Rechercher dans la communauté

http://www.wintercities.com/ On Facebook https://www.facebook.com/WinterCitiesInstitute Those who live and work in northern cities recognize the need for better planning and design. The sustainability of winter cities requires a creative approach that addresses the problems of snow and cold while enhancing the advantages, opportunities and beauty of the winter season. A positive approach benefits the attitudes of residents, and bolsters the community’s ability to attract new business and residents. The Winter Cities Institute was organized in 2008 to identify, promote and share the positive attributes of winter living, new concepts in architecture and urban design, and success stories from those places that are thriving in the north. The Institute was founded by Patrick Coleman, AICP, recognized for his work with the Livable Winter Cities Association (WCA). From 1982-2005, the WCA organized conferences, published books and the quarterly magazine “Winter Cities”. A totally volunteer staff made the WCA difficult to sustain and in the end it struggled with its mission. As Coleman incorporated winter enhancement strategies in his planning practice with multi-disciplinary design firms in Alaska and northern Michigan, he found enthusiastic reception to the idea of making winter a better time of year. “People are looking for answers to common winter problems and issues”, he said. “I experienced firsthand and heard from many the need for a source of information, networking and resources, and decided to launch the Institute as a web-based network and resource sharing project”. The Winter Cites Institute offers a place for those looking to improve the quality of life in wintertime and need information on what is being done in other northern places. Our members are from around the world and include: cities and towns architects planners engineers parks and recreation professionals economic development and tourism officials Welcome to the resources available on this site and consider joining the network to get even more benefits.

Montreal, March 21st, 2012 - Ivanhoé Cambridge has selected Sid Lee Architecture, in collaboration with Sid Lee, to re-envision the Rockhill multi-residential complex, located in Montreal. "We are thrilled for the chance to work with Ivanhoé Cambridge Residential on the new Rockhill. This complex is part of Montreal's urban landscape and taking part in its revitalization is an honour for us," explains Jean Pelland, architect and senior partner. "This partnership with Ivanhoé Cambridge will allow Sid Lee Architecture to bring a fresh perspective to a building that has left its mark on Montreal." The idea is to breathe new life into the apartments and into this six-building complex, located at the foot of Mount Royal and 10 minutes from downtown Montreal. For Sylvain Fortier, president of the residential entity of Ivanhoé Cambridge, Sid Lee Architecture's approach really shines a spotlight on the Rockhill as a whole, with architecture being integrated not only into the infrastructure, but also the branding. Their ventures in residential real estate, urban development and retail are proof of their expertise and we believe that they are the best professionals for the project. In order to relive its glory days of the 1960s, the Rockhill, a multi-residential rental complex, will undergo a modernization, both architecturally speaking and in terms of branding, thanks to the teams at Sid Lee Architecture and Sid Lee. Due to its expertise in the fields of urban, architectural and interior design, Sid Lee Architecture was selected to re-envision the complex. The two teams will also be responsible for producing the strategy behind the new Rockhill, in line with Ivanhoé Cambridge Residential's vision of offering quality multi-residential housing in up-and-coming neighbourhoods boasting interesting perspectives. The Rockhill is located in Montreal's Côte-des-Neiges neighbourhood and comprises six rental buildings, over a thousand apartments and a small shopping mall. Built in the 1960s, it was Ivanhoé Cambridge's first multi-residential acquisition in Quebec. About Sid Lee Architecture – http://www.sidleearchitecture.com Founded in 2009 following the integration of architecture firm NOMADE (founded in 1999), Sid Lee Architecture is a partnership between seasoned architects and urban designers Jean Pelland and Martin Leblanc, and Sid Lee, a global commercial creativity company. Established in Montreal, with satellite offices in Amsterdam (Netherlands) and Paris (France), Sid Lee Architecture boasts a team of 25 architects, technicians, designers, managers and support personnel. This multidisciplinary team enjoys a solid reputation, having successfully carried out many large-scale projects. Sharing common views on interior design, brand strategy, urban approach, and the role of context, the Sid Lee Architecture team has had the opportunity to put its knowledge and expertise to work, successfully completing a wide range of multidisciplinary projects. About Sid Lee – http://www.sidlee.com We are a multidisciplinary creative team of 600 artisans of many persuasions. We work globally for top-tier clients from our Montréal, Amsterdam, Paris, Toronto and Austin ateliers. We are people passionate about embedding brands, products, spaces and services with meaning and resonance. Find us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/meetsidlee Follow us on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/sidlee Credits Client: Ivanhoé-Cambridge Architecture: Sid Lee Architecture Branding: Sid Lee Interviews available upon request

