Couple videos and webpages that I've watched/read recently! I should probably come up with a way to format these separately from my other blog posts if I do this more frequently, but I've fallen off blogging in general for a bit at this pont. Gotta get back to it!
Great video about the trend towards (North American) kids increasingly using motorized transport to get to school and decreasingly walking or biking themselves to school. In 1969, 48% of US kids walked or biked to school and about 10% were driven. Those numbers had reversed by 2009, and are lower still now.
The video goes into the reasons behind this trend, what the impacts of this shift are on kids, and how we can reverse it. Good watch!
It's been clear to me that a lot of what the Dutch have learned about street design is applicable to other places as well, but it's nice to see that put into practice. This one shows off a North American city that's started to put in high quality bike/pedestrian infrastructure (in particular continuous sidewalks/bike paths), and what's happened since then.
It's heartening to see. The initial reaction from residents was (as you might expect) somewhat negative, but (as I would also expect) turned much more positive once the changes were in place and people could see how much they improve the feel of the street.
Continuous sidewalks are a game changer and I'd love to see some around here!
Interesting read about our relationship with technology that resonated with me a lot.
wabi tek sabi is way of seeing and living with human craft and technology in the world. like wabi sabi it certainly has much to do with aesthetics and pleasure, but it is mainly a way to look at, work with, and live with technology.
we all have our favorite objects; comfortably worn-out shoes we can’t bear to part with; we watch the holes grow larger as we wear them year in and year out. a new tool patinas; that patina eventually becomes objectionable wear. a shiny new object may stand out from others like it, until it too achieves the warm dull patina of use and becomes part of a household. mundane things become personalized. objects treated in this way are ongoing, long-term situations, relationships between people and objects, that is not simply about money and is not necessarily fully rational; they give us pleasure and usefulness both.
it is the combination of object and human attention that creates the situation of wabi tek sabi. these situations are the very essence of wabi tek sabi. where wabi sabi finds beauty in objects subjected to various (generally unacknowledged or unseen) processes of wear and use; wabi tek sabi embraces the processes and situations themselves that lead to to the creation of an object’s dynamic situation.
My MNT Reform, which I built as a kit and have done board-level repairs on, feels very wabi tek sabi.