A New Life in the Infinite City

It has been a little over a month since I packed my bags, loaded up the UHaul, and set sail for San Francisco. Since then, my main priority has been finding a job (or even a part-time "yob"). So apologies, again, for not maintaining this here blog up to my usual standards. As of this writing, I have not yet found a job but have made some good progress to that end. At the very least I have interviewed for positions far more frequently than I could've ever predicted. 


For those of you who're interested, here is a brief update on the job search:


First, the bad news...I have been rejected for the following positions:

• Sales coordinator position at a Facebook-related, early-stage startup in SoMa (rejected after two interviews)
• Customer service position at an events and ticketing late-stage startup in SoMa (rejected after two interviews)
• Executive assistant position at an international non-profit foundation (rejected after one interview)
• Admissions representative at a private university Downtown (rejected after one interview
• Recruiting position at a pharmaceutical staffing agency (declined the position after a phone screen)

Now for the bright spots of the job search, for opportunities still pending:

• Project coordinator position at an affordable housing developer in Civic Center - this is the opportunity I'm most excited about :)
• Policy analyst at an insurance-related non-profit Downtown
• Contracts clerk at a solar company in San Mateo
• Admin at a private university Downtown
• Project coordinator position at a climate change think tank in Berkeley
• Two large temp agencies

So as you can see, not all is lost as the job hunt goes on. The positions that are still in the cards for me are far and away much better fits than those for which I've been turned down. I sometimes forget in the stress of applying to and interviewing for jobs that as much as the employer is interviewing you, you are interviewing the employer to find the best match for you. 


The importance of this is easy to overlook when at the end of the day I just need a job to pay my bills. But will it be a job that I enjoy, somewhere I can thrive over the long-term and find real growth opportunities and maybe even a career? Something tells me it was for my own good that the sales and customer service-related positions passed me over. Perhaps they sensed (correctly, I think) that I wanted more out of a job than answering phones all day or mindlessly crunching numbers. Dare I say it, I want a career and not just a dead-end job? So those outcomes can be seen as a blessing in disguise, I suppose.


In the meantime, I cannot praise the temp agencies in San Francisco highly enough. If you ever find yourself unemployed (or under-employed) in a big city like SF, I highly recommend that you get yourself into the local temp agency for an interview. 


The first temp agency I met with (who will remain confidential as I am still working with them) was tremendously helpful. I was referred to the agency by my good friend Elyse, who got a kickass job at Pandora with their placement services. She began as a receptionist and has since been promoted twice, first to recruiter, now to events specialist. She has been working there since January, mind you. Elyse is also responsible for helping us find our apartment and has truly been an indispensable resource in helping us getting established here. Love you, Elyse! Her story is one that I think could only happen in a place like San Francisco.


So after Elyse referred me to the temp agency, I applied for several jobs within a few days of getting into town. Not even twelve hours later, I get an invitation to interview with one of their recruiters. Now that's service! 


The first woman I met with took one look at my resume and made clear, precise recommendations for several types of positions, such as administrative, sales, or customer service. She told me what to cut (a lot!), what vocabulary to change, and what to embellish for my job search. Another woman I met with had already reviewed my resume and had a position at a biodiesel company already in mind. The position ended up not being available, but the fact that she was able to recommend me for a position in a field I've already blogged about here is a testament to her diligence.


The agency also hooked me up with several days' temp work as an usher at the recent Dreamforce conference at Moscone Center, run by the local software giant Salesforce.com. In case you're wondering what the hell Salesforce is, don't worry...Salesforce is the future, and the future is terrifying! It's basically a sales database system that combines the powers of every social network into one: Facebook, Skype, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Amazon.com, all seamlessly integrated. 


Imagine the following scenario: you walk into a Nordstrom's and buy a pair of jeans. Upon ringing you up at the register, the sales clerk registers the transaction into Salesforce, where not only your credit card information, but also your Facebook profile, Twitter feed, blog presence, and nearly every other social footprint online is stored. An inquiring salesperson or advertiser would then be able to search your profiles and "recommend" your next purchase based on the interests you've expressed on your social networks as well as those expressed by any of your hundreds of online friends.


Maybe I'm being paranoid here, but this technology is quite frightening and makes me take pause at how my online presence could potentially be used for sinister purposes. After ushering the VIP section at the Dreamforce keynote address by Marc Banioff, I can tell you that what I've described is merely just the beginning of what Salesforce has in store. Coming soon are internal company Facebook-like social networks, where any employee in a closed network can post company updates, share documents, or even schedule online conferences. 


