Learning from St Louis

Image courtesy of CityRiverArch.org

Turnstone has recently been interviewed about the role of storytelling in placemaking, for PBS’s current affairs show, Stay Tuned, on KETC, Channel 9, out of St Louis, Missouri.

This week’s episode, broadcast on 4/4/2013, was about the St Louis Gateway Arch Grounds 2015 renovation project, specifically the vote that narrowly passed to support a controversial earmarked “Arch tax” increase, to be levied locally to support the renovation of the famous St Louis monument and its surrounding grounds (technically a National Park).

Stay Tuned presenter, Casey Nolan, asked me about what it takes to get a city behind a redesign of public space, what other international precedents there are that St Louis could follow and what steps it takes to win public hearts and minds around big ideas for shared spaces. There’s a good background panel discussion at the top of the show, then Turnstone talks sense from around minute 16. Click the clip above to watch the full show.

Turnstone in transit in 2012

Beyond yellow taxi fleets to greener road transit:

The downstate New York chapter of the US Department of Energy’s Clean Cities Coalition will roll out a new identity in 2012, based on strategy completed by Turnstone in 2011. The Clean Cities program’s mission is to improve air quality in major American cities by reducing, replacing and eliminating petroleum-consuming road transit with cleaner vehicle fleets.

In September 2012, Turnstone will present a paper at TRANSED 2012, India’s national conference on Mobility and Transport for Elderly and Disabled Persons, in Delhi.

Turnstone in schools

Turnstone’s most inspiring audience of 2011: In March, we addressed 150 5th-8th grade students at the East Harlem School. Here are EHS’s star performers at BB King’s, at the school’s annual Poetry Slam. The School invites volunteer tutors to join their Saturday School program during the academic year. Interested? Email here and Turnstone will introduce you.

This Fall, Rachel returned to the School of Visual Arts Interaction Design MFA Program, to supervise five graduate thesis projects. The second years will, come hell or high water, present a range of fantastic concepts, ideas realized, at their Graduate Symposium in May. Looking forward to it already. It’s a strong year.

In 2011, Turnstone also presented to the Harvard Graduate School of Design Urban Planning Organization and Carnegie Mellon University, as a guest of the Nierenberg Chairs of Design, and to Moholy Nagy University of Art and Design, Budapest, Hungary.

Happy New Year! The 2011 Round Up: Turnstone inspired

Happy 2012. In 2011, Turnstone got the most out of

Tweeting more than blog posting. Follow @TurnstoneTweets.
Postcards from Penguin, 100 classic book covers
Sol Le Witt at Mass MoCA
The drawings of Kelsey Dake
Fifteen minutes listening to Nobel prize-winner, Leymah Gbowee
Symeon Brown‘s take on the riots at the London Policy Conference.
The Power of Making at the Victoria & Albert Museum
Christina Stampfli joining Turnstone
Graphic Details, female graphic novelists and cartoonists, exhibiting in NYC, touring in 2012
Steve Jobs, and many more, RIP
Ryoji Ikeda’s The Transfinite at The Armory on the Park, NYC (above)

Taxis of Two Tomorrows

In October, Turnstone got a preview of Nissan’s Taxi of Tomorrow. We’re delighted a new cab has come of the strategic vision we initially set out with the Design Trust for the Taxi and Limousine Commission.

 

 

 

 

Turnstone is equally delighted the accessible, alternative fuel-ready  Karsan V1 cab, shortlisted last year to become New York’s Taxi of Tomorrow, is now a driveable prototype. The V1 went on display at the Dutch Auto Show in December, set for production in Europe.

Special Brew: Summarizing the London riots

Since three days of burning shops, smashing windows, nicking trainers, drug crime, hoodies, senseless deaths, squads of indignant broom-wielding, bat-handling locals, and 24hr magistrates hearings galvanized the British public earlier this month, Turnstone has been trawling through range of (sure, left-leaning) articles about the UK riots.

One resounding concept (but ahem, not the only one) seems to be that it’s crucial to hold more than one thought in our heads about the confluence of contributing factors if any subsequent social, political, economic response is to stick. It was (get ready) multi-nuclei, local, regional, global scale, urban, heterogenic, pan-ethnic, trans-class social upset unfolding over days (breathe). To be constructive rather than draconian, any new policy must be holistic, bottom-up, top-down and must reflect only joined-up thinking to produce sustainable impact. Guess what, people, it’s not one thing and there ain’t a cure-all, quick fix. Suggesting we shhh twitter was akin to suggesting we squash ocean water, and betrayed that blokes in charge don’t recognize the nuanced segmentation and reflexivity of social networks…on as well as perhaps offline.

