Season 3 | Placemaking Report

COVID-19 Arrives For a few weeks it was off in the distance, then suddenly it was on you: COVID-19. When Fab@CIC and District Hall and Cambridge Hackspace closed their doors, you join a number of local Slack- and Zoom-powered maker COVID groups. But without sewing skills, you can't help the mask cause. So you shift your explorations to a humbler "information pain" challenge: "touchless." And then you start to review the idea of "placemaking."

Doubling Down on Gesture Sensors After flirting with a capacitive sensor on some Mixed Reality rides, such as inviting people to "touch the oak leaf," you had to abandon the capacitive sensor. Asking someone to touch something suddenly seemed like a dangerous request. So you start converting everything to "touchless." Your first enabler is the APDS gesture sensor.

Holiday Tree at District Hall features "TikTok Lights" When District Hall joined up with a neighborhood "Holiday Tree" campaign, you knew your tree would feature TikTok lights.

Not an Advent Calendar, an Invent Calendar, and I'm Day #6 Proud to be part of a Holiday Countdown, alongside a Floral Book Wreath and Origami Robot Paper Circuits Kit.

Place Report: Somerville Bike Trail Sculpture Garden With District Hall closed for the holidays, and a second Covid surge descending like a cloud on indoor places all over, you decide to take your placemaking research outside. It will be safer there, you reason, and you could safely recommend a visit, if you find something worthwhile. You start with a sculpture garden that had sprouted up alongside a nearby bike trail in Davis Square, Somerville.

Place Report: Pine in the Sand After the sprawling, messy, free-form expression along the Somerville Bike Path Sculpture Garden, you are up for something minimal and curated. Pine in the Sand fits the bill. It's a striking installation: a single living pine tree atop a sand dune, surrounded by concrete barriers and a cluster of granite blocks.

Place Report: Ninja Walking in Bow Market A Place Report visit to Bow Market in Somerville, MA - Ninja style, with a DJI Osmo Pocket 3-axis gimbal camera.

Place Report: A New Canyon in Cambridge: Cambridge Crossing It doesn't make any sense geologically, but there's a canyon emerging in Cambridge. A remote urban canyon, surrounded by tall cliffs of glass, metal, and concrete. Way over on the far eastern tip of Cambridge: past Kendall Sq., past Lechmere, past even East Cambridge. East East Cambridge.

Place Report: Newsprint Art in Allston Back to the physical world, to the Boston neighborhood of Allston, which Harvard University recently expanded into, to grab some "Art in Prints" by local artists for 25 cents. It is now on its seventh edition. These prints are dispensed in old fashioned metal boxes, so called "honor boxes."

DJI Mini 2 Drone Doing more Place Reports, so you up your arsenal. This drone, selected by Max R., is just about perfect for the job. It's an easy way to get off the ground for more perspective.

Straight Up from District Hall A new direction from District Hall -- straight up. Starting at 100 feet up, looking out at Boston Harbor.

Placemaking in the Metaverse? Worth checking out. Corporations are starting to place bets on new, virtual territory.

Place Report: Goldfish Mega Bites Mountain, Decentraland A video Place Report from Goldfish Mega Bites Mountain in Decentraland, in the metaverse. Buried Goldfish, glowing boots, a billboard, a pick axe, and a new backpack, with a virtual salty snack.

Place Report: Mona Playground "How-To" is a big part of the evolution of the metaverse. Hence the Mona Playground. A place to learn anti-gravity, portals, textures, door navigation...

Halfcourt Basketball in the Metaverse Of all the rides in Meta's colossal metaverse project, the first one that caused you to pause for more than a second was the no-frills halfcourt basketball court located at the edge of the Plaza in Horizon Worlds.

Metaverse Gumball Machine Launches in Decentraland After exploring some metaverse sites (Meta's Horizon World, VRChat, Decentraland, The Sandbox), you launch the Gumball Machine into that overhyped universe. To compound the hype, you program the machine to dispense NFTs.

Metaverse Gumball Machine Launches in the Physical World, aka District Hall Later, you launch a companion Metaverse Gumball Machine in IRL, in the physical world, in District Hall, Boston. That's right: it's intergalatic, inter-dimensional. Let's take a closer look at the physical twin of the Metaverse Gumball Machine.

Experimenting with Vertical, Phone-First Media Instagram and YouTube have woken up to the TikTok threat. Which means that there are now 3 phone-first platforms available for Place Reports. You start out with, and end up sticking with, YouTube Shorts.

Tough Love on YouTube Shorts So far, you've been noodling with YouTube Shorts. But YouTube is a brutal, competitive world. Check out these tough dudes. They dispense YT advice straight. With lots of BIG TEXT to DOUBLE DOWN on their POINTS. I guess it's time to niche down.

Why You Should Try Tactical Placemaking How about some placemaking content? So many placemaking projects originate, and stagnate, in municipal development departments. Or else they get massaged into initiatives that the town or city wants to do anyway. Could "tactical placemaking" be a way around that?

One Thing You Don’t Know About this Famous Glue: Original Gorilla Glue. Notes & Annotations How about a tool tip? A tool tip should work on YouTube. For example, something that viewers might not know about this famous glue: the original Gorilla Glue? PLUS an important, BONUS reminder.

Make Your Life Easier with T-Slot, the “Industrial Erector Set” Here's another tip for YouTube. T-Slot makes it easy to create a quick build of an idea.

Inspirational Guerrilla Artists for Placemakers: INVADER A possible niche for YouTube Shorts: artists who might be inspirational for placemakers? You give it a try, starting with Invader, a guerilla artist who works with mosaics. This and some others Shorts start earning a few hundred views, maybe a few thousand. And then, le deluge.