A huge congratulations to @philipthalis on his well-deserved award.
Philip is undeniably both one of Australia's most respected architects and a tireless advocate for good urban design.
More importantly, he's not afraid to speak up publicly against bad state government planning decisions, as he did with Barangaroo, even when there's a personal cost.
Hornsby is the fifth best place to live in Australia, apparently.
At least, according to a study SGS Economics and Planning:
"Sydney's Northern beaches ranks as the highest in the nation for wellbeing, with only one Queensland city making it to the top 10, the annual index revealed today.
"The Australian Capital Territory came in second due to its low gender wage gaps, climate change risks and the division of wealth."
The study assessed 518 local council areas on seven indicators:
Looks like Sydney Trains is going to drop the jargon from its PA announcements.
From the SMH:
"Commuters will soon be told to “get off” the train, rather than “alight”, after Sydney Trains resolved to overhaul its station announcements to favour colloquial language.
"The phrase “this train terminates here” is also being retired, due to concerns the word “terminates” is difficult to understand."
"It's going to be a bloody disaster": Tell me again about how the second road tunnel under Sydney Harbour won't make congestion worse?
"Civil engineer Les Wielinga, a former CEO at the now-defunct Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA), made the fiery comments at a NSW parliamentary inquiry into the bungled Rozelle Interchange.
"The Western Harbour Tunnel, which is under construction, will allow drivers travelling between the inner west and the North Shore to bypass the CBD.
"Entries and exits to the tunnel will lie at the Ernest Street interchange in Cammeray and near the Falcon Street interchange at North Sydney.
"'It's going to be a bloody disaster,' Mr Wielinga told the upper house committee on Friday.
"Paul Forward, another former CEO of the RTA, told the inquiry he was concerned about the project's design.
"'You've now got three motorways coming out into this short area, and whilst I would recognise there are some exit points, some off-ramps, those motorways are now all going into the Lane Cove Tunnel,' he said.
"'A large number of lanes are going into two lanes at the Lane Cove Tunnel. Sounds familiar?'"
The saga of Waverley Park — Melbourne's car-dependent suburban AFL stadium with a planned seated capacity of over 150,000 (not a typo!)
A really good run down by @philip on the plans by the AFL (and its predecessor, the VFL) to build the world's largest stadium in outer-suburban Melbourne.
Unfortunately, a planned railway line past the stadium to Rowville was never built. That meant a massive 25,000-spot car park as the only real means to get there.
While most of it has been demolished and redeveloped for housing, the oval itself still used by Hawthorn Football Club as a training and administration centre.
@nictea@philip@fuck_cars Pretty much the whole City of Knox (a large chunk of outer-eastern Melbourne) is 1970s and 1980s car-centric suburbia at its worst.
The only rail in the whole area is basically Bayswater and Boronia stations on the Belgrave line. And trains only run every 30 minutes, aside from the morning and evening peak.
Other than that, you have the SmartBus from Ringwood to Frankston, the Rowville SmartBus, and a bunch of infrequent suburban busses.
And the stroads! There's literally a stroad called High Street Road (which is quite possibly the stroadiest name ever invented).
And all of them — Boronia Rd, Stud Rd, Wellington Rd, Burwood Hwy, Wellington Rd, Dorset Rd — are a nightmare during peak hour.
There's whole housing estates with detached residential homes where the only practical way to get anything is to drive.
If anyone says Melbourne does planning well, take them out to Knox (you'll need to drive) and they'll come away with a different opinion.
@nictea@philip@fuck_cars Even the 903 SmartBus only runs a 15 minute timetable during the day, which is less than the minimum 10-minute service busses should be running.
And other services in the area, like the 737 (Croydon to Boronia to Knox to Glen Waverley to Monash Uni) is a 40-minute-plus frequency during most of the day.
And people wonder why more residents in the outer suburbs use public transport...
See, here's why I think the Parramatta light rail should be extended from Sydney Olympic Park to Strathfield.
It's not just that it would allow it to connect directly to many of the train lines serving the western and northern suburbs, including the T1, T2, T3, and T9. Or intercity trains to the Blue Mountains, Central Coast, and Newcastle.
It's not just that Strathfield is a major bus hub with many services across the western suburbs.
It's not just that DFO Homebush (between Strathfield and Olympic Park) is a busy shopping centre that generates a lot of traffic.
No, the big reason I say it's a good idea is because these photos were taken on the 526 bus, between Strathfield and Olympic Park, on a Sunday afternoon.
A good friend of mine just implied (again) that I'm Eeyore and always gloomy (because I mention all the things that can go wrong). I had to gently remind him that I'm not a pessimist, I'm a REALIST. In short, plan for the worst case scenario, hope for the best!
Optimist: Doesn't think anything will go wrong, doesn't want to hear about bad things, caught unprepared when things go south.
Realist: Looks at risk factors, even the small percentage ones, plans accordingly. Can respond if bad things happen, hopefully not needed.