Let's take the next technological leap into the future for a second. Facebook has recently announced a hair-raising new facial recognition technology. You heard right. Technology now exists that can search for and locate your Facebook (and countless other Internet profiles) based on a quick and dirty photograph of your face. See below:





Now let's take a paranoid leap of faith and assume that enterprising companies like Salesforce snap up this technology in a split-second, paying no heed to the public's concerns over breach of privacy. Because you know that's exactly what will happen. Now the sales clerk at Nordstrom's need not have your credit to look up your social presence online. It can now be done by video cameras the instant you walk into the store. Is it just me, or does this not sound exactly like one of the more disturbing scenes from Minority Report?





Run for your lives, children! The future is already here...


Now for less depressing geekiness. My mom gave me the book Infinite City before I left for San Francisco. It is nothing less than one of the most interesting books I've read in years and was the best possible book I could've read before moving to the city. Infinite City is a collection of maps and accompanying essays that charts the social, economic and cultural history (and future) of San Francisco through the lens of very diverse groups. Written with the premise that every person who lives in the city could write their own infinite series of maps based on their individual life histories (places of residence, watering holes, restaurants or markets they frequent, places they walk their dog) that themselves comprise the fabric of the city. It is a radical concept, that cities are composed of a tapestry of millions of individually situated maps of our livelihoods.


Here are some of the best examples of this type of psychogeography:

The "phrenology" of San Francisco - the city as it reflects within the human psyche

Gay bars and endemic butterfly species - a great pairing if there ever was one!

Poison vs. Palate - toxic waste sites overlaid ontop of gourmet foodie destinations -  "What doesn't kill you makes you gourmet"

Old-style movie houses and scene locations from Alfred Hitchcock movies

Infinite City is the only book I've ever read that truly achieves what a map should as an art form. As a student of geography and GIS, I wish I had been more educated on some of her methods and encouraged to try more or Solnit's wildly imaginative interpretations. Few things are as hard to map as history and culture, for these are nonlinear and fluid concepts. As the author states, any interpretation of our sense of place is situated by our individual experience; there are therefore an "infinite" number of maps that each of us could make of the city, and each would be artistically relevant. Infinite City does a great job of highlighting both the more popular stories/folklore of San Francisco through her maps, as well as those most of us are not brilliant enough to imagine. 


Solnit has a keen sense of duality and contradiction, which shows in her cartography. "Poison and palate", the interplay between toxic waste generators and gourmet food destinations and how the two are not at all unrelated. "Phrenology" of the city was another of my favorites. As I finished Infinite City, I was left scratching my head wondering 1) why geography students aren't educated to value maps in the artistic sense; and 2) why aren't there more books like Infinite City for the other great cities of the world! Infinite City is a fantastic read, highly recommended.


That's all for now, folks! I'll be sure to post again when I have more news on the jobs front, if not sooner. To a new life in the Infinite City!

Why Your State Sucks...

Back in October, I posted a map of the 50 states with their most iconic movies that define the state's history and culture. How about a map of the states' dirtiest little secrets? I think so :) Thank you, Time!

A few of my favorites:

Washington - bestality? Unfortunately, this one's true and true. I'm going to quote the multiple sclerosis awareness industry here for a second, but: Is it the Trees?

North Dakota - ugliness? Maybe at the country fair.

Wisconsin? Binge drinking? Milwaukee is the drunkest city in America. Thank you Miller and PBR!

Via: Time

Ecotality's EV Project Gives Coulomb's ChargePoint a Run for Its Money

Last month I wrote about how Coulomb Technologies' ChargePoint America program plans to install 4,600 EV charging stations across nine metro areas in the next several years. So far, however, the EV stations have been geographically limited, especially in the Puget Sound area. Long story short, it's going to be hard to ease questions of "range anxiety" that many potential EV buyers will have if the only available ChargePoint stations are at Bellevue City Hall, UW Bothell, and a high-end condo building in Downtown Seattle (residents only). That's hardly the way to expand a network and create the necessary perception that plugging in your electric car will be as seamless and convenient as filling up at any gas station.

Luckily, that necessity breeds invention, and Ecotality's EV Project has filled in to give Coulomb's ChargePoint America program a real run for its money. The EV Project has a much larger budget, having landed a $99 million grant from the DOE - nearly three times the size of the grant awarded to ChargePoint.

The EV Project began in August 2009 and will be completed by the end of 2012 and takes a markedly different approach to the implementation of EV infrastructure than Coulomb. Rather than focusing on installing public charging stations, the EV Project is assisting customers who bought the Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf by providing then with over 8,300 home charging systems. Not to be outdone in terms of public visibility, Ecotality is also installing 15,000 public charging stations. The project spans six states - WA, OR, CA, AZ, Tennessee (odd choice, although they've installed some of Ecotality's charging stations at the Cracker Barrel!), and DC.

