WordBuzz: Micro Urban
Nestled between the metropolitan and micropolitan categories officially defined by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget is an unofficial hybrid hometown dubbed micro urban—places with big-city amenities and a small-town feel.
Urban areas have 1,000 people or more per square mile and more than 50,000 people; micropolitan regions have 10,000 to 49,999 people but lack the economic, cultural, or political importance of large, urbanized regions.
A micro-urban area is, as the word suggests, small—250,000 people or fewer—but offers all of the population diversity, culture, art, technology, and public conveniences that are usually associated with major urban centers such as New York City. Examples include Champaign-Urbana, Fargo, Syracuse, Iowa City, and Roanoke.
As more knowmads choose homes based on community and culture rather than jobs, micro-urban living could become a macrotrend.
For more information, see the Micro Urban blog (www.microurban.org) launched by Meet-Up co-founder Peter Kamali (@kamali on Twitter). Kenneth J. Moore contributed to this story.
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Blogs
Headlines at 21st Century Tech for May 17, 2013
This is my last posting for the next few days. I will be taking my office apart so that we can move to our new apartment downtown next Tuesday. I will be unplugged and disconnected except by tablet. Expect me to be back in the saddle before the end of next week probably in time to provide you with some more headlines. In the interim these are the stories I share with you this week:
Colorado: the Alternative Transportation Mecca?
Today, literally thousands of alternative transportation vehicles are coming out of the woodwork and they nearly all have the same problem – no place to drive them. Most are banned from biking and hiking trails, and they are neither licensed, nor licensable, for use on the streets. I’d like to discuss some new possible solutions and why Colorado is poised to take the lead in the alternative transportation marketplace.
Googlenature
In a recent conference promoting not only their latest gizmos but their company's animating vision as well, Google executives declared they were working toward a future in which technology "disappears," "fades into the background," becomes more "intuitive and anticipatory." Commenting on this apparently "bizarre mission for a tech company," Bianca Bosker warns that their genial and enthusiastic promotional language masks Google's aspiration to omnipresence via invisibility, an effort to render us dependent and uncritical of their prevalence through its marketing as easy, intuitive, companionable.
Backing into Eden: Chapter 2 – The Beasts of the Field
Occasionally during meetings one of my staff – an avid birder – will elbow me and I’ll look up and glimpse a bald eagle. Each time, I am in awe. I live in Washington State, which is home to a plethora of eagles, where pods of Orca ply the waters near the San Juan Islands, and where roads are sometimes blocked by herds of elk.
Energy Update: An Environmental Engineer's 2030 Forecast
In this month's Report on Business Magazine, a supplement that comes with The Globe and Mail, one of Canada's national newspapers, Stanford University's Mark Jacobson provides a best case scenario
Peter Thiel Against Hollywood Against "The Future"
According to The Hollywood Reporter, celebrity tech CEO Peter Thiel is upset that movies like The Matrix and Avatar make technological innovation seem "destructive and dysfunctional."
Crowdsourcing to Hunt for Power Plants
A team of researchers are asking the public to help them locate and count all the sources of CO2 coming from power plants on the planet.
UK Scientists Create A New Wheat Strain Through Embryology Not Genetic Manipulation
Initial results from a selective breeding program at the National Institute of Agricultural Botany based in Cambridge in the UK, indicate the successful creation of a new super wheat.