Anyone who's sat at a red light for minutes on end in the middle of the night when there's no cross traffic can cheer on science for proving what we already knew: lights that adapt to the flow of traffic, instead of dictating the flow of traffic, can improve the flow of traffic. A team of researchers discovered that if you let lights locally decide how to time their signals based on how much traffic they're dealing with, and then communicate that with nearby lights, you get closer to the "green wave" of lights that keeps thing moving smoothly. The issue with the centralized, top-down system of control is that it is geared to address an average traffic situation that rarely occurs as planned. The variations in rush hour traffic mean that lights are trying to apply one solution to a vast number of situations. In their trial in Dresden, Germany the team found that traffic congestion was eased by nine percent, pedestrian congestion by 36 percent, and bus and tram traffic by 56 percent. With rush hours spreading in time and distance, the proof and implementation of this can't come soon enough. Blog: http://www.autoblog.com/2010/09/23/study-traffic-lights-should-respond-to-cars-not-other-way-arou/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+weblogsinc/autoblog+(Autoblog) To tame traffic, go with the flow Lights should respond to cars, a study concludes, not the other way around By Rachel Ehrenberg Web edition : Friday, September 17th, 2010 Traffic lights that act locally can improve traffic globally, new research suggests. By minimizing congestion, the approach could save money, reduce emissions and perhaps even quash the road rage of frustrated drivers. The new approach makes traffic lights go with the flow, rather than enslaving drivers to the tyranny of timed signals. By measuring vehicle inflow and outflow through each intersection as it occurs and coordinating lights with only their nearest neighbors, a systemwide smoothness emerges, scientists report in a September Santa Fe Institute working paper. “It’s very interesting — the approach is adaptive and the system can react,” says mechanical engineer Gábor Orosz of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. “That’s how it should be — that’s how we can get the most out of our current system.” An ultimate goal in traffic regulation is “the green wave,” the bam, bam, bam of greens that allows platoons of vehicles to move smoothly through intersection after intersection. When that happens, no drivers have to wait very long and sections of road don’t become so filled with cars that there’s no room for entering vehicles when the light does go green. To achieve this rare bliss, traffic lights usually are controlled from the top down, operating on an “optimal” cycle that maximizes the flow of traffic expected for particular times of day, such as rush hour. But even for a typical time on a typical day, there’s so much variability in the number of cars at each light and the direction each car takes leaving an intersection that roads can fill up. Combine this condition with overzealous drivers, and intersections easily become gridlocked. Equally frustrating is the opposite extreme, where a driver sits at a red light for minutes even though there’s no car in sight to take advantage of the intersecting green. “It is actually not optimal control, because that average situation never occurs,” says complex-systems scientist Dirk Helbing of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, a coauthor of the new study. “Because of the large variability in the number of cars behind each red light, it means that although we have an optimal scheme, it’s optimal for a situation that does not occur.” Helbing and his colleague Stefan Lämmer from the Dresden University of Technology in Germany decided to scrap the top-down approach and start at the bottom. They noted that when crowds of people are trying to move through a narrow space, such as through a door connecting two hallways, there’s a natural oscillation: A mass of people from one side will move through the door while the other people wait, then suddenly the flow switches direction. “It looks like maybe there’s a traffic light, but there’s not. It’s actually the buildup of pressure on the side where people have to wait that eventually turns the flow direction,” says Helbing. “We thought we could maybe apply the same principle to intersections, that is, the traffic flow controls the traffic light rather than the other way around.” Their arrangement puts two sensors at each intersection: One measures incoming flow and one measures outgoing flow. Lights are coordinated with every neighboring light, such that one light alerts the next, “Hey, heavy load coming through.” That short-term anticipation gives lights at the next intersection enough time to prepare for the incoming platoon of vehicles, says Helbing. The whole point is to avoid stopping an incoming platoon. “It works surprisingly well,” he says. Gaps between platoons are opportunities to serve flows in other directions, and this local coordination naturally spreads throughout the system. “It’s a paradoxical effect that occurs in complex systems,” says Helbing. “Surprisingly, delay processes can improve the system altogether. It is a slower-is-faster effect. You can increase the throughput — speed up the whole system — if you delay single processes within the system at the right time, for the right amount of time.” The researchers ran a simulation of their approach in the city center of Dresden. The area has 13 traffic light–controlled intersections, 68 pedestrian crossings, a train station that serves more than 13,000 passengers on an average day and seven bus and tram lines that cross the network every 10 minutes in opposite directions. The flexible self-control approach reduced time stuck waiting in traffic by 56 percent for trams and buses, 9 percent for cars and trucks, and 36 percent for pedestrians crossing intersections. Dresden is now close to implementing the new system, says Helbing, and Zurich is also considering the approach. Traffic jams aren’t just infuriating, they cost time and money, says Orosz. Estimates suggest that in one year, the U.S. driving population spends a cumulative 500,000 years in traffic at a cost of about $100 billion. And the roads are just going to get more congested. The optimal way of dealing with such congestion is to take an approach like Helbing’s and combine it with technologies that deal with driver behavior, Orosz says. Car sensors that detect the distance between your bumper and the car in front of you can prevent a sweep of brake-slamming that can tie up traffic, for example. “In general these algorithms improve traffic, but maybe not as much as they do on paper because we are still human,” he says. “It is still humans driving the cars.” http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/63481/title/To_tame_traffic,_go_with_the_flow