Why not?

Tweed Ride TC: 2012

May 21, 2012 GLHowe 2 comments

spacer

Thank you


Tweed Ride TC: 2012

_

A few images from Saturday’s sultry Tweed Ride. There was less tweed than last year, but you can blame that on the 86 degree temperatures (it’s still May, right?).

spacer

Click to open gallery

_

Next year’s date has already been set and has been moved up a month to improve the need for tweed. Mark your calendar’s for April 27, 2012 and follow Tweed Ride TC for updates.

Saturday’s dignified assembly:

spacer

click for large version

_

These images and more at the MyWHaT Flickr Site

* Photos by GLHJR

_

_

Supreme happiness to those who share:

  • Share on Tumblr
  • More
    • Digg
    • Email
    • Print

    Like this:

    Like
    Be the first to like this post.

    Does speeding have you at your wits end?…Make some signs

    May 18, 2012 GLHowe 2 comments

    spacer

    Community supported blogging?

    _

    Speed kills: What are you gonna do about it?

    _

    Always appreciative of Daniel Pink’s emotionally intelligent signage series.

    spacer

    The posting of the above sign was timely because I saw it shortly after a phone call with a friend who called me out of complete frustration with cars speeding by her Traverse City home. She lives near a heavily foot-trafficked intersection and has gone through Traverse City’s traffic committee process, her neighborhood’s traffic committee process, and has reached out repeatedly to the City police department to increase enforcement of the 25-mph zone…nothing has worked to help slow down traffic. The latter doesn’t pull people over unless they are going over 35-mph (more on that bullshit nonsense later).

    At a certain point, taking things into your own hands is the best option. It may or may not be apparently effective, but it adds a bit of fun to the situation (on my street, we experiment with duct-tape delineation (TW) and even the penguin’s were working until stolen).

    There is a market for emotional signage…Recently, a reader sent me the following image from Kingsley, Michigan, where  the community took the polite route to nudge people to slow down through the village’s main drag and neighborhood.

    spacer

    Kingsley’s emotional plea

    In another emotional appeal from Pink’s blog, he highlights a sign from the sign company Drive Like Your Kids Live Here, which sells different versions of the same message. This is certainly a sign I could see being popular in Traverse City. 

    spacer

    In the town of Needham, Massachusetts, the community went for the heart-strings of drivers by having children make the appeals to slow down (Boston Globe). The town manager wrote a letter describing the strategy (.doc), “the goal of this project…was to raise awareness of the importance of speeding on local streets, and it is clear that the community is engaged and drivers are noticing these signs and thinking about their purpose.”

    spacer

    Needham making signs personal–do you hate kids? 

    Signs aren’t going to “solve” the speeding issues in our neighborhoods, but that isn’t really the point of these emotional appeals. It’s more about showing that people, residents, are present and need to be expected to be present by those oblivious to the context of the community they are driving through.  So show them. And, don’t be afraid to be a little whacky…

    spacer

    via How We Drive

    Signs like the one above would make  David Engwicht, who champions creating “intrigue and uncertainty”  to reclaim neighborhood streets, proud.

    I can get behind that–a little cognitive dissonance created in the minds of drivers is likely to pull them out of their morning commute stupor or their end of the day slog home more than you think. Once you have them thinking about the context they are in, it is only a quick skip and a jump to realizing they are driving a 2-ton machine of death too fast for context.

    What messages can you come up with? Please share…

    _

    A few from the scribble pad and with a bit more umph:

    spacer

    Just place on tree lawn

    Same theme, a little more direct:

    spacer

    I’ll go back to the scribble pad with any ideas shared here. If you’d like to organize a sign-making soiree, I encourage you to do so…keep readers posted or send me a message.

    Supreme happiness to those who share:

    • Share on Tumblr
  • More
    • Digg
    • Email
    • Print

    Like this:

    Like
    One blogger likes this post.
    • spacer

    The future is near, design for it

    May 16, 2012 GLHowe 1 comment

    spacer

    Thank you


    Are we designing communities for the next 50 years or the past 50? 

    _

    “Almost half of all 18 to 34-year-old drivers are driving less, and nearly two-thirds would drive less if alternative transportation options were available.”

    ~ Survey: Half of Gen Y would rather text than drive, USA Today

    spacer

    Graphic via Baby Boomers drive boom in new car sales (Freep)

    “Those students, who are starting their college life as soon as today, are the youngest of a tech-infused millennial generation who – in sharp contrast to Baby Boomers and other previous generations – no longer view a driver’s license as a rite of passage into adulthood.”

    ~Marketing shift seen for Millennial generation, SFGate

    Supreme happiness to those who share:

    • Share on Tumblr
  • More
    • Digg
    gipoco.com is neither affiliated with the authors of this page nor responsible for its contents. This is a safe-cache copy of the original web site.