City cutting more trees in Old Brooklyn

In response to the threat of Ash Borer beetles, the city has cut down several Ash trees in Old Brooklyn in 2010. About 10 of these trees have been cut down on Mayview, where I reside.

Last year, I blogged my resignation to the city’s removal of ash trees on my planting strip (the space between the sidewalk and curb). Because our tree was the only one cut down at the time, I didn’t realize its impact on the street. However, after reading an article by Michael Gill in a December issue of the Cleveland Scene and seeing more trees cut down on my street [even in the snow], I’m having second thoughts about the city of Cleveland’s plan to cut down the remaining Ash Trees.

Why keep the trees ?
Aesthetics. They also provide shade and cool down the front of houses and while walking through the neighborhood [although I'm not sure if that can be calculated].

Unfortunately, the city, planting the Ash trees (on Mayview, they were planted in the late 1970s), didn’t follow a rule of biodiversity, to plant different types of trees to prevent a bug or disease from affecting all of the trees. Any new tree replacement should include different trees and I’ll see if that’s being done for Mayview and Cleveland.  A 2009 study by a group of Entomologists from OSU and a couple other midwest universities stated that there are several insecticides that are effective. 

More questions to be answered: do the insecticide treatments have any negative environmental effects ? Has Chicago’s or Milwaukee’s alternative strategies to cutting been effective and can they be replicated in Cleveland ?
After reading a bit more on it, I would like to find out more if our trees can be saved [though I'm still figuring out how high of a priority it is for me to take more action] and whether the insecticide treatments have any negative environmental effects. I don’t know how much it will cost to keep them. It’s something that I’ll talk to my neighbors about and think about.

PS – While writing this, I found http://www.emeraldashborer.info to be a great source of information of Ash Borer beetles and communities’ responses.

 

Sustainable Cleveland 2019 communications meeting wrap-up

Yesterday was the Sustainable Cleveland 2019 meeting.

Andrew Watterson, the head of the Cleveland’s department of sustainability, asked: What sort of technological tools and features does the online infrastructure need to maintain communication, share knowledge and resources to enable the groups to work more effectively and reach the goals of Sustainable Cleveland 2019.  

As marc Lefkowitz at GCBL previously noted, some groups at the summit had not maintained communication amongst themselves and had not done much. Groups were not well informed of each other’s activities and progress.

At yesterday’s meeting, atttendees split up into several groups based on areas of communications [between groups and the city, within groups and the group participants, among multiple groups, and externally to the general public].

What should a communication system look like ?

There were several ideas that had a common consensus for the online infrastructure among the groups :

- Asset Mapping: A way for the institutions and participants involved or related to each group need to layout what their expertises, their existing relationships with other institutions and what they can help other groups with, what the group needs help in accomplishing.

For example (on a very micro level):
I found a grant that would be really good for another group to pursue, they should know about it.
Or I have some ties with a certain city department through my father. If you have questions who to talk to there about their sustinability policy, I can find out for you or I already know.
One member of my group yesterday, Sudhir, is developing one type of framework for asset mapping.

- A project management system with core features including:
- a page that can concisely give a summary of the group: current initiatives, members, main contacts, and timelines.
(GCBL has a great model of this already) The setup of this page would be a template and used by all groups.

- group calendar with meeting events

- doc repository (possibly a wiki)

- people’s profiles

- ways to track other groups’ assignments, responsibilities, goals, and milestones (and their progress on them)

- feeds, alerts [RSS?]

- privacy/access guidelines

Two possible consensus tools mentioned were basecamp and ning. With these suggestions, a design team including GCBL, Marc Canter, and couple other individuals (and possibly myself) will be determining which online tools and platforms will be used for Sustainable Cleveland 2019.

Personally, I haven’t explored ning as a platform very much but it does appear to be limited its features for collaboration (or I don’t have administrative access for them. Additionally, the site does not look very nice aesthetically. However, since the ning site has the most information of SC2019 and members of SC2019 on it [compared to the GCBL's blog [based on drupal] and the wiki (using pbworks) ] completely ditching the ning site may slow the existing discussion there if a transition to a new platform isn’t done smoothly.

 

Reflections on the DARPA challenge

Yesterday was the DARPA Challenge, a contest for anyone (or team) in the USA to find 10 red balloons placed anywhere in the continental United States by DARPA for 9 hours.
This type of contest first excited me even if it was sponsored by the DARPA, an organization under the Department of Defense.

