by TRC_Admin | Mar 31, 2022 | Nature, Planting, Technology, Trees
Photo: Alana Holmberg, The New York Times
“A program in Melbourne, Australia, that tracks every public tree — and even gives each an email address — is seen as a way to manage climate change.
High in the branches of a 122-year-old Dutch Elm, two workers in a bucket crane framed by the city’s skyline used a chain saw to slice large limbs from the top of the tree.
Office workers strolled past, seemingly enjoying the afternoon sunshine of Flagstaff Gardens, the city’s oldest public park, while the workers carried out their ‘reduction pruning’ aimed at controlling the tree’s bulk to help improve its vitality and extend its lifespan.
It is one of the most time-tested forms of tree maintenance, but at ground level the workers’ supervisor, Jake Shepherd, added a high-tech wrinkle.
Mr. Shepherd, a 27-year-old Englishman, touched a yellow circle on a portable electronic device. The circle was within a map of the park that is part of the city’s elaborate tree database and it instantly turned green to register that this specific elm was back in top shape…
New York, Denver, Shanghai, Ottawa and Los Angeles have all unveiled Million Tree Initiatives aimed at greatly increasing their urban forests because of the ability of trees to reduce city temperatures, absorb carbon dioxide and soak up excess rainfall.
Central Melbourne, on the other hand, lacks those cities’ financial firepower and is planning to plant a little more than 3,000 trees a year over the next decade. Yet it has gained the interest of other cities by using its extensive data to shore up the community engagement and political commitment required to sustain the decades-long work of building urban forests.
A small municipality covering just 14.5 square miles in the center of the greater Melbourne metropolitan area — which sprawls for 3,860 square miles and houses 5.2 million people in 31 municipalities — the city of Melbourne introduced its online map in 2013.
Called the Urban Forest Visual, the map displayed each of the 80,000 trees in its parks and streets, and showed each tree’s age, species and health. It also gave each tree its own email address so that people could help to monitor them and alert council workers to any specific problems.
That is when the magic happened.
City officials were surprised to see the trees receiving thousands of love letters. They ranged from jaunty greetings — ‘good luck with the photosynthesis’ — to love poems and emotional tributes about how much joy the trees brought to people’s lives.
Members of the public were subsequently recruited to help with forestry programs such as measuring trees and monitoring wildlife, and politicians were left in no doubt about how much Melburnians valued their trees…
Gregory Moore, an expert on ecosystems and forests at the University of Melbourne, said another major problem was that planning laws controlled by the state of Victoria did little to protect greenery on private land, allowing development that contributed to the annual loss of 1.5 percent of canopy cover across the greater metropolitan area.
‘A good tree cover can save you an enormous amount in health spending alone by reducing deaths in heat waves and getting people outside and taking more exercise,’ he said. ‘Politicians and bureaucrats seem to think that all of these benefits from planting trees are simply too good to be true, but I think they will eventually get the point when economists keep telling them how much money they will save.'”
— Peter Wilson, New York Times
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by TRC_Admin | Mar 31, 2022 | Codes, Legal
Photo: Daily News File Photo
“In two separate rulings, one on a motion and the other following a court hearing, Walton County Judge David Green declined to rule on the constitutionality of Florida’s existing customary use doctrine.
His doing so didn’t shock anyone paying attention to the 3 1/2-year legal battle being waged between the county and private beach landowners over control of the white sand of the county’s beaches. Green had succinctly stated his intentions regarding constitutional questions last November.
“This court does not have the authority to rule that the customary use doctrine adopted by the Florida Supreme Court is unconstitutional,” he wrote.
Daytona Beach vs. Tona-Rama is the landmark 1974 Florida Supreme Court case that established a standard of proof for what constitutes customary use. Customary use is a proposition by which Walton County has staked a claim that the dry sand areas of its coastline should be open to the public.
“This came as no surprise to us based on the judge’s prior rulings,” said Kent Safriet, who represented two private beach property owners at the hearing when constitutionality issues were turned aside. “Judge Green believes he is handcuffed. He believes he has to follow the Tona-Rama decision no matter how bad he feels it is.”
In ruling against Safriet’s clients in Walton County vs. Northside Holdings LLC and Lavin Family Development LLC, Green opened the door for the attorney to appeal his constitutionality case to the First District Court of Appeals. That brings it one step closer to the Florida Supreme Court, where Safriet believes “Tona-Rama” must ultimately face scrutiny…”
— Tom McLaughlin, Northwest Florida Daily News
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by TRC_Admin | Mar 12, 2022 | Billboards, Legal
“Maryland’s highest court has upheld a tax imposed by the city of Baltimore on selling billboard advertising.