So our non-comprehensive coverage collected comes mostly, and with thanks, from our friend, Nick Durrant, who shared his set of sources over email in the days/weeks following. Our debate and exchange was conducted in a personal capacity. What follows is a summary of what we dug up as I asked some basic questions:

Seriously, who actually took part? The UK Guardian (a main point of reference for us) stratified the riots into its political classes to understand the wider social context of today’s British society, only to conclude that locally, the upheaval was not unexpected. A reissue of a 2007 article in Adbusters also echoed that we’re not blaming millenials, this is Generation F*cked.

And while many might retreat to an organic coffee shop in fear of them, a blog discusses today’s gangs in London and, if you dare stick your pin in the streetview, a google map of them. So while the riots reveal some unpalatable home truths about UK culture of fear and consumer greed, Suzanne Moore implored, Don’t shut these kids out now. Has anyone else written about the crisis of masculinity that the riots imply? Are girls looting the ultimate battle cry of the Ladette? Still looking for that coverage.

With that overview, it was interesting to watch various other opinions emerge by key issues-focused commentators:

Paul Gilroy, author of Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack had this to say about comparing this unrest to – and decoupling it from – the riots of the early 80s; Naomi Klein‘s “Looting with the lights off” was one of many to take a look at the consumer values/brands angle with the less likely commentators, Association of Accounting Technicians, suggest it’s too expensive to be a teenager and most pathetic of all, trainers and mobile phones, the things most shoplifted – have become objects of our disaffection.

This way, says Social Europe Journal, the riots can be seen as consumerism is coming home to roost. Echoing this, Pankaj Mishra from Bloomberg surmised that London’s rioters are Thatcher’s grandchildren and grimmer still, the UK riots were a ‘product of consumerism and will hit the economy’, according to City broker, Dr Tim Morgan of City analysts, Tullet Prebon, thinking the unthinkable. Meantime, the Mayor of London could worse than listen to the opinions and lyrics of a few more British Grime artists. About as grimy but no less perfect, is Jarvis Cocker’s Fat Children, sung from the perspective of a dead man mugged by kids for his mobile. Since Mr Cocker forbids his listeners to sing along, watch out, Prime Minister, just take heed.

Finally, onto the mapping perspective: What about seeing the inner city as a giant gaming space, part Grand Theft Auto, part Chromaroma. Why else (apart from subscribing to some scary hip hop magazines) call British riot police “FEDS”? Blackberry devices become the console for game-play in real swag and proper ‘blowing sh*t up’. Noone said anyone had to play nicely in a big urban game as they post QR codes to billboards. And for every urban antic, there must be a situationist perspective, this one from Domus magazine.

This, from the European Tribune theorizes about the police’s multi-layered, can’t win/can’t win role, speculating why enforcement can’t just be airdropped straight from Bratton’s LAPD ‘copter from Watts to the West Midlands. A perfect example of the constraints of models, as described in  “The Fruitful Flaws of Strategy Metaphors” we’ve referred to here before, from the Harvard Business Review.

We’ll conclude with the incredible interview with globalization guru, Zygmunt Bauman, who makes me feel dumb just looking at him. Two quotes stand out:

“The thus far reaction of the British government to the mutiny of the humiliated is bound to deepen the self-same humiliation that caused their rebellion…”

“Their mutiny was an un-planned, un-integrated, spontaneous explosion of accumulated frustration that can be only explained in terms of ‘because of’, not in terms of ‘in order to’; I doubt whether the question of ‘what for’ played any role in that orgy of destruction.”

His conclusion is not for the faint of heart. While there is not enough work to do, there is work to do.

It’s the journey, not the destination, that counts

So, loyal fans of Turnstone, New York City have made their decision about the taxi of tomorrow (ToT) at last. Deep breath: The contract to build a custom yellow taxi for New York goes to Nissan, not to our client Karsan, nor to incumbent Ford.

First, thank you to notes and emails streaming in. No, we haven’t thrown Turnstone under a passing Crown Vic. From from it, Turnstone is delighted to be stepping into a new by-standing role as merely a savvy passenger.

That Karsan is already looking to other cities to establish a new global standard for cab design, and Nissan gets into production for NYC, is a huge testament to the original research accomplished with fellow Taxi07 Fellows of the Design Trust back in 2005-7, to Turnstone’s independent work leading up to Taxi of Tomorrow and to the efforts we made on behalf of New Yorkers’ favorite.

