Blog design mind on GOOD
By Eric Wicks - February 3, 2010
Planning clearly-marked urban biking systems can help us educate car drivers and decrease cycling accidents.
If you ride a bike and live in Texas like I do, you’re screwed. Three of the largest cities in the country are in the Lone Star state, and they are all among the worst to bike in. But in fact, only one or two of the biggest urban areas in the country are considered acceptable for biking by the most basic standards. During the life cycle of these cities from small town to metropolis, planners had to answer the question of how to accommodate the transportation needs of the growing population. Unfortunately, those boom periods coincided with the rise of the automobile and the oil industries, not the urban biking surge we’re now experiencing. As a result, planners are now faced with the task of retrofitting new concepts and ideas to existing infrastructure.
Blog design mind on GOOD
By Eric Wicks - January 4, 2010
What the bicycle can teach us about the design challenges of the next century.
Albert Einstein once said, “The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them…” and he was right. In the next century, our job as designers will be to evaluate accepted solutions through a different lens. For a solution to be truly sustainable and good it must have a positive return to the environment and society. At the heart of any design problem is a question: Are we trying to make something less bad or are we trying to make things better?
