Friday, July 01, 2016

That Vision Thing > Pie-In-The-Sky ASU Downtown Mesa Campus

Cities: The intersection of people and place
By T.J. Raphael (follow) 
Jane Jacobs, the mother of urban planning, warned the world more than a decade ago about grandiose developers peddling utopian urban visions.
This is one of the troubles with what I call the 'vision' thing," Jacobs said in 2004. "The vision thing is an idea that somewhere or other in the future is a golden age we should be working toward, and when we get it, boy won't that be great."
Now, Roberta Brandes Gratz, an urban planner and friend of Jacobs, is carrying forward that skepticism. She says that the buzz around “smart cities” presents an opportunity to think both enthusiastically and cautiously about the future of urban development.
Brandes Gratz is founder of the Center for the Living City and author of "We're Still Here Ya Bastards: How the People of New Orleans Rebuilt Their City.” She says that while the "smart city" may be the latest trend in urban planning, the fundamental building blocks of cities haven't changed.
 

Up-Ending Creative Place Making > A BIG QUESTION

Maybe it's just an old habit hard to break, but your MesaZona blogger likes to take a look at what's used to wrap-up an article or report or a proposal [or read an executive summary] before getting into the introduction or reading the main body of lines and paragraphs -or skipping around.
Let's go back to a number of posts about that ASU Downtown Mesa Campus Pie-In-The Sky Scheme : the problem?
It was an attempted done-deal way before the public got wind of it - A RADICAL TRANSFORMATION. Here's why 
In creative placemaking, inclusion is fundamental.
You don’t ask people for their feedback on something that’s already been made.
You ask them to start with you at the beginning.
How hard people will work to make sure that happens is an even bigger question.
If part of the goal is to create places that reflect neighborhood identities, isn’t it a challenge to ensure equity and inclusion?
Of course, people doing this work believe that everybody should be able to participate. But whether or not that happens is a big question. . .
It’s a place-based approach, so you’re working within a specific square mileage.
If, as an artist or community development corporation, you want to use creative placemaking to build cohesion in that defined place,
how do you constantly make sure you’re not missing people’s voices?

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Creative Place Making
LISC Our Stories 
By Lynne McCormack
As head of the creative placemaking program, Lynne, an artist by training, oversees LISC’s many projects that bring arts and culture into the work of comprehensive community development. Before joining LISC, Lynne served as the director of Art, Culture and Tourism for the city of Providence. For over thirty years, she has worked at the intersection of arts and community, forging partnerships that brought grants, festivals, employment opportunities and increased funding for arts-based development to the city. Lynne holds a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design.

Or, at least, part of it. Last week, some 60 community developers, artists, public officials, funders and LISC staffers came together in Providence, RI to hash out the theory and practice of “creative placemaking,” which is becoming an increasingly integral part of community development work. In the interview that follows, Lynne McCormack, who joined LISC in October 2015 as director of creative placemaking for national programs and who spearheaded the meeting, answers some fundamental questions about creative placemaking. For starters: what the heck is it?
Read more at the above link


WATCH THIS > New Avigilon Appearance Search™ Technology – Reveal



Published on Jun 19, 2016
Views: 4,119
Avigilon Appearance Search video analytics technology is a sophisticated search engine for video data. It sorts through hours of footage with ease, to quickly locate a specific person or vehicle of interest across an entire site. Avigilon Appearance Search technology can dramatically improve incident response time and enhance forensic investigations by allowing operators to build robust video evidence and create a powerful narrative of events.

Connect with Avigilon
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Avigilon 'Appearance Search' transforms video surveillance

Published on Jun 30, 2016
Thank you for joining Avigilon at IFSEC International 2016. This year we featured Avigilon Appearance Search Technology and our revolutionary H4 Edge Solution Camera line. We also featured our latest video and access control solutions including the HD Pro and H4 Camera lines, HD NVR premium, our ACC ES HD recorder and the latest version of our Access Control Manager system.
Watch the show recap >> https://youtu.be/nvvXKqYoLf4

Wednesday, June 29, 2016

How Computers Learn To Be Creative

We're on the edge of a new frontier in art and creativity — and it's not human. Blaise Agüera y Arcas, principal scientist at Google, works with deep neural networks for machine perception and distributed learning. In this captivating demo, he shows how neural nets trained to recognize images can be run in reverse, to generate them. The results: spectacular, hallucinatory collages (and poems!) that defy categorization. "Perception and creativity are very intimately connected," Agüera y Arcas says. "Any creature, any being that is able to do perceptual acts is also able to create."
Video Link >> https://www.ted.com/talks/blaise_aguera_y_arcas_how_computers_are_learning_to_be_creative?language=en
Interactive transcript: here


Software architect
Blaise Agüera y Arcas works on machine learning at Google. Previously a Distinguished Engineer at Microsoft, he has worked on augmented reality, mapping, wearable computing and natural user interfaces.










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Looking Back : Jerry Lewis LD18 AZ State Senate Campaign Announcement


Uploaded on Jul 27, 2011
Raw footage of the campaign announcement of Mesa resident Jerry Lewis for the Nov. 8 recall election in LD18.
Current mayor John Giles was the co-chairman for his election campaign - Lewis lost.
. . . and here's an endorsement Scott Smith
 [produced by Jillian Studios]

 

Covering Mesa: Code Enforcement


Mesa 11 Live Stream


The live stream for the City of Mesa Channel 11 in Mesa Arizona - a lot of real estate industry adverts.

Readers can get livrstreams and on-demand videos all the time at mesa11.com