In a news week that buried alive all other announcements unrelated to Bin Laden and the Royal Wedding, we don’t envy anyone trying to cover this cab story, but we’ll try our best to represent some of the coverage here.

Calling Karsan’s submission ‘stylish and amenity-laden‘, the New York Times explained why the City have gone for the Japanese model over the Turkish one. Regulators are risk-managers before they are paradigm-shifting innovators. Good enough may be better than nothing at all.

Paul Goldberger’s glowing words for Karsan in The New Yorker will be framed for the Turnstone bathroom wall, alongside our Oscars and Platinum discs:

“The Karsan was far and away the best piece of design….It somehow looked as if it belonged on the streets of New York. …the Karsan taxi’s face was friendly. It made you want to jump aboard. …The Karsan was the only one of the three that made you smile, the only one that looked and felt as if it had been designed from the ground up as a taxi, and only as a taxi. It would have been something new, and something that would have made the streets of New York look better, which is what I thought this whole “taxi of tomorrow” business was about.”

While dieselheads at Jalopnik could barely muster faint praise as damnation (“New York’s New Taxi Freakin’ Sucks”), Gothamist comes out more clearly on Karsan’s side, calling out a rather ungentlemanly commenter’s verdict that the City’s choice was ‘the minivan of yesterday‘, declaring simply,
“Karsan Kab, we really wanted you to win!“
and greeting news that the V1 will go to market elsewhere,
“If those things start showing up in San Francisco we will not be amused.”

To all these speculative fans, who liked what they saw before the potential became a reality to climb aboard, thank you for allowing us to envision what New York deserves.

In what follows, I’ll draw a number of conclusions from a couple of distinct perspectives that reflect my various engagements with this process. First, as an independent design strategist with years advocating yellow cab passengers’ needs. Secondly, a partisan view, as a consultant to Karsan. Thirdly, as a designer, stepping outside the ring of municipal mega projects, to draw some lessons for other projects.

For decision makers, least worst may equal best
Orthodox as a public agency must be, the City’s choice is not the worst decision it could have made. It could have made no decision at all, or been cowed by lobbying interest groups. It stuck reasonably to the success criteria in its original, decently crafted Request for Proposal. You get (mostly) what you ask for. More about what else it could have asked for, below.

Glocal city
In this global economy, it’s no shock that a New York icon is to be designed in one corner of the world, manufactured in another (Mexico), driven in another (Manhattan…at least below 125th St. Harlem, the taxi of tomorrow won’t come soon enough) by a man with, most likely, a South Asian/West African passport. And let’s face it, Japan could use some good news these days. That said, the economy around any local industry is worth looking after.

The City’s yellow cab choice is still a bright green one.
What the NYC cab industry does in bulk for 13000 vehicles not only influences at scale the direction in which other national cab fleets follow suit, but sets a precedent, a new normal, for miles per gallon, air quality, fueling infrastructure, and the way individual motorists think about their own car purchasing choices.

We articulated this in the Roads Forward report in 2007, alongside many other vehicle requirements that influenced the ToT concept; choosing a new cleaner vehicle is a radical shift environmentally. Fingers crossed, the project can survive legal battles ahead which may frustrate what is good for cab drivers (who pay for their own gas), for New Yorkers who breathe traffic when they open their windows, and, yes folks, for the only planet we’ve got.

On yer bike
By not choosing Karsan, the City foregoes an opportunity to introduce a cab that’s accessible to all (that’s you too, stroller moms, luggage-schlepping tourists, furniture-hauling, carless apartment-dwellers, as well as the rightly vociferous wheelchair community). An inclusive vehicle – accessibility and availability – was a pivotal goal in Roads Forward and for Taxi of Tomorrow and yet the selected car allegedly sails past this objective like an off-duty cab at 4.30 in the rain.

Drive this shiny object towards shiny objectives
From the conception of ToT, the City called on auto manufacturers to make new, iconic, safe, robust, affordable vehicles. Certainly, no small request. But a wider conceptual frame to the project, one which situates that car in a service context (nod to Zipcar), might have raised the competition amongst the submissions. What’s the ride like? How, as urbane New York street furniture, will it look from the sidewalk, from the 47th floor of a skyscraper, in the next 20 years of countless movies and ads?

Turnstone’s contribution to the Karsan proposal, specifying content strategy for digital media in/around the car, would have improved the service experience of riding and driving a cab. So why not a connected cab, a gateway to rider-relevant, context-specific, revenue-generating services? Granted, deliver the vehicle, then let’s redraft some shinier functionality for it. I’ve made Jetsons noises like this before. To paraphrase an early Banksy: Laugh now, but when the next killer app arrives on wheels and you all hail one to get home late at night in another city, I’ll say, Told You So.