Courtesy of The EV Project

Ecotality's EV Project also has the advantage of having major funding outside of the federal government. Swiss power grid corporation ABB just agreed to invest $10 million in the EV Project.

The bulk of the 15,000 plus residential and commercial charging stations will be primarily on the West Coast, as well as Texas and Tennessee. Just where will you be able to soon find your Ecotality charging station? One of the coolest things to come out of Ecotality's EV Project has been the official maps it has released showing station density in several cities.

OREGON

According to a September press release, Ecotality plans to install 1,100 charging stations in four Oregon cities: Portland, Euguene, Salem, and Corvallis. The stations seem to be logically aligned along Portland's major arterials, like Burnside Street, Sandy Blvd, MLK, and the downtown core.

Map of Portland charging stations

WASHINGTON

The EV Project plans to install 1,200 charging stations in Washington State, which will be a great complement to plans already underway to create an electric highway on I-5. With the help of planners at the Puget Sound Regional Council (PSRC), Ecotality has finally released a detailed map of charging station density in the Seattle area.

Via: GigaOMElectric Vehicles

Looking Up Your Bus Route Should Not Be a Chore - Seattle Transit Frequency in One Easy to Use Map

Don't you hate it when you try to look up a bus time, and 10 minutes go by as you try to understand the oh-so-cryptic bus schedule information and route maps? For many of us, it's one of the biggest turn-offs to taking public transportation.

I can remember so many times when I would become trapped in remote areas like Factoria, Kingsgate, or Overlake because I misread a bus route map and caught the wrong bus, only to find that the next bus I was looking for didn't come for another two and half hours!!!

Thankfully, the good people of the Seattle Transit Blog have come to the rescue with this handy map of bus frequency in Seattle. This is an easy-to-use resource that shows all bus routes that have a frequency of 15 minutes or less - that is, they stop every 15 minutes. Realistically, people are only going to use public transit if they don't have to plan every single trip according to its schedule (hence the 15 minute frequency) and if routes are logically placed.

What's not surprising about this map is the extent to which it shows how imbalanced the transit density of Seattle is - Downtown, Capitol Hill, and the U-District pretty much have the greatest number of high-frequency buses, while the rest of the city is left high and dry. Part of this is due to the fact that it's easier to build transit in high-density areas, and part of it is due to budget cuts and bad planning on the part of King County Metro. In particular, the scarcity of frequent buses in West Seattle and Lake City is astonishing - these areas aren't exactly out in the boonies!

I'm sure this map will become my best friend as soon as I start taking the bus more due to the horrendous tolls coming this spring on 520.

Check it out!

Via: Seattle Transit Blog

Seattle Bike Share Comes Closer to Reality

In the past six months, there's been a wealth of attention devoted to starting a bike-sharing system in Seattle. In November, I wrote about the first feasibility study done for bike-sharing in Seattle, a collaboration between SDOT and the UW.

The UW study divided the city into 10-square-meter cells and ranked them based on factors like residential population density, job density, retail density, proximity to transit, and existing bike infrastructure.

The result is a detailed portrait of where bike-sharing is most likely to succeed in Seattle. The results of their analysis suggest that bike-sharing should first be rolled out in the downtown core, Lower Queen Anne, and Capitol Hill neighborhoods. These neighborhoods both have very high residential density and walkability, extensive bike and transit infrastructure, and are full of retail and tourist destinations.

Photo courtesy of Publicola and the UW Bike Share Studio

Phase 1 of the proposed bike-share system begins with the green zone of downtown and its immediate neighbors Lower Queen Anne and Capitol Hill, along with parts of the Sodo stadium district. Continuing down the hierarchy of density, the system would be later expanded in Phase 2 to include Upper Queen Anne, Eastlake, the Central District, Beacon Hill, Ballard, Fremont/Wallingford, and the U District. Lower density neighborhood centers, known in City of Seattle parlance as "urban villages" would be the last to be added in a Phase 3. 

According to Seattle Transit Blog, King County is currently seeking a $150,000 federal grant to get the pilot Phase 1 off the ground. The program would launch first in the green downtown areas with between 800 and 1,000 bikes, with a capital cost of $3,500 - $4,500 per bike. Operational costs would average $1,200 to $1,600 per bike, which would be paid through monthly or annual user subscription fees in the range of $45-$75 per year with an hourly rate after the first free half-hour.

