Influx Insights Tag Feed: urban

rethinking the american dream- the new value of walking

Influx Insights — 2008-06-19T14:39:15Z

Things seem to be happening so fast as the rapid change in the economy coupled with all sorts of other concerns seems to be changing consumer behavior in a rapid fashion. The suburban dream has been questioned for years, but I find it fascinating to see the European and New York city mantra of the value of neighborhoods starting to be widely embraced. One great manifestation of this comes in the form of the Seattle based Walkscore, a website dedicated to helping citizens discover the walkability of various neighborhoods.

The site explains the multiple benefits of walking.

Posted by Ed Cotton

walden as urban car park

Influx Insights — 2008-01-26T17:24:51Z

In a time where we are being driven to desire the natural and the remote, it's fascinating to see somebody take a different take and look at "escape" in an urban context.

A Scottish theater company. Magentic North, is staging a production of Henry Thoreau's Walden in a car park.

Bldblog has a nice piece about it.

I think it's interesting because we seem over-burdened with natural cliches about getting out and finding escape in the natural world.

VW's "Night Driving" campaign also changed it around, challenging us us to find beauty in the urban.

Magentic North's Walden is another great example.

Posted by Ed Cotton

understanding your brand purpose- jc decaux

Influx Insights — 2007-12-17T01:41:23Z

JC Decaux the French outdoor media company is increasingly finding new ways of connecting advertising to urban environments.

Its latest move is to provide an advertising supported bicycle network in France called Velib.

Users can rent bikes for just $1.50/day with JC Decaux picking up most of the costs.

"But when we look at the city of tomorrow, what we understand from people is that they are expecting a city that is more sustainable, where mobility is easier and so on. So we did a 'trend-zoom' on mobility." Ass�raf's team concluded that city inhabitants have two expected 'givens' for the future. The first is what he calls in French 'intermodalite' (using several modes of transport in one day) and the other is mobility itself (actually wanting to move around, not stay still). "So we met inside our company and said "what can we deliver?", to give a new service to people, mixing inter-modality and mobility - which is out of our core business."

More here...

Posted by Ed Cotton