprehend cyclists, and often I hear drivers complain that bicyclists aren’t safe and tend to be “dangerous” on the road. It turns out that cyclists are safer than cars, cause way fewer collisions, and are amazingly great at avoiding a collision.

To reach this conclusion that bicyclists are safe riders researchers used cameras mounted on bicycles (and riders) accompanied by other observations.

In total, 127 hours and 38 minutes of usable footage was obtained. 54 ‘events’ were captured on film – two collisions, six near-collisions (where rapid evasive action by the cyclist was needed) and 46 other incidents (where some collision avoidance was required).

The cameras also recorded the road position and behaviour of the cyclists – including head checks, reactions and manoeuvres. The aim was to identify risk factors for both cyclists and motorists.

In 88.9% of cases, the cyclist had been travelling in a safe/legal manner prior to the collision/near miss.

Read more at BikeRadar.

So car drivers please remember to share the road and be conscious of what’s around you.

Skateboarders Help Transform Urban Environments

- Adam Clare


Skateboarding culture is often (wrongly) lumped together with criminal behaviour amongst youth. To those that still think that way, you should check out a study in the most recent Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability.

By looking at what young skateboarders would do in the city of Chicago the researchers found out that skateboarding culture is a great thing for urban environments. It’s good to see a positive take on a group of people who often get brushed aside.

Young people appropriate and redefine built environments through their everyday playful practices. Among a widening spectrum of young city dwellers, skateboarders transform urban spaces by exploring terrains and performing unforeseen uses. These urban explorations ascribe new meanings and pleasures to otherwise mundane built forms. Waxing ledges is a ubiquitous practice among skateboarders that signals creative appropriation through the application of wax on rough surfaces. The smoothening of ledges enables speed and exhilaration, while the traces engraved on the urban landscape communicate to other skateboarders a pleasurable space.

Read the abstract and full article here.

Good Designs to Protect Against Flooding

- Adam Clare 4 Comments

The damage of Hurricane Sandy is still being fully realized and we won’t know the full cost of the damage for a little while. What we can do for know is to look into ways to lessen the damage the next time an anthropogenically influenced storm hits the city. The Atlantic has put together some previously thought-out plans for preparing New York City for flooding from ideas that are used elsewhere in the world.

As ocean levels rise this will be a more pressing issue for New Yorkers and other cities on coasts.

Here’s what I think will be the easiest for NYC to implement, but I haven’t been there for years so I could be way off.

2. Elevated infrastructure. There are very few buildings in the entire state of New York built at grade at elevations below sea level. But New York City has constructed one massive piece of infrastructure below that threshold: the subway system. As we saw this week, flooding can devastate an underground network of tunnels, train platforms and corridors. So how do you keep more of that water out? For one thing, elevating subway entrances would help. Bangkok, another low-lying city susceptible to rising tides, has built precisely these kinds of subway entrances. They’re raised a meter off the ground and include built-in floodgates.

See the rest of the ideas here.

Why Drivers Don’t Understand Cyclists

- Adam Clare


As an average cyclist I often find it confusing when drivers get their hate on for sustainable transit. Anyone who knows anything about the environment or living in an urban centre would acknowledge that bicycle infrastructure is important and creates a more vibrant city than car-dominated streets.

Yet, car drivers still demand more space and want to take away space from cyclists, what’s up with that? According to a columnist at Slate it has to do with the fact that car drivers can’t conceptualize riding a bicycle as a form of everyday transportation.

Moreover, bicycling as a primary means of transportation—I’m not talking about occasional weekend riders here—is a foreign concept to many drivers, making them more sensitive to perceived differences between themselves and cyclists. People do this all the time, making false connections between distinguishing characteristics like geography, race, and religion and people’s qualities as human beings. Sometimes it is benign (“Mormons are really polite”), sometimes less so (“Republicans hate poor people”). But in this case, it’s a one-way street: Though most Americans don’t ride bikes, bikers are less likely to stereotype drivers because most of us also drive. The “otherness” of cyclists makes them stand out, and that helps drivers cement their negative conclusions. This is also why sentiments like “taxi drivers are awful” and “Jersey drivers are terrible” are common, but you don’t often hear someone say “all drivers suck.” People don’t like lumping themselves into whatever group they are making negative conclusions about, so we subconsciously seek out a distinguishing characteristic first.

Now that we know what one of the problems is in North America it would be great to see more public awareness programs like car drivers for Jarvis.

Read more at Slate.

In the Future Cities will be Sharing Centres

- Adam Clare

Urban centres are already more efficient than their surrounding suburbs and this looks like it will continue for the foreseeable future. Due to the close proximity of people in cities it allows for local sharing projects that can greatly reduce waste awhile increasing access to things we think we need.

How can cities help save the future? Alex Steffen shows some cool neighborhood-based green projects that expand our access to things we want and need — while reducing the time we spend in cars.

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