The King County planners STB interviewed seemed to indicate that Redmond (with its large high-tech workforce) be included in the Phase 1 and the suburban centers of Bellevue, Kirkland, Renton, and Kent would be included in the Phase 2.

The UW study explicitly recommended against this approach of including outlying population centers in the initial phases so as to not create a disjointed, less functional system. They even recommended not including the U District in the initial Phase 1, despite the high student population and retail density, because of the lack of bike connectivity with the downtown center. We'll have to see if King County follows this reasoning in their final proposal.

Also unclear is whether the County would require helmets on users of the bike-share system - most European systems have done away with their helmet laws completely to boost their ridership, and this approach seems to have been its saving grace. Will our litigious American culture subside enough for helmet laws to be relaxed? Or worse still, will there be vending machines at the bike stations to sell helmets? That just sounds like nanny-state ridiculousness, but with Seattle you never know!

A second interesting study was done in April by an STB writer, Adam Parast. He did a GIS analysis of the current bikeability of Seattle versus Portland. The project compared factors of street connectivity, existing bike infrastructure, slope, land use (proxy for density) and barriers (like a freeway interchange or an impassable slope). The result? Not surprisingly, Portland takes the cake on bikeability in nearly every respect.

Due to a combination of our more challenging geography (Portland has it easy lying in a mostly flat river valley) and our comparative lack of bicycle infrastructure, Seattle is reduced to "islands of bikeability" in a hostile, car-centric sea. One of the more surprising and extensive bike-friendly areas is Ballard. Should this area be included in Phase 1? It's about 10 minutes away by bike from the downtown core via 15th Ave. W and Elliott. Also in its favor: its fast-rising residential density, numerous tourist attractions, and largely self-sufficient retail district.

Current bikeability comparison, blue = high bikeability, red = low bikeability

Potential bikeability comparsion

More good news for bike sharing: bikes travel faster than cars during rush hour in most cities! According to a study out of Lyon, France's bike share system, bicycles are faster and more direct than cars in high-density areas during rush hour because of the complications of circling the block to find parking and then finally walking to your destination. Intuitively, this makes sense in Seattle - you can ride your bike between Downtown, Capitol Hill, and the U-District faster than rush hour car traffic.

King County is looking to launch the Seattle bike-share system by summer 2012, so there's sure to be a lot more going for bike-sharing locally, and a lot more reporting to come from Green My Fleet!

Via: Planetizen and Publicola

San Francisco Bike-Share Makes More than a Few Enemies

Last month we took a peek at a bike-sharing pilot project in the works in the San Francisco Bay Area to nearly 1,000 public bikes on the streets of San Fracisco and points south by late 2011.

The system is aiming to replicate the success of European bike-sharing, with automated charging stations and annual, daily, or monthly subscription fees for users, along with hourly rates. Like many of the most famous systems, the first 30 minutes would be free of charge, to encourage riders to use the system for short trips close to home.

The pilot program would begin with about 500 bikes and 50 stations in the San Francisco city center, focusing on the City Center, Tenderloin, Market Street, and Transbay Terminal areas. An additional 400 bikes would go into the urban centers of CalTrain corridor south of the city.

Now that we have a better take on the foundations of this exciting program, it bears asking the dreaded question of all multimodal projects in the US: will people use it? will we look like assholes for thinking this type of bike transit infrastructure was even a good idea?

Is this what San Francisco was going for? So hipster...

In a scathing critique of the San Francisco bike share program, Matthew Roth of SF Streetsblog argues that the city is setting itself up for failure with an inadequate starting number of bikes that won't serve people's needs.

According to Roth, "bicycle sharing program’s greatest assets are ubiquity and ease of use." The Paris Velib program, considered the vanguard of bike-sharing worldwide, began with 750 stations and 10,000 bikes before quickly expanding to 1450 stations and 20,000 bikes, enough to make the stations more than three times as ubiquitous as the city's subway network, also the world's most dense. The Velib program is surprisingly inexpensive to run, even given the city's notorious problem with theft and vandalism of the bikes. User fees pay for the city's expenses of running the program, and the remaining $4.3 million is paid for in advertising space.

With only 50 stations at its inception, San Francisco's system would be the smallest in North America. When DC Bikes opened in the capital two years ago with 120 stations, a spokesman for the District DOT regretted that the system had not opened with more stations: "Knowing what we know now, we would've launched it bigger."

So just how many bikes would San Francisco truly need to have an effective bike-share system?

