andy grayson

Guest Blog: Erin

Since I'm (a) Andy's favorite sister, and (b) enjoy hearing about strategic planning in advertising, I wanted to share some info on what urban planners talk about, think about, and lose sleep over.

I attended the American Planning Association Conference this past week in Philadelphia (here are some pics),

and I managed to have a great time despite the Nor'Easter on Sun, Mon, and Tues. The pictures below are of a fabulous market near the convention center. The food in Philly was top notch, and now I know why it is often called the "City of Brotherly Love Handles".

About 5,000 planners from across the U.S. attend this annual conference to share ideas on how to make cities, suburbs and rural areas better places to live and work. Here are some of the things that I betcha didn't know:

- 2/3 of the American population will live in urban areas by the year 2030.

- On average, people spend 19% of their income on transportation. People who are auto-dependent spend approximately 25% of their income on it adn those who live in "transit rich" areas (w/ bikeways, more than 1 mode of mass transit available) spend only 9% of their income on transportation. Savings on transportation could free up a lot of money for a mortgage payment.

- Increasing density (which people are usually opposed to) in an area can actually bring prices down (increase supply, decrease demand and lower prices result).

- A planner from a suburb of Sydney, Australia shared some aerial photography and Sydney is actually experiencing sprawl that looks identical to that in the U.S., meaning 2-7 acre lots with large houses on the metro fringe. So we're not alone...

- It costs between $18,000 and $25,000 to construct 1 parking spot in a parking garage.

- The Dutch lead the way in street design. Europeans are decades ahead of the U.S. in their implementation of "Home Zone" street design. Streets in the Netherlands, Germany, England, etc. are designed so that pedestrians and cars share the street and there is no differentiation between sidewalk and street. Just think about walking down streets in Europe –- people ultimately feel their property extends into the street; cars park half on the street, half on the sidewalk area. Pedestrians are the best tool for traffic calming! (The picture below is from a website  about this and I highly recommend checking it out.)

Looking forward to guest blogging again. - Erin

people planners

So I've mentioned that my sister is an urban planner in D.C. (actually just outside D.C. in the exploding Montgomery County, MD) Here are some links to previous posts about Erin. one & two

Anyways, her job is seriously cool, and I always get a kick out of thinking that my Mom & Dad are parents of two planners. We should make them t-shirts that say "planner dad" or something.

Erin recently attended a conference in Philadelphia for urban planning, and I thought I'd have her guest blog because those urban planners are into some interesting stuff that affects all our lives in a much more tangible way than advertising. In many ways, we're doing similar things. A planner is a planner. Urban planners are trying to figure out the brief of a neighborhood or city block, and their creatives are architects and developers.

Ultimately, they are the voice of the consumer in the world of construction & urban development –- our spatial life if you really think about it.

And I think that brings up some interesting thoughts...

A planning conference shouldn't just be limited to planners of advertising & marketing. Planners of all sorts of disciplines could learn from one another. In many ways, we're all "people planners". We think about people and their attitudes, behaviors, patterns and the likelihood of all those things to change based on cultural forces. What separates us is how we bring that thinking to bear on our specific industries –- advertising, urban planning, pychology, architecture, moder design...

Who's up for a people planning conference?

At the very least, it would be good to start to gather some examples of great people planning.

(Erin, sorry I blathered on. Your guest blog will be in the next post.)

I love this kind of stuff.

bet you didn't know # 22

This is my first video "bet you didn't know". But it's a good one.
In an earlier post I used a Frank Gehry quote to illustrate how creative inspiration can come from anywhere. Jenna made a brilliant post on her blog about very much the same thing using this video of Tinker Hatfield, the nike shoe designer who was inspired by the exposed guts of a modern Paris building resulting in the creation of the first exposed air bubble in a shoe.

creative inspiration

If you haven't seen Sketches of Frank Gehry, you should. I grabbed this low-quality clip from the DVD by using my digital camera – "low-quality" being the operative word. But I think you can hear the quote. Frank talks about creative inspiration, and that it can come from the most mundane of places. It's all about the way you see something.

bet you didn't know # 18

Because the heat expands the metal, the Eiffel Tower always leans away from the sun.

*engineering.com

cars = cokes

My sister, Erin, sent me this article from the NYT on innovative parking decks. The basic gist is that city planners and developers are rethinking the way parking decks work in densely populated cities. Taking a cue from Tokyo and vending machine logic cars are getting auto stacked in robo-garages. Cool.

Erin is an urban planner in Montgomery County, Maryland. Right outside of D.C.

monkey mails

So we're talking a lot these days about viral marketing ideas and such and such. "How do we go beyond the 30 sec TV spot?" is every agency's current million dollar question.

Kristen found this site after receiving a monkey mail from her friend. Definitely check it out. It's the best "viral" idea I've seen in awhile.

monk-e-mail

* want a great example of ambient media?

Julian Beever is a sidewalk artist who creates amazing 2D drawings on the sidewalk that look 3-dimensional from an oncoming angle.  They'll blow you away. He's been transforming the sidewalk experience in cities all over Europe.

See his stuff below.