Get up on phygital design and #techresilience with this smart cities video discussion series. Check out the latest release, episode 2 ‘The Bench,’ featuring a review of Street Furniture Australia’s prototype Aria Smart Bench with PowerMe Table.
Smart Cities Council Executive Director Adam Beck, and Place Design Group Director Chris Isles have teamed up to film their travels and chats about future change for cities, towns and regions, and how our lives will be affected now, and beyond.
We liked this update of the hierarchy of needs pyramid:
5 biases behind share bike dumping:
We use decision-making shortcuts to abdicate our responsibility for the bikes we leave in dodgy places, writes behavioural researcher Conor Wynn, phD candidate with BehaviourWorks and the Monash Sustainable Development Institute, on the Conversation.
“We see an action that leads to harm as worse than lack of action that leads to harm. We don’t see inaction, such as failing to park a bike in a safe and appropriate spot, as particularly wrong, even though it still leads to damage,” he says.
“So, a user is likely to justify leaving the share bike somewhere dodgy on the basis that they didn’t do anything wrong. What they won’t admit to unfortunately is they exposed the bike to the risk of vandalism. If more share bikes were left in safer places, the incidence of share-bike littering would be likely to fall.”
This, called omission bias, is just one mental tactic that comes into play when choosing where to leave a share bike – Wynn describes five in his article, and he has tips on how to prevent the assets from ending up in rivers and trees, taking these biases into account.
Making it more clear where it’s safe or unsafe to park a bike, making penalties immediate rather than something to worry about later, and sending timely reminders to riders through their app that a penalty is highly likely if they behave in certain ways, could all help to alleviate the problem of share bike litter, he says.
The Street Furniture Australia factory, in Regents Park, Western Sydney, is both a manufacturing hub and R&D studio for our Australian-designed and made street furniture products. We run fun and informative group events for customers throughout the year, to share how products are designed, tested and built, and the latest products and projects. Director of Tract Julie Lee said: “It was a great opportunity for our team to look behind the scenes and understand the innovation, research and climate positive outcomes Street Furniture Australia is focusing on. Thank you for having us!” Place Design Group Associate, Liam Isaksen, said: “The factory tour is a fun experience to learn about the design and manufacturing process of public furniture we use in landscape architecture design. Seeing the work behind the scenes and …
Did you catch these most-read case studies, furnishing tips, new product announcements and special industry events in your StreetChat updates in 2023? Each month our StreetChat enewsletter publishes new projects, products and trends from the public domain; subscribe to receive it in your inbox. 10. Which design firm can see Longhorn Cattle from their office window? 2 countries. 9 cities. 300 landscape architects. Street Furniture Australia and USA partner Spruce & Gander visited offices in Australia and Texas. There were key similarities and some notable standouts. 9. Jazz at The Mint: Product and Book Launch Sydney landscape architects gathered at the iconic Mint Courtyard to launch a design book by our founding directors Darrel Conybeare and Bill Morrison, and expansions to the Linea collection. 8. 2023 Good Cause Giveaway goes to …
Street Furniture Australia has designed and built prototype charging stands as part of a Transport for NSW program to deliver free phone chargers at 15 Sydney train stations. Developed by Street Furniture Australia’s inhouse industrial designers in collaboration with Transport for NSW, the prototypes offer wireless, USB-A and USB-C charging, and can power 7 devices at once. They were built at the Street Furniture Australia factory in Western Sydney. Two Power Spots are now installed at Liverpool and Campbelltown stations. The $1 million Power Spots Project rollout to 15 transport hubs including Bankstown, Hurstville, Lidcombe, Penrith, Wynyard, Central, Town Hall and Bondi Junction will be completed by late 2024. NSW Transport Minister Jo Haylen said the Power Spots provide peace of mind: “In the modern world, our phones are our …
The stories you missed while enjoying the beach this summer. Musk says public transport “sucks”: Elon Musk came under fire in December after commenting that public transport is “painful” and “sucks.” He then called a public transport expert, via Twitter, “an idiot.” Asked by an audience member about his take on transport and urban sprawl at a Tesla event during the Neural Information Processing Systems Conference in California, Wired reports the Tesla, Boring Company and SpaceX CEO replied: “There is this premise that good things must be somehow painful. “I think public transport is painful. It sucks. Why do you want to get on something with a lot of other people, that doesn’t leave where you want it to leave, doesn’t start where you want it to start, doesn’t end where you want it to …
Uber to work with NASA for Flying Taxis: Ride sharing giant Uber has announced it will work with NASA to bring flying taxis to Los Angeles by 2020. Project Elevate will develop four-person, electric, vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft, regulated by an air traffic control system to be developed by NASA with a number of industry partners as part of its Space Act Agreement. The agreement aims to ensure safe and efficient operations of small aerial systems like drones and eventually small aircraft flying at low altitudes, to keep sky traffic orderly. Uber envisions commuters catching air taxis from the top of skyscrapers, and delivering them to their homes in the suburbs. It hopes to build a fleet of electric jet-powered vehicles – part helicopter, part drone, part fixed-wing aircraft – running multiple rotors to take off and land vertically, and fly horizontally …
Rich millennials drop golf for ‘agrihoods’: Twenty-five years ago moving near a golf course was a status symbol, largely for the green space and views, but millennials aren’t interested in that type of manicured neighbourhood, writes the Business Insider. Forget empty swathes of green, millennials are more interested in farm-to-table living, with around 150 master-planned housing communities built around working farms, known as agricultural neighbourhoods or ‘agrihoods’ appearing around the US. The homes feature solar panels and composting, and are often minutes from city centres so as to not sacrifice work opportunities for lifestyle. The trend means that in some places, communities are doing away with golf courses to make room for sustainable living. Read more. Photo by Rancho Mission Viejo, Facebook. The war on sitting: US and UK city councils can’t …