According to Colin Hughes, a planning grad student at UC Berkeley, exactly 5328 bikes. Colin first suggested that any bike-share system should be thought of as a form of mass transit, like light rail or a bus route. Without regular, intuitively placed stations and high frequency, no one is going to use the damn thing!

The Paris Metro is the densest subway network in the world, with 300 stations within the city. The trains run from about 5 am to midnight, and users might have to wait about 20 minutes for a train in off-peak hours. In comparison, the city also has 1451 bicycle stations - a transit network almost 5 times denser than its subway system. Users can access these bicycle stations 24/7, they can ride them wherever they like, and the cost is free for the first 30 minutes.

Paul DeMaio, one of the world's only "bike-sharing consultants" based in DC, writes that the ideal bike-share systems need approximately one bike per 150 residents of the service area. This equates to 5328 bikes at 605 stations if we're using the Paris-based metric, or 2960 bikes at 484 stations if we're using more modest metrics from the Barcelona system.

The San Francisco bike-share system was originally announced back in 2009 with only 50 bikes at 5 stations - now the most recent plan calls for ten times that number, 500 bikes at 50 stations, at a cost of $7.9 million.

Bixi bikes from Montreal, on display at Golden Gate Park in a recent expo promoting the SF bike share program

Hopefully more public pressure on the city to make a truly workable number will get things in gear. If you are asking SF residents to ride 50-pound bikes through the rain, you need to make the system easier than catching a bus, hell easier than catching a cab! There should be enough stations that riders won't have to worry about finding a place to park their bike at the end of the ride. 

Via: SF Streetsblog

The Digital Story of the Nativity

I was having one of those oh-so-crummy days at work (in my windowless office behind the loading dock), and  my good friend Jamie Stroble sent this hilarious video to cheer me up!

It really captures the spirit of Christmas in the age of Twitter @Jesus.



Thanks, Jamie!

What Does Facebook Look Like from Space?

Have you ever wondered what the world of Facebook would look like if you plotted friendship ties along a map? Well, neither had I, until I read about this Facebook INTERN's amazing project.

The method to the intern, Paul Butler's, madness?

I defined weights for each pair of cities as a function of the Euclidean distance between them and the number of friends between them. Then I plotted lines between the pairs by weight, so that pairs of cities with the most friendships between them were drawn on top of the others. I used a color ramp from black to blue to white, with each line's color depending on its weight. I also transformed some of the lines to wrap around the image, rather than spanning more than halfway around the world.

Interesting how all of China, nearly all of Africa, and most of Russia are almost entirely dark on the Facebook map. Censorship, anyone?

Via: GOOD

It's Absolutely "Mapnificent"

You know you're a geek when you go gaga for something like this.

Mapnificent  is a Google maps interface that plots the areas of a city that are accessible by biking, walking, and public transit within the point of reference you select.

It visually frames the city in a more relevant way for sustainable development. Instead of merely *hoping* that people ditch their cars for bikes and public transit, this could be a tool to assess potential alternatives just by entering your address, not unlike the site Walkscore already famous in the real estate industry.

Here's a couple cool examples from right here in the busiest neighborhoods of Seattle.

Downtown:

Capitol Hill:

University District:

Via: Seattle Transit Blog

Ten Centuries in Five Minutes

I about fell out of my chair when I saw this video. It provides a visual play by play of the geographic changes of European history since 1000 AD, covering the full scope of wars, invasions, and the rise and fall of empires.

All I can say is I wish I had seen something like this when I was stuyding for the AP European History exam!



Source: The Map Room (via GOOD)

50 Movies for 50 States

I've begun reading GOOD magazine within the past few weeks, and every day they come up with a little treasure like this one. It's a map of 50 iconic films that define the character of the 50 states. Most are recognizable fits, but there are some funny surprises! Jesus Camp = South Dakota?

Click here for the larger version.

Topics, Trends, and Twitters - Planning in the Next 50

This is a presentation I helped to create for the Next City Next 50 symposium, an event celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Masters in Urban Planning (MUP) degree at the University of Washington.

My co-presenters were Associate Professor Dennis Ryan, Affiliate Professor Jill Sterrett, and Karen Wolf, Strategic Planning and Policy Division Manager for King County.

This presentation focused on the top trends that urban planners will face in the next 50 years. These top trends include food and water security, climate change, social equity, new urban design, demographics, collaborative education, transportation and health, regionalism, and social networking technology (Web 2.0).

I presented on the applications of social networking in urban planning (last 3 slides) to a panel of MUP alumni on January 31, 2010.

Topics, trends, and twitters   planning in the next 50

View more presentations from dperl88.