FACTS: Driving is why you´re fat!!!

Driving is why you´re fat!!!

http://awesome.good.is/transparency/web/1008/driving-and-obesity-3/flat.html

Articulo: Rethinking Lower Manhattan: What If?

Anthony Townsend

Since its founding in the mid 1990s, Alliance for Downtown New York has long been one of the world's leading business improvement districts. This non-profit organization has presided over the reinvention of New York's historic Financial District as a thriving 24-hour live/work district, while retaining a respectable share of the city's financial services sector. The Alliance built a network of Wi-Fi hotspots that lit up nearly every major public space in the district - not just outdoor locations like Bowling Green and City Hall Park, but also indoor atria like the Winter Garden and 60 Wall Street. More recently, they announced a new initiative to create a new kind of incubator, the Hive@55, which will model itself off the exploding grassroots coworking movement that is sweeping the country.

Thus its no surprise that such an innovative advocate for Lower Manhattan has just blown the roof off the debate on what to do with the long-neglected area south of the World Trade Center known as Greenwich South, with a study released yesterday titled simply "Greenwich South: What If?". Developed over the last year with the input of numerous stakeholders and award-winning architects, the study presents a series of provocative questions that hope to accelerate the debate about the area's future far beyond the rather unambitious proposals that have circulated in recent years. My personal favorite - "What if you could Live, Work and Raise Sheep in the same building?" - is about the most delightfully playful urban planning idea to be floated in New York City in a decade.

Greenwich South has long been the stepchild of Lower Manhattan - blighted first by an elevated railway, then the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel approach, then the closing off of northern access by the World Trade Center superblock - nearly any action would be an improvement. And that's what most of the proposals to date have been limited to - incremental improvements. The Alliance study offers the possibility to turn the area into a living laboratory for bold new planning ideas that bring great streets, public art, and even urban agriculture into the place where New York City started. One of the study's other provocations, which asks "What if it all started here (again)?" might just be a wish that turns out to be true.


http://www.planetizen.com/node/40938

Articulo: What Makes a Successful Place?

What Makes a Successful Place?

In evaluating thousands of public spaces around the world, Project for Public Spaces (PPS) has found that successful ones have four key qualities: they are accessible; people are engaged in activities there; the space is comfortable and has a good image; and finally, it is a sociable place: one where people meet each other and take people when they come to visit. PPS developed The Place Diagram as a tool to help people in judging any place, good or bad:


Imagine that the center circle on the diagram is a specific place that you know: a street corner, a playground, a plaza outside a building. You can evaluate that place according to four criteria in the red ring. In the ring outside these main criteria are a number of intuitive or qualitative aspects by which to judge a place; the next outer ring shows the quantitative aspects that can be measured by statistics or research.



http://www.pps.org/topics/gps/gr_place_feat

Cuaderno de Ideas

En cuanto al tema Legal, Bisa Urbana debe...

• Estudiar cuales son los instrumentos legales que hoy en dia rigen el desarrollo Urbano de Caracas
• Detectar los aspectos a cambiar, modificar, introducir, etc. para que estos mismos vallan en cohesión con el tipo de Ciudad que queremos y a su vez, regulen la Re-Activacion y Re-Urbanizacion
• Dar las pautas para el diseño de nuevos instrumentos legales para que regulen los futuros Desarrollos Urbanos de la Ciudad

>>> Actualmente, los instrumentos legales que rigen el Desarrollo Urbano, no demuestran una base sobre el tipo de Ciudad que se esta desarrollando. Estos se basan principalmente en el uso de la Zonificación

>>> Y segun el CNU ( Congress for New Urbanism):

"The excessive application of zoning has led to the extreme separation of everyday activities, separating homes from work places, shops, schools, churches and libraries.

Single-use zoning also results in the segregation of the population by age and income groups, with separate "pods" of housing zoned, developed and marketed for the super rich, rich, middle-upper income, middle income and lower income populations.

Housing types are also separated from one another, creating pods of apartments, townhomes, condominiums, duplexes, and single-family homes making it nearly impossible for families and individuals to stay in their communities and find different types of housing that suit their needs throughout their lives as young singles, young couples, families, empty nesters, and elderly citizens in need of care.

Single-use zoning also prevents low- and moderate-income households from establishing home-based businesses – "live-work" arrangements – such as crafts, trades and services that traditionally provided additional income for families with stay-at-home caregivers, homemakers and other family members to supplement wage earners' income. The prohibition on accessory apartments, or "granny flats," has also eliminated a traditional source of affordable housing that provided rental income and options for allowing homeowners' elderly parents or teenagers to live close by."

Cuaderno de Ideas

Plan Global de Transporte y Rehabilitacion de Espacios para Caracas Humana!!!

Incluye tres Aspectos....


• Legal ( Bisa Urbana da las pautas + Otros diseñan y ejecutan)

• Arquitectura y Urbanismo ( Bisa Urbana diseña y ejecuta)

• Transporte ( Bisa Urbana da las pautas+ Otros diseñan y ejecutan )

Cuaderno de Ideas

• Rescate del Guaire como monumento natural de la ciudad....

>>> Haciendo uso del mismo
>>> Pasos Peatonales a todo lo largo, puntos estrategicos
>>> Crear comercios y zonas de interes
>>> Rescate ambiental
>>> Concepto de Plataformas Tematicas (ejercicio, parque, entretenimiento, Bares, Restaurants)
>>> Conexiones abiertas solo a paso peatonal y ciclistas ( no motor)
>>> Ofrecer una vista Unica de Caracas ( sin carros)

Tomar fotos puntos importantes a lo largo del Guaire


• Re-Acticacion de los Proceres

• Re-Activacion de Las Mercedes, Bello Monte

• Re-Activacion de Los Chaguaramos, Santa Monica

• Re-Activacion de la Av. Rio de Janeiro