As a part of a team from Metafilter;, what I did observe and learn ?

- There was a lot of misinformation (incorrect information of balloon sightings, speculation whether or reported sightings were true, speculation of the exact location of the balloon) on twitter as I expected.

-  Team metafilter’s strategy included observing new tweets based on keywords. Twitter was used by multiple teams because team members used their audience (which was anyone subscribing to their twitter feed or searched for information also inside their ) to promote the contest to their twitter feed subscribers on the chance they would find a balloon.

-  The level of misinformation and the amount of fake balloons was not as much of a coordinated or comprehensive effect as I expected. There were only 2 false balloons with pictures (Royal Oak, MI and one in the Boston area) that gained some traction over the internet. Cynically, I thought there would be many more false balloons coordinated through fark, 4chan, or somethingawful.

A mefi member had coded up a pretty spiffy page as our homebase which monitored Twitter feeds (I believe it searched for tweets containing Darpa, Balloon, and a couple other keywords).

Reflections on trust and incentives

I wonder much trust should you put in other users’ information on the internet and DARPA wanted to see how much people did.

Before Saturday, I thought a team based on an existing social community (cough, like metafilter) would win the DARPA Challenge
because the information submitted of balloon sightings would be more accurate because giving wrong information would erode their standing and trust in their social community or outcast them in that community.

In the absence of an existing social community, the MIT team offered any individual (and those who referred the person to MIT) monetary rewards for correct coordinates. Given the monetary incentive (and no disincentive to give MIT false submissions), I am very curious to know: how did MIT quickly decipher all of their submissions to determine if they were correct ?

Metafilter only received 3 submissions from our form (only 1 of them actually was right) which asked Metafilter members to submit any balloon sightings there.
Most of our information for locations ended up coming from Twitter. At our online homebase Possible locations were based on the amount of tweets in a certain geographic area (I think this geographic area was based on a combination of factors, on whether the name of the place was location, coordinates). This sort of sampling is based on a ‘wisdom of the crowds’ philosophy.
Interestingly, locations that did not have any balloons (Seattle; Arlington, VA; Albany, NY; Royal Oak, MI; Iowa) generated the most tweets.  At least in our configuration of the twitter filter, the wisdom of the crowds failed.

Congratulations to the MIT team.

 

How to make a mirror for your bike helmet.

Over the years as I have rode on my bicycle, I had not given much thought to buying a mirror. However, after riding more this Spring (as my primary means of transportation in Kalamazoo) and summer, I realized a mirror would be helpful especially for riding in the city. With some time on my hands, I made a mirror for my bicycle helmet.

It was all free, since I had all of the parts around the house.

Parts:
Mirror from a compact (makeup)
wire clothes hanger
super glue
small bracket
a couple 5/32 inch screws

Tools:
Power drill
5/64 drill bit
vice grips.

Steps:

1. Cut the hanger a bit (12 inches, maybe?).

2. Bend one end of the hanger into a circle, so that it would fit into the compact’s groove. Only make the circle big enough to fit the compact

Click on the image to see a larger version.
). While making this, the hanger would often pop out of the groove in the compact. This took a lot of work and I used vice grips to bend the wire into position.

3.
Put superglue inside the groove of the compact and then insert the circular wire into the grooves. Press down for 10 minutes or so. I added more super glue whenever I found it necessary.
(I would love to hear if you know of a better adhesive that is less abrasive than super glue.)

4. Made pilot holes in the visor of my helmet and then screwed in the bracket.
(Bracket placement will differ based on your helmet and height).

5. Inserted the other end of the hanger through bracket and into the helmet.
Click on photo for larger version.

Voila. Unfortunately, the mirror broke two days later as a box of tools fell on it.

 

Missing from Cleveland’s counsciousness: Public Transportation

After going to Boston for the weekend and planning a class reunion, I was reminded of the stigma of public transportation in Cleveland.

I went to Boston over the weekend for the first time for the MAPACA Conference. The ‘T’, Boston’s public transportation system of subways and buses, was able to get me everywhere (which was the airport, my hotel – walking distance [5 minutes] from a T stop, downtown/Back Bay, Cambridge) I needed to go. I had to make several transfers to do so but there were no additional costs. The price per trip was a reasonable $2.00 (if you had a ‘Charlie Card’, a debit-like card, which in retrospect, probably would have been worth for me to obtain – $1.75) The only disadvantage of the ‘T’ was that nearly all of the subways and buses only operated until 12:30AM or so. One of the days I spent walking around Boston and Cambridge with a friend living in Boston. In our conversation, the ‘T’ was the way to go.
everywhere we went (to Harvard’s campus in Cambridge and later to Back Bay in Boston).
Public transportation is engrained into the minds of many in Boston.

