What Will Buildings In The Future Look Like?

Image sent by Matt Green Green Consulting LLC

High Tech with all the high-tech gizmos or  a living-green vertical forest?
Two different perspectives with two different timeframes:
One a hundred years from now
One now by Stefano Boeri in Lausanne, SwitzerWonderland
THE FUTURE IS NOW
[it's looking green, renewable, regenerative, energy-efficient + increasing the health, productivity and well-being of residents]
BTW: thanks to two contacts, the first and closest Matt Green who purchased a home here in Mesa in 2010 located in one of downtown's historic districts, studied architecture @ ASU and has worked on different projects in Harlem, the Navajo Reservation in Arizona, and sites in New Mexico. The other is BrianG.Donnelly, an "architectneur' based in Toronto.

The headline image is featured in TreeHugger | Making Sustainability Sexy [go figure] . . . and while you're on the site there's  very good report day 16 November titled
Daniel Wallach of Greensburg explains how to talk to a conservative about the environment.

In another report from the U.S.Department of Energy [ link here >> http://energy.gov/eere/buildings/buildings-future ] efforts are aimed to investigate key design and technology trends and current unknown areas that could revolutionize the built environment across the areas of energy and water use, greenhouse gas emissions, material consumption, building control and communication, resilient design, occupant health and productivity, and cyber and physical security . . . Group members also considered related topics that may directly impact the long-term trajectory of buildings, such as modes of transportation, electric grid integration, and community-scale planning,  . . Through surveys conducted by the Buildings of the Future participants, a next-generation building’s top attribute will be its ability to increase the health, productivity, and wellbeing of occupants.

http://www.achrnews.com/articles/131005-what-will-buildings-look-like-in-100-years#

Here are some other images to feast your eyes, get inspired and get seriously curious about >

THE BIG WE > Here. There + Everywhere | Music Makes The Mark On/Off Main Street

Mesa Channel 11 on-site

As soon as local City-owned local Mesa Channel 11uploads their coverage of the 1st Mesa Music Fest it will get posted here -  crews, staff and equipment were all over the  streets day and night Friday, Saturday and Sunday . . . your MesaZona blogger [slightly overtaken by the earth-shaking + loud-pounding music did manage to snap a timelapse blurry image to the left].
Social media - in the hands of the public - was all over  with many people connecting with free @mesa WiFi .
Having been "around the block" more than a few times in major cities like Washington DC, Philadelphia, Boston and New York City, gotta say it was a big surprise to see so many people working together to promote the New Urban Downtown Mesa - it worked!



The often-ignored MacDonald Street, south of Main, was center stage

Prime Cut & Sew caught attention

 Inside peek at Salt Mine Recording Studios



Boeing Apache A64E Attack Helicopter @ Dubai Airshow 2015

Going  global and worldwide

Can WE Get Real?? Re/Image of Cycling = Not Urban Hipster

Readers will notice the use of THE BIG WE in the headline of this post.
That phrase came from a chance impromptu chat with Natalie Lewis, who was volunteering on a City of Mesa holiday - Veterans Day - at the all-veterans music performance @ Mesa Arts Center supporting the city's initiative to provide housing for homeless vets.[previous post here "Keeping The Promise"]. Also see image from performance + updates about housing homeless vets initiative thanks to Natalie Lewis.
One topic quick-fire led to another as yours truly was trying to wrap his head around what it takes to regenerate the New Urban Downtown Mesa.
Natalie forcefully and assuredly said THE BIG WE . . . More about that later when the conversation with her can get expanded.
For now in this one post to show the dynamics of engaging in The Big We: the city comes out with a press release spoon-fed to the media who stenograph and publish it. Why? ... because it's easy, it fills the pages and mainstream reporters get paid for it - it's their job.
Case in point: compare the two images in this post

Bike share to start in Mesa this spring
East Valley Tribune on Sunday, Nov 8, 2015
Yes this is nice and all that -it's rolling out in many cities all over the world; Phoenix for a year and Mesa next Spring.[Image to the right from EVT article link]
Let's be honest. Who's this commercial Grid Bike Share Program operated by a company called Cycle Hop http://www.gridbikes.com/ for? ... with initially 100 3-speed bikes available next Spring for a daily rental of $8 or by the hour. The company originally planned for 250 in Mesa in 2015.
How does it work for all you cool dudes and dudettes "saving the planet"?
Simply hop on your web-enabled mobile device, desktop computer, or visit a hub to reserve a bike. Ride to your destination and lock it to any hub or public bike rack. [additional fees may apply] It’s that easy! 
During  a month-plus break from driving, your MesaZon blogger finds a different reality every time boarding the bus or light rail - there's always a bike rider getting off his/her bike putting both on public transit.