The Court of Appeals last week rejected arguments by Clear Channel that the tax violates constitutional provisions that protect freedom of speech.
The appeals court ruled 6-1 that the tax ordinance was not subject to heightened scrutiny under the First Amendment because it did not single out the press, target a small group of speakers or discriminate on the basis of the content of speech.
The Baltimore City Council passed an ordinance in 2013 imposing a tax on the selling of advertising on billboards that are not located on the premises where the goods or services being advertised are offered or sold…
Clear Channel’s challenge to the ordinance had previously been rejected in federal court, the Maryland Tax Court, the Baltimore City Circuit Court and the Court of Special Appeals.”
— Associated Press in Baltimore Sun
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Additional background – Forbes
by TRC_Admin | Mar 12, 2022 | Mural, Placemaking
Photo: Courtesy Photo in Sarasota Magazine
“The International Chalk Festival has been taking place in Sarasota and Venice since 2007. Thousands of people come every year to experience 3D chalk designs by more than 100 international and local artists. This year, the festival’s theme is resilience.
Prior to the pandemic, Mexican muralist Carlos Alberto traveled the world sharing his paint and chalk murals at festivals. He attended Sarasota’s 2019 festival and will return this year, sharing his optical illusion drawings, which use the floor and walls to produce immersive work.
‘I’ve been painting all my life and moved into chalk as a medium recently,’ says Alberto. ‘One of the reasons I love working with chalk is you can create ephemeral pieces that people can enjoy during the creative process. They can be done quickly; you do not have to wait for each layer to dry.’
Alberto says the fact chalk can be erased easily with water is part of the medium’s charm. It can be appreciated during its execution, in the same way we experience live concerts, dance performances and plays. It survives as a memory in spectators’ minds…
This year, the festival will take place at the Venice Municipal Airport from Friday, April 1, to Sunday, April 3.”
For more information, a list of artists and to purchase tickets AND additional Sarasota location/details on the Sarasota “Chalk it up event”, visit chalkfestival.org”
— Allison Forsyth, Sarasota Magazine
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by TRC_Admin | Mar 12, 2022 | Billboards, Controversial, Interactive Advertising, Technology
Photo: Ocean Outdoor in Washington Post
“A new form of outdoor advertising is slowly taking hold. But experts warn of overload…Anamorphic advertising is coming — usually right out of a building. (
It all began with a floating cat.
Photo: Independent UK (click photo for article
The giant feline suddenly appeared suspended over Tokyo’s Shinjuku train station. Throughout the summer, it stretched awake in the morning, meowed at passersby during rush hour and curled into a sleepy ball after midnight.
The cat, along with a cresting ocean wave above the streets of Seoul, wasn’t a biology experiment gone awry. It was a 3-D anamorphic outdoor ad, a proof-of-concept from several Asian design firms. The pieces would inspire principals at British ad company Ocean Outdoor, owner of many public screens across Europe, to create tools for a 3-D ad platform called DeepScreen. Part art installation, part ‘1984’-esque vision, the results hint at what our commercialized outdoor spaces might soon look like…
In just a few months, Ocean Outdoor’s Piccadilly Circus location and others across Europe have attracted advertisers including Fortnite, Netflix, Vodafone (the ad has 25-foot rugby stars and their ball bursting through a building), Sony, Amazon’s Prime Video (for its new ‘Wheel of Time’ fantasy series) and food-service company Deliveroo. Two weeks ago, the British agency that worked on the ‘Wheel of Time’ spot, Amplify, brought it to Times Square…
‘This is exciting and it’s attention-getting,’ said Arun Lakshmanan, an associate professor of marketing at the University at Buffalo School of Management and an expert in immersive advertising. ‘It also could really start getting intrusive…’
Production is expensive — it can cost upward of $500,000, several times a 30-second TV spot — and labor intensive…
Nir Eyal, an author and expert on the attention economy, called this in an email the ‘shiny pony’ problem. New forms of advertising lose their luster. Customers could lose interest.
But these ads may not be aimed only at them. Teixeira notes that the appearance of innovation could be equally important for what it telegraphs to investors, retailers and competitors.
Even the skeptical would admit there’s something cool about dynamic images occupying the space around us. But is it scary in the hands of corporations? Could advertising get ‘Minority Reported,’ where we are all Tom Cruise, assaulted by airborne ads tailored to us every time we leave our homes?
Could a political demagogue even use the tech to loom large in public?
‘How we want to regulate this is a very good question,’ said Buffalo’s Lakshmanan. ‘Unfortunately, in the history of advertising, it tends to be answered only after something has gotten popular.'”
— Steven Zeitchik, Washington Post
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