FYI QoL #4

When you think of human movement and well-being. Physical well-being quickly comes to mind. However when combined with the trend sustainable cities a lot of different aspects play their part. In my last quality of life blog i’ll explain how my blog connect with well-beings from different aspects.

Physical well-being

Physical well-being means that you’re healthy in whatever definition you decide. It focuses on physical health. You’re mobile and feel safe.

Material well-being

Material well-being is about possession, owning, income, environment and transport. This is a very important factor for a lot of people. Appearance is easy to connect to this factor to.

Social well-being

Social well-being is centered around connection between people. How do you live and connect with the people around you, your friends and family for example. It’s also about society, what is your place and how do you feel there. It’s one step above emotional well-being. It’s safe to say both effect each other greatly. Because appearance is often a reflection of our society, social status or how we feel. A lot of my blog revolved around this social subject.

Development and activity

Activities or development are experience based on the fact that you want to do or learn something. Whether this is work related or not. You have the ability to grow intellectually if you want to and grow as a person.

Emotional well-being

Emotional well-being is about mood, self-worth, status, respect, confidence etc. It’s about how you feel as a person and how things effect you as an individual

Economic sustainability 

Well the product in this blog might not really be connected to a well-being aspect but the main subject is. Economic instability is strongly connected to material well-being and development and activity. Because when the economy becomes shaky and markets start to drop, a lot of people are effected. People loose their jobs, government make budget cuts which often effects the same people. These people lose a lot. Sometimes they even loose their house. They loose everything because of some people on wall street if you say it quite frank. So their material as well as their emotional well being is greatly effected by shifts in the economy.

Fated Ascend

This app mainly focces on emotional well being. It captures your connection with a certain (random looking spot). You can even leave your mark there and it’ll stay there. This way you’ll have a special connetion with that area. Also when you find other traveler’s marks you might feel less lonely when hiking alone.

Can I park here?

This cluster covers a variety of well being aspects. Mostly it covers material well being. What you use to transport with says a lot about you. All the transport forms in this cluster make a statement. Visually and statement wise. Ecological, white and futuristic shapes exude a certain status. That super hip 30 something from down town has had that car forever and you’ve just heard about it.

Not only status is important here. Physical well-being is very important as well. All vehicles are electric. This way they don’t directly polute the air, keeping smog out of the cities. This way people stay safe and can breathe clean air.

High parks

High parks focus is mainly on the social well being. How nature revived a whole living area. Bringing the young and creatives together. Also the fact that you can grow your own plants there brings people together. They find connection through shared passion for gardening which makes it a better place to live.

A new billboard message

Development and activity would be the only aspect covered in this coolhunt. This is because it triggers thought. It makes you realize how much power we’re wasting and how easy we could change that. This also might have some effect on your emotional well being but it is not the main goal for the developers.

A new billboard message

The other cool thing I ran in to last week (19th of may, 2015 Times square) was on one of the best known spots of newyork. Times square. Giant billboard lit up the night sky all selling a new show, product or whatever else there is to promote. One billboard stood out however amongst the attacking messages and lights. The one by the company Ricoh. A radiator company. It had solar panels on it.

I found that really amazing. Instead of wasting loads of energy it creates energy. It  is a sign of green branding as I call it. It’s subtle (in a way a huge billboard can be subtle) but yet very powerful both in message as in impact. It combines our over stimulus of messages with our need for energy and creates a new way of advertising which might be nescecery in the future.

It is a really cool sign of sustainable cities and hopefully we’ll see many more.

High parks

Last week I was in new York. I spent the week looking for cool and innovative things which showed signs of sustainability. (the 15th of may, Lowerside Manhattan) 2015 The first thing I actually came a cross was this amazing park. It used to be a rail road. A few years ago however they changed it in to a very modern park full of green life.

It isn’t just a park but there has been given a lot of attention to the plants that grow in the park. They were carefully picked and very well maintained. Not only are the green they also looked very stylish in contrast with their industrial surroundings but what makes this park so special. In my opinion in combines nature and city in the best way.

Nature is a cycle, every year everything dies and comes back to life in the spring. You might say that nature also brought this rail road back to life. This can also be seen in the trend copy nature. This aesthetic approach to nature and combining that with living, leisure and human movement has made this project a great success and  a big tourist attraction.

By creating something new on something old it really revived a whole part of New York. Making it attractive for young people again. This way it wont be a victim of another trend called aging society. The park has attracted a lot of you creative people which have given the lower west side of New York its authentic cool vibe.

Can I park here?