Everyday bikes  @ Main Library

For everyday people now using public transit - both bus and light rail - bikes are a necessity.The actual environment for biking in downtown Mesa is not what "city leaders" or "city planners" perceive to be an asset for urban gentrification - everyday people, the vast majority here middle and low-income and minority/or not, use bikes for survival and purposeful riding for their own transportation in a car-centered infrastructure, frequently using bus or light rail public transit to fill in the distance gaps from where they are to where they need to go.
As a colleague, Brian G.Donnelly in Toronto that writes a blog called Architect This City notes in an email today, "Public transit can often suffer from what is known as the first mile/last mile problem. This is a problem where riders find it difficult to get to the nearest transit route from their departing point or to their ultimate destination once they exit transit."
So-called city leaders and city planners are once again "leading from behind" and taking credit for it > at least catching up with a practical and cost-effective, self-empowering to maintain, healthy and affordable way to get around that's  a necessity for the vast majority already using bikes in the human infrastructure.
The data's just not there about why and how everyday people use bikes.

Your MesaZona blogger has been riding bus and light rail public transit during the last month seeing and talking with  wide spectrum of bike riders - only two were all tricked-out in high-priced cycle gear and high-tech bikes.
 
City of Mesa Special Projects Manager Niel Curley gets excited about data.
According to what's reported by Shelley Ridenour, "The bikes are also “smart,” he said, and equipped with a GPS-enabled solar-powered panel . . . Curley is especially excited about another GPS feature on the bikes. City officials can track where the bikes are ridden to discover the most popular routes. That information will allow for better decisions about whether to add more bikes, more hubs or to relocate hubs, he said."

If you want to use the jargon in the urban redevelopment toolbox It's the utility of point-to-point travel in inter-modal connections.

 Concert @ MAC on Wed Nov 11

Congress will be voting on a final transportation bill within just a few days…
We need a flood of emails to Congress asking for the highest funding possible for public transportation.

Tell Rep. Sinema and Senators McCain and Flake you’re watching and that you expect a real investment by Congress to improve and expand American public transportation.
Go >> http://voicesforpublictransit.org/actioncenter.aspx


Thank you!
Mantill Williams
Voices for Public Transit Community Coordinator

The Whole World Is A DataSet > Huh?

It's a little crazy, but the story begins over 50 years ago with the launch of the first generation of U.S. government photo reconnaissance satellites.
And today, there's more than a handful of the great, great grandchildren of these early Cold War machines which are now operated by private companies. It's not in outerspace anymore either - if you travel anywhere, or to get down to the local level traveling on Valley Metro the sign clearly says "Smile you're on camera"

Some people call it BigBrother or surveillance or location-tracking, national security, or just "data" or "metadata" . . Got a good chuckle the other day while in Heat Sync Labs here on Main Street with a group of techies when one of them said to another - surprised and jumping up from his laptop - How many databases or datasets do you have?
The City of Mesa has recently announced via a Twitter Poston the City Manager's twitter account the internal appointments from City Hall to start the first Open Data Portal bringing transparency and accountability for the first time to benefit residents thanks to partiipating in Bloomberg's WhatWorksCities . . . keep an eye on that, dear readers.

 It's a little out-dated but take a look at this official TEDTalk 9:44 video seen by over 770,000 people with Dan Birkenstock that what posted in Fb 2014 + rated Informative, Ingenious
https://youtu.be/7pVPmmwSeJQ

Why you should listen and watch

Dan Berkenstock is an entrepreneur and engineer from Chicago, who fell into a classic tale of Silicon Valley innovation while taking a graduate entrepreneurship course at Stanford. That class led him and some others to found Skybox Imagingm[now part of Google], of which Berkenstock is executive vice president and chief product officer.




Here's a link to the complete transcript https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_berkenstock_the_world_is_one_big_dataset_now_how_to_photograph_it/transcript?language=en

The Grand Opening That Wasn't > There's More To The Story

 . . only two [2] people showed up on Friday Nov 6.

That didn't phase the owner of the new business Polk Barn Primitives on S Center Street.
Lisa Sorenson and her daughter Matti were busy in the shop and waiting for a new big sign to get installed on the front. [just yesterday they got email notification that the sign plans had been approved by P &Z - this lady moves fast]
Yours truly happened to be walking by today, getting into a brief spontaneous chat with Lisa while the sign was put up on the front by Todd Tate, owner of Sign Art whose motto is "A business with no SIGN . . . Is a SIGN of no business". 

Pole Art Primitives now has both a sign and an experienced business owner who just relocated with her family to Arizona in April - six months later she opens a business enterprise in the New Urban Downtown Mesa!