Cities, 2009.
Urban design, transit, civic tech, Open311, the city as internet
- Optional scope contracts
For an upcoming project at TOPP, we’re talking about setting up an optional scope contract [PDF] — where we specify the time, cost and quality, but leave the actual scope of work open. This approach has many advantages, which I’ll just quote from Beck & Cleal’s document: Customers can change their ...
- Transit: uniter or divider?
Today’s post on Infrastructurist about the D-Train Murder had a line that caught my eye: Cramming the population of a city like New York into a maze of underground cars creates a forced melting pot that’s a perfect breeding ground for class and race divisions. There’s no question that the NYC subway...
- New App Idea: Dude, Where's My Car?
Even though I shouldn’t own a car, I do, and as every car owner in NYC knows, dealing with alternate-side parking is a hassle. That, combined with my recent itch to write a small mobile app, has lead me to the following idea: the “Dude, Where’s My Car?” app for mobile. Here’s what it will… Contin...
- Getting My Transparency On
This past weekend, Phil Ashlock and I headed down to DC to participate in TransparencyCamp, a BarCamp event put on by the Sunlight Foundation. We spent two days with ~200 open government and transparency advocates from all sectors — government, non-profit, tech, etc. All in all, it was a pretty ...
- TOPP @ Green Desk
This week, TOPP moved into additional, (maybe) temporary office space, to alleviate some of the crowding at our office in the West Village. We were looking for a place that was convenient, comfortable, and most of all, available immediately (backstory is that we’ve been basically sitting on top of ...