(Granted, this is all ancedotal evidence and it was in the 50s and sunny when I was there – very pleasant weather).

Now, I contrasted this with planning a night out on the town with a larger group of friends [15-20] from school.
A group of 5 of us discussed about getting from point A (meeting at a central location in Old Brooklyn) to Point B (going to East 4th). None of us even mentioned public transportation. The conversation was strictly ’should we: drive downtown’ or ‘just get cabs’.

Interestingly, after looking at the bus schedule, I realized making this trip would be possible by taking the RTA and walking 2-3 blocks.

The absence of public transportation in some minds in Cleveland has been on my mind and asking why:

A couple hypothesis for this :

- For some middle-class and working-class people that I’ve talked to, The RTA is branded in their consciousnesses as ‘ghetto’ .  If they can monetarily afford not to take the RTA, they will not. The ability to drive instead of using public transportation can also be branded as a status symbol, in that ‘I can afford to have my own car and use it (and the utility that comes along with a car since RTA doesn’t service everywhere, etc.) so I will use it’ .

- [Drawing this from other public transportation, very general]. Some people, especially women, would also feel unsafe riding the RTA.

- In addition to drawing from those two factors just mentioned, they find it more beneficial to drive to a place. Economically, they may find that the cost of owning, maintaining a car, gasoline, and paying for parking is worth more (monetarily and how they value their time and control of choosing when and where to go).

Even if there is a scenario that both the RTA and driving would be options to go to a place, they would drive.

For this to change ? There are no silver bullets but I’ll mention some things that I think would have to change for RTA to enter the public consciousness.

 

the Ecovillage Tour

I toured the Ecovillage in the Detroit-Shoreway neighborhood (on the Cleveland west side) for a couple hours about weeko ago along with Lilah from Detroit-Shoreway CDC and a EcoVillage project director.

What does an ecovillage mean ?

From their website, the ecovillage:
”The EcoVillage is:
* An innovative partnership involving nonprofit organizations, the city, the regional transit authority, private developers, and neighborhood residents.
* A national demonstration project that will showcase green building and transit-oriented development.
* An opportunity to realize the promise of urban life in the most ecological way possible.
”
That being said, what does the label ‘ecovillage’ really mean in this neighborhood ?

Walking through, I would not be aware that I was walking through the Ecovillage if I had not known it was there (Lilah acknowledged branding is one of their weaknesses). At first glance, it was a neighborhood like others in Cleveland: closely spaced homes [colonials and ranches] from the early 1900s (about 5 feet from neighbor’s driveway to your house). No businesses on the side streets. Empty grass lots dotted the landscape. Some houses well maintained, others – not as much.

As a neighborhood that labelled as environmentally conscious, the level of participation in the ecological urban life for a resident varies. Some of the residents participate (I saw one working the compost pile at the community garden).

There were also included some newer ‘green homes’ (built with coordination of the CDC) which had some greener amenities [a heating bill of $600 a year], no-mow grass (which I really like and want to plant myself when I buy a home).

I Walked through the RTA Rapid Station on West 65th containing some sustainable features in it (natural lighting is one specific I remember). The location appears to be situated well, near Lorain, running through the neighborhood. I did cringe when $2.3 million was spent on the station (I don’t know its sources of funding).

There were some failures in the neighborhood. The ‘pocket park’ (a small spot of trees and greenspace on the corner of an intersection) never came to be and is now littered with trash and a sink hole. Plans for more green homes never came to fruition with the decreased demand for housing after the housing bubble. Some ‘broken-window’ elements [like spray-painted benches at the station] remained.

This was a quick walk through and still leaves a lot of questions, which leaves me wanting more after the walkthrough and a discussion.

Do residents care about the EcoVillage label ? How do they think it will impact their lives ? Do they know and take advantage of the opportunities that exist ?

Can an ecoVillage thrive in a place which a lot of the housing [built in the 1940s-50s - hasty generalization from looking at a couple parcel records at the county GIS] ?
Are these older houses structurally sound and able to be adapted to more environmental modifications ?

(A long overdue post from over a month ago !)

 

Reflections on Sustainable Cleveland 2019.