Pessimist: Doesn't think anything will go right, thinks everything is going to fail/go horribly. Stays in bed.
I have a new planner for next year and oh my goodness, it has SO many notes pages (for fellow planner nerds: I ordered a Hobonichi weeks and didn't see it was a mega. Notes pages galore!)
I've decided on my word of the year for next year
having a real Christmas tree in the house is just so wonderful, I love the little thing.
The terrible human toll in Gaza has many causes.
A chilling investigation by +972 highlights efficiency:
An engineer: “When a 3-year-old girl is killed in a home in Gaza, it’s because someone in the army decided it wasn’t a big deal for her to be killed.”
An AI outputs "100 targets a day". Like a factory with murder delivery:
"According to the investigation, another reason for the large number of targets, and the extensive harm to civilian life in Gaza, is the widespread use of a system called “Habsora” (“The Gospel”), which is largely built on artificial intelligence and can “generate” targets almost automatically at a rate that far exceeds what was previously possible. This AI system, as described by a former intelligence officer, essentially facilitates a “mass assassination factory.”"
"The third is “power targets,” which includes high-rises and residential towers in the heart of cities, and public buildings such as universities, banks, and government offices."
#IDI stands for the Intelligence Division of the Israel army. Here is some praise of technology usage:
May 2021 "is the first time that the intelligence services have played such a transformative role at the tactical level.
This is the result of a strategic shift made by the IDI [in] recent years. Revisiting its role in military operations, it established a comprehensive, “one-stop-shop” intelligence war machine, gathering all relevant players in intelligence planning and direction, collection, processing and exploitation, analysis and production, and dissemination process (PCPAD)".
Behind any aircraft that takes off for an attack, there are thousands of soldiers, men and women, who make the information accessible to the pilot. "They produce the targets and make the targets accessible. To set a target, it’s a process with lots of factors that need to be approved. The achievement, the collateral damage and the level of accuracy. For that, you have to interconnect intelligence, (weapon) fire, C4I [an integrated military communications system, including the interaction of troops, intelligence and communication equipment] and more," said Nati Cohen, currently a reservist in the Exercises Division of the C4I Division of the army.
"The unit is engaged in the same kind of AI work that the world’s biggest tech companies, like Google, Facebook and China’s Baidu are doing in a race to apply machine learning to such functions as self-driving cars, analysis of salespeople’s telephone pitches and cybersecurity — or to fight Israel’s next war more intelligently."
“I’ve always loved algorithms. I was already involved with them in high school and worked in the field. When I [was] drafted I wanted to combine the technology with a combat,” Maj. Sefi Cohen, 34, recalls.
The unit’s only female member left recently. so for the moment it’s an all-male team. Cohen says: “Everyone who’s here is the tops.”
It was easier to locate the individuals in their private houses.
“We were not interested in killing operatives only when they were in a military building or engaged in a military activity. On the contrary, the IDF bombed them in homes without hesitation, as a first option. It’s much easier to bomb a family’s home. The system is built to look for them in these situations.”
For those unfamiliar with it, Lemmy is basically a federated version of Reddit, distributed across multiple servers like Mastodon. (For anyone who wants to delve further, lemmy.ml, beehaw.org, and aussie.zone are three popular Lemmy instances.)
From Mastodon, you can follow any Lemmy group by following its handle, exactly the same way that you would follow a Mastodon account. Any new posts to that group will then begin appearing in your Mastodon feed.
Even better, if you start a thread on Mastodon, you can also post it to a relevant Lemmy group just by including its handle in your post. (Please note this only seems to work with the first post of a thread.)
I'm a PhD student in Urban and Regional #Planning at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. I'm especially interested in regional revitalization in #Japan, #Korea, and elsewhere in East and Southeast Asia.
Also a big fan of #JuliaLang and its applications for social science. In a parallel life I build #AgentBasedModels
Culver City in Los Angeles introduced a new bike lane that boosted cycling by 57%. Now it's being removed for cars.
"A project called Move Culver City was launched in November 2021 with the aim of encouraging biking and walking through the 1.3-mile downtown corridor in the Culver City area.
"The project claimed traffic lanes along the Washington and Culver Boulevard strips, creating bike and bus lanes in their stead, reducing the lanes for vehicle traffic to one in either direction. The project was met with mixed opinions over the last few years.
"And while a report released this month by Move Culver City boasted a 57 percent increasing in cycling along the Washington and Culver Boulevard corridor over pre-pandemic levels, the Culver City Council voted 3-2 earlier this week to end the program, remove the bike lanes, and return the corridor to two lanes of vehicular traffic in each direction 'wherever feasible.'"
Does anyone feel like sitting down in front of the computer and playing around with their notes a bit?
I just wrote down how I set up and try to maintain my (academic) reading list in #Obsidian using the #Projects plugin by @marcusolsson and #Zotero. Might post it again after the holidays, but for now, here's the description of my approach for those who asked. Thus, fulfilling my promise from this thread: https://hcommons.social/@natalie/109557676423033978