When we look at studies about the future, it is estimated that in 2050 around 75% of the worlds population will be living in the city. Studies also claim the that the population will grow to nine billion, considering the rate we’re growing in now. You can imagine that this might cause some problems. The most obvious one is space. Other problems might be that those people need to live somewhere, will use energy, have to go places, work, eat and produce a lot of trash.

Instead of the usual focus on just one solution or cool thing as usual i will create a cluster of really smart solutions which may be very necessary in the future to maintain the quality of life we’re used to now.

The first one is a person with a great concept and invention. Rick Cavallaro invented the ‘Black Bird’ a very futuristic looking cart which is fully powered by wind. The special thing about this cart however is that it can go faster than the wind pushing it forward. Without the help of any other power source. This has never been seen before and when it was published it sparked debate in the science world with one main question, HOW? I’m not the person to talk science (i’ll let wired do that) but this i a great example of super sustainable transport which might be the only thing left when fossil fuels run out.

The other problem which i mentioned was space. As more and more people will live in cities space will be a very expensive thing to have. Amsterdam might be a great current example. Where parking cost are insanely high (5 euro’s an hour) So a smart solution is to minimize space. There are a lot of examples and i will focus on three example which already are or will be available soon.

For just $16.000 you’ll be the happy owner of the Hiriko folding city car. This car drives just like regular cars but when you park it it only takes up half the space, by folding up. How cool is that. The Hiriko car is already available for a while but is not yet a great  seller. People might need to get used to the whole concept of their car folding in half. Or they just need more space in their car.

For every one who doesn’t want to drive a car or places where scooters are more popular like asia there are also solutions. This electric scooter which can fold to half its size has been designed to also carry a big load. By lowering its center of gravity the scooter is a lot safer that the usual scooter which are now stacked op on. 

The last one is a kick starter project. We already knew the fold up bike and the segway and you might say this is their love child. The half bike is a bike which you ride standing up. This way the bike takes up way less space but also creates a whole new way of transport.

All these forms of transport have a prospect in the future in their own way. Weather this is sustainability, ubanisation or population growth. They aren’t that popular yet but might be necessary one day.

Fated Ascent

Fated Ascent is a app for your phone or tablet. It allows you to leave your mark in a whole new way. It was displayed at STRP Biennial (15th of april, 2015) and i was told that when backpackers travel they leave a rock at certain points to show that they have been there. But Fated Ascent has put a spin on this concept and made it futuristic and everlasting.

Based on the gps location of the pile of rocks you can leave yourself on one of them. You take a picture of yourself and put it with the app on the rocks. As you can see on the video it’s in 3D which makes it even more life like. This way your mark will stay there long after your gone.

Right now it is not possible to actually put your self on one of these rocks but the technology is there. Fated Ascent is still developing. It works pretty much the same as Layar. A virtual layer is placed on actual real life footage creating a whole new world.

As i said earlier Fated Ascent is a really cool way to capture your self and leave a digital mark. It fits right in with the modern day habit to capture everything around us. (See Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook for example) It is also a kind of cool thought to leave a mark which theoretically could stay there for ever.

The concept fits in really well with the trend internet of things because even rocks in the middle of nowhere can be layered with a picture of you! It shows that the internet has no boundaries or borders. Fated Ascent allows you to experience other people’s trips through your phone. Which might make yours less lonely and fits in perfectly with our inline lives.

There is just one point of criticism or maybe more of a question. Is there a good wifi or 3g connection in a dessert, on a mountain or in a forest. If not you might want to ask what is the use of this app. But as mentioned earlier it’s a concept (a very cool one) and it is still developing.

Economic sustainablity

In 2008 all hell broke loose and markets crashed. It set of a deep economic recession and it effected millions of lives. Despite having a lot of negative effects it also sparked a wave of creativity and demand for clarity. That demand was answered in many ways but the absolute root of the problem remains very unclear to many people. Its a forrest which you cant get trough when your not a economic graduate.

A journalist Joris Luyendijk felt the same way. Being a journalist he wanted to investigate this complex system that is called the bank. He first wrote for nrc but ended up writing a book, This Can’t Be True. The book shows and clarifies how insane these banks operate with our money. It shows a glance at how idiotic our economic system has become.

This book sells like crazy and is praised by experts as well as ‘normal’ people. This is why. It fits right in with that demand for clarity. People want to clarity so they can trust. Trust is a very abstract but insanely important for the economy. As a knowledge society we want to trust the institutions who we hand all our money to.

This became clear again when just about a month a go, directors of ING and ABN AMRO raised their salary and gave themselves huge bonuses. People and the government were outraged. These news items have been in the news more and more. Showing that the 99% revelotion from 2011 is not yet erased from our minds. There has just been a more clear focus on a goal, honesty and authenticity.