The ‘Sustainable Cleveland 2019′ – a three day summit presented by the City of Cleveland is similar to summits and symposiums in which I participated [the symposium on youth violence for juveniles in cleveland (August 2007), Voices and Choices (2005-6) and numerous ones in college] .

Such an event usually has small group discussions and brainstorming sessions which produce a plan of action to attain the goals is created the participants’ consensus of a list of priorities and goals. Some times, no plan of action is created to reach these goals. Even if a plan of action to attain the goals is created at the event (a failure of Voices and Choices) there is not sufficient follow-up among the participants and the event’s leadership to ensure actions towards the goals are made and if the current actions are not effective to achieve the goal, change the actions. In a comment on BFD, Ed Morrison concisely articulated this criticsm as well.

2 Weeks after the summit, what steps are being taken to harness the energy created at the summit and follow through with the talk ?

- There have not been any published action plans to move forward.
- Earlier this morning, I have asked the City’s Office of Sustainability in an email if any recommendations or goals have been released yet and if not, when they will be. No reponse yet – I’ll be sure to let everyone know.

- When are the future meetings that will measure the implementation of the goals ?

Reported in the Plain Dealer is that Frank Jackson hoped formal recommendations would be made in a week or two. (At this blog post’s publishing, has been 11 days since the summit ended).

- </Frank Jackson writes that he will “report to the community on the progress we have made in the first year of this journey.”
- While it’s nice to announce the city’s progress after one year, it’s important to make short-term before the energy and enthusaism from the summit dissipates and people and organizations resume their previous routines.

Update [Aug 26, 7:30 PM]: I received a response from the office [Evelyn Burnett] and ‘the recommendations are being finished and will be released soon, but no firm date’ However, Evelyn noted that online collaboration is continuing at http://clevelandsummit.ning.com/

 

test entry on a new blogging client.

I think I found a new blogging client. I’ll be deleting this post soon.

a link

 

Cleveland’s Online Police Report system debuts

A follow-up from this post in July 2008.

The City of Cleveland’s online police reporting system is now up. People can now submit online police reports for a limited amount of incidents (petty theft [less than $500] and property damages).

The City’s front page links to its Press Release (HTML) (1st link ) which then links to the official press release (PDF) (2nd link). This official PDF Press release then directs the reader to access the Cleveland Police page (3rd link) which has the actual Online Police Report System (4th link) which specifies what you can report and links to the Police Report form. A bit complicated, you know ? The city should place the link to the Online Police Report System on its Press Release (the 1st link) and tell how to find the static link on the 1st link.

What are the effects of this software ?
I’m not sure how much.

A] The amount of City of Cleveland residents without internet access is a bit high (I’m guessing) but creating the online police report system makes it easier for most people (not everyone knows how to use a computer, i.e. my dad) to make reports and for many people, removes a barrier (getting transportation and time to the police station) although the report system puts up another barrier (requiring internet and computer access).

B] This is a piece of software. Software, like any other tool, is only useful by the people who operate it. The online report system has the potential for the creation of maps and trends (I say this optimistically, because I have not used the underlying software and this is not specified in the press release) – like seeing a map of hotspots of bicycle thefts, along with their time and dates.  Additionally, the software can facilitate the distribution of this information [already in a digital format] to people online. If the information is publicly released, an active citizenry can be a watchdog over the Police Department. Police and people can also make more informed decisions. However, missing from the press release is whether incident reporters can follow up with the police department to find out any updates in their cases and if so, how.

(static, in HTML lingo, means that the URL does not change each time a person access the link. You can give that URL to someone else and they will be able to access the same website later). The opposite of this, when the URL changes each time a person accesses it, is dynamic).

 

Some brief thoughts on cdBaby

[disclose: I have no affiliation with cdbaby other than being a customer].

I’ve been a fan of CDbaby for a while.

A couple initial reactions to their website redesign:
- The graphics and layout remind me of web2.0 (2006-07). I’m not sure if this is a good thing or bad thing.

- It’s been a while since I last browsed Cdbaby. I was on there and a bit surprised to find many artists selling their physical CD prices at a >$12.99 price.

(As a freshman in high school, I thought the concept of selling music directly from musician to consumer, even through CDs, had a lot of potential. Unknown to me, cdbaby had already existed).

I’m not a typical consumer. My sister still wants an easy way to buy (doesn’t have a digital audio player yet, in part because they rely on me to get them music at a cheaper price).
(this is a very early draft).