And, Karsan will build their cab anyway.
“We fervently believe that there is a strong market and an acute need for a true Taxi of Tomorrow, and we look forward to working with other forward-looking cities around the globe to make the Karsan vision a reality.”
So, uncharacteristically following rather than leading, NYC may later imitate what they might now have pioneered, once it becomes standard in other cities. Can’t blame anyone for not buying v1.0, but really?

Hold the door open for the ladies
Last of all, I was the only woman on any of the competing consortia, as far as I know. Coincidentally, most NYC cab passengers are women. Just sayin’.

Equal opportunities aside, Turnstone’s more important contribution to this project was as a strategic advocate of all those who ride around in cabs (not of those who run or regulate or refurbish them), a change agent within the design team, fusing the expertise of car and digital engineers to serve the people who will sit on cab seats 24/7, 365 days a year.

Thanks
Finally, thanks to my friend York (fittingly, now working for Hot Wheels) who got me hooked on this project at the outset (that’s the last time I’m taking orders from an ex-Marine), to Imagination, the Design Trust staff and fellows, all the organizations and universities that have invited me to talk about taxis, to the constellation of unofficial tech consultants who validated our media concept in 2010, Frank at The Map Office for his visual design, and patient friends who sat through many cab rides while I barraged drivers with questions about medallions.

Your feedback is welcome. We’re going off-duty now. Back with news of the next projects very shortly.

Thank you petrolheads+systems thinkers: Envisioning the taxi of tomorrow

Turnstone is proud to have completed its pre-bid phase of work with Karsan, one of the auto manufacturers bidding to win the New York City Taxi of Tomorrow contract.

Due to hit the streets in 2014, the winning cab must remain a New York icon, but be much more fuel efficient (that is, a greener yellow), with a smaller footprint (no more 18foot Crown Vic canoes) and roomier on the inside (not just for wheelchair but stroller and suitcase access). A bit like Dr Who‘s Tardis, only for hire.

Karsan is paying close attention to all these requirements, and has put forward a built-to-suit solution, rather than modifying an existing model.

Turnstone joined the European consortium to specify how tomorrow’s cab communications might work. As we’ve discussed, tomorrow’s taxi will be more than just a car. It’ll be a personal wireless device on wheels, a way to access services on the go, on the way from A to B.

The project was an amazing opportunity to apply thinking from earlier discovery and definition phases of work to articulate an initial design proposal – drawing from research from the Taxi07 report, and months of independent lectures, Turnstone has reconceived, visualized and put forward what goes on those credit card payment screens, what public service announcements, maps and roof top ads look like inside and out, in a integrated package of passenger- and driver-friendly graphic signage and digital services.

The City is due to choose a winning design by the end of 2010. Meantime, Turnstone would like to thank the Karsan team and all those who shared enthusiasm, insights and recommendations (in an informal capacity) at our winter roundtable, at Google, Teague and Virgin America, social gamers Mudlark, screen technologists, Lumio, Transport Research Institute at Edinburgh Napier and elsewhere. Yes, we talked to in-flight entertainment aviation people. Because taxicab or plane cabin, city maps or in-flight snacks, it’s clear that user-centered designers in both fields have a critical brokering role, influencing the right kind of collaboration between the technologists and engineers to make the whole experience work, planes, trains and for-hire automobiles…

Shave your head to save the Gulf from the oil spew?

An incredible chapter in Lovins’/Hawken’s “Natural Capitalism“, much mentioned on these pages, describes how human hair, yes, that swept off barbershop floors, effectively absorbs crude oil from water. Is it time the nation shave our heads and drop the clippings into the Gulf of Mexico? Like everyone else, Turnstone fears it may now be too late, even for this zany Plan B. Still, a provocative question of when waste becomes an asset in a crisis.

ET, Phone the White House

Famous for explaining plagues and exploding spaceships in pictures, and railing against the ills of Powerpoint, Yale statistician and info design evangelist, Edward Tufte, has been appointed by Obama to the Independent Recovery Advisory Panel. To misquote Tufte himself, this may represent an exercise in making (un)clear, as well as clear, thinking visible, no snark intended. It’s awesome, as one friend suggested, that the White House gets it. And as Ben Fry said at Columbia the other week, “We’ll never have less data. [We'll just need] better ways of hiding it and learn how to ignore the right things”. Power to the picture.