Please take the time to watch this video. I can’t seem to embed it, so you have to click the link.

In the video, Clay Shirky talks about the revolution happening in social media. We used to be passive because there wasn’t much we could do in our free time other than watch television or shop. Now, because of social media and networking, we can do so much more but we can also start producing and thinking and creating collective networks of valuable information. So where do we start?

“The way you explore complex ecosystems is you just try lots and lots and lots of things, and you hope that everybody who fails fails informatively so that you can at least find a skull on a pikestaff near where you’re going.”

We haven’t yet developed that culture of experimentation, yet. We still have a crippling fear of failure, but we have to realize that this is how evolution works; with lots of mostly failed experiments, a few good ones survive and thrive. So much precious time is dissipated by idle workers and bored Kuwaitis looking to ‘waste time’ at work and at home. What if we channel that surplus time into something useful and productive?

Let’s think about some possibilities for Kuwait. A website that tracks energy use per household and rewards those that are below average with a large financial prize. People can look at the map, and see how much they’re consuming in comparison with other people in their neighborhood. They start challenging for the prizes and learn the best ways to save energy from each other. The prizes won’t be a zero-sum game (I win when you lose) but would be designed to encourage people to help each other with ideas.

People could join together and create a micro-governance task force that looks for local problems in infrastructure (badly maintained public park, potholes, stupidity in general) and have direct access to the people responsible. We must get government assurances that if the people responsible don’t act in time, they get punished. The way this works is because of the beautiful sudden transparency of the internet.

I’m sure there are lots other ideas we can think of and most of them won’t work, but the few that do will change Kuwait for the better.

Why doesn’t Kuwait have any charter schools? These are independent publicly funded schools (no tuition, religious affiliation or selective student admissions), but are separated from the rules of the Ministry as long as they abide by agreed upon performance standards.

A charter school is authorized to function once it has received a charter, a statutorily defined performance contract detailing the school’s mission, program, goals, students served, methods of assessment, and ways to measure success.

The point is that they end up experimenting with better methods of teaching without being restricted by bureaucracy, while still being held accountable for student achievement. Successful examples in the US include High Tech High and Seattle Girls School.

I would love it if we had such choices in Kuwait. Most of the private schools are getting too expensive for most people and are attracting rich, spoiled kids that demand special behavior because they’re paying exorbitant fees. They start developing an atmosphere of entitlement which defines students’ behavior throughout their lives. Public schools aren’t any better, but that’s because they lost interest and have settled on a comfortable rut that no one in power wants to change. A little competition can’t hurt can never hurt.

Update: If not charter schools, then at least strictly not-for-profit private schools. It’s the profit motive that, I think, ruins most private schools.

Later Update: The reason why i’m asking for this is that education, like security and healthcare, is a right and not a privilege. Public schools have no innovation and their ability to develop well-rounded, curious and creative young men and women is weak. They teach to the test and have been stuck with the same curriculum taught in the same way for generations.

Experimenting with charter schools, or at least non-profit private schools, is simply a way to disrupt this stagnation. It will show that there are alternatives to the way we teach. If I was in charge of a school, i’d make these changes:

1. Have a much later starting bell than usual, in the region of 9am. The school opens as early as 6:30, and parents would be free to drop their kids in anytime they want. Breakfast would be served in school for those that don’t have time at home. Kids that are there early can work on their projects or just socialize with their friends.
2. Mandatory 15 minute exercise for students and faculty first thing in the morning.
3. School would end much later than normal, somewhere around 4 or 5pm. They wouldn’t be expected to do any homework, all work is done in school. That means that they don’t carry their books home. Most kids don’t have good work spaces at home, and some have loud or disruptive home environments.
4. Lots of extra-curricular activities (teachers would be encouraged to each start something in a field that they’re passionate about, for example astronomy, chess, wrestling, dance, gardening, cycling, etc) Every student would have to pick two or three activities as part of their schedule.
5. Students would be served lunch in school at around noon, a healthy, nutritious lunch that’s made specifically for each student (there would be a nutrition specialist on staff that would ‘design’ each child’s menu for the year, based on clinical tests and physical exams. And no, I don’t think that’s crazy)
6. Major emphasis on creativity and self-empowerment. There’s a test at the end of the year, but the weight of the test would be much less than usual. Team projects will be a main tool of education. The aim is teach kids how to learn.
7. Much smaller classes than usual, depending on the subject and students.
8. Troublemakers would be weeded out of the normal classes and put together with each other. They would be taught through tough, discipline oriented methods. They would have a second chance to go back to Gen-Pop, but only if they behave and work hard. This idea is from Season 4 of The Wire.
9. No useless technology. Sometimes schools think that simply having technology will replace the act of teaching. Technology is a tool, and using it in the wrong way wastes time and money. Only stuff that works and is proven effective will be used.
10. Community awareness. The kids would be constantly involved in local initiatives, cleaning up the park for example, or proposing and enacting changes to things they decided needed to change. Basic acts of micro-democracy and showing how when people organize and get involved, they can make stuff happen.
11. Students will be constantly encouraged to make things. The school should have a pervasive and contagious feeling of creativity and experimentation. Students are taught not to say what they’re going to do, but what they did. Wet labs, wood shop, photography studio and dark room, art space, a theater. There’s always something happening.

There’s no way that this school could exist as part of the Ministry. It has to be separated from the rules that govern all public schools. I don’t see it being successful as a private, for-profit school, either. The motivation there is to make money, and that drive supersedes the desire to teach honestly and enthusiastically.

It has to be independent from the rules and not driven by profit. The only options are charter schools (free, public schools that are accountable to the Ministry, but don’t follow their rules) or a non-profit private school.

Why are Arab architects and engineers obsessed with fences? There’s always a big fence surrounding every building, usually around the site perimeter. I can understand a fence around a prison, maybe a zoo, but why everywhere? What’s the point?

It don’t think security is a valid reason. It has a false sense of security, sure, but anyone can jump a fence if they want to. The reason why i’m so against the idea is that, by definition, it keeps people out. This limits the usable public space to the leftovers. There’s no gray area, no semi-public space. Urban flow is cut off because there’s always a clear and physical barrier between the areas where you are allowed to be and those where you are not welcome. Architects start getting lazy and design buildings as isolated and independent islands without caring about integrating the project into the existing urban fabric. They can’t, anyway, because the neighbor has a fence.

I bet this is all a big fence-maker conspiracy to sell more products.

Mayor Bloomberg just announced that the Times Square pedestrian pilot project will become permanent. This means that it’s now a completely pedestrian only street all year round from now on. This is great for tourism and public health and safety. They’ll start designing permanent landscape architecture and services to accommodate the change. It’s a great decision and one that should be used as an example for SAM street here in Kuwait.

Times Square, NY City

I’m wondering if maybe converting SAM street into a year round pedestrian promenade might not be fair to the tenants. Nobody will really be walking there all day during the hot summer months. What if the pedestrian street becomes seasonal? It can be done in a way so that it transforms into a pedestrian street with very little adjustment, maybe just installing retractable bollards to stop cars from driving in. The landscape architecture would have to be designed to not restrict cars in the summer, but that’s a realistic design problem and can be solved. So what we end up with is a pedestrian street during the cooler months (November to April) and a normal street during the hotter months (May to October). A seasonal transformation is a politically feasible solution for SAM street.

I use Gmail and i’ve been messing around with Buzz for the past few days. I’m enjoying it so far. I never got on the Twitter bandwagon because the 140 character limit seemed stifling, but Buzz is more convenient anyway. You can find my Google Profile here. I post lots of projects, ideas and events that I find interesting along with my notes and comments. I’ll probably put a link on the sidebar in the future, but for now just click here. Thanks.

I shot that video today walking through the park. It’s just as filthy as when I last saw it. It’s a shame, because the park itself is pretty decent. You can hear the birds and the trees are healthy. What would it take for the park to be successful? First of all, how would we define success? I think it has to be a place full of kids and families, a place that they feel safe going to and enjoy being in. No litter and graffiti. The park has to be well lit at night, not with stupid floodlights that blind people who look in their direction, but with subtle lighting that does its job without being irritating.

It really wouldn’t take much of an effort to make that all happen. I still think the Facebook page idea is a good one and is the best way to get the community involved and ‘own’ the park for themselves. It’s a very achievable goal. I’ll probably do the Facebook page myself in a few weeks and I hope it turns out as well as I think it will. Any ideas?

Things we can do to fix it:

1. Clean-up program with local kids (litter removal and painting over graffiti)
2. More rubbish bins (one near every BBQ grill and seating area, people want to throw stuff in bins but they’re too far away or full)
3. Cover the sand around the playground and wherever there’s sand with mulch. It’s safer and stores the nutrients in the soil. Mulch can be anything, but I suggest rubber mulch.
4. Take out all of the stupid floodlights. They ruin the atmosphere and blind people who look near them. They’re the wrong choice.
5. Install ground lighting around the running track and lights under every bench. The seating areas have to be individually lit from within as well as the circulation that leads to them. No dark spaces, but no annoying mega-lights either.
6. Hire a maintenance guy and a security guy. The facility is there and it needs to be fixed. This is critical.
7. Change the boring and unimaginative signs outside the park. They’re not inviting.
8. This is a personal preference, and I understand the reason for having it, but I would demolish the wall and slowly expand the park outwards filling up all the dead space that surrounds it.
9. The Facebook page.
10. Plant a much wider variety of plants and flowers. There’s too much of the same thing and variety attracts more birds and is visually appealing.

Edit – I know i’m dancing around the topic, but I would LOVE to redesign the park…

Note: Please ignore the actual design, the image is mainly to illustrate the point and to show the potential program that can be in place.

A wonderfully simple video about efforts to retrofit suburbia. There are a few things we can take that apply to Kuwait. We don’t have the problem of having to ‘fill in’ the gaps, because most of our suburbs are very densely packed. The thing I found most appealing in the video is the notion of the ‘third place’.

The first two places are your home and workplace. The third place is where you go to hang out and is very important for a younger generation (like ours). We have lots of third places, coffee shops, restaurants, etc. The problem is that they’re usually really far away from where we live.

I’ll use Qortuba again as an example of an opportunity to create something. Here it is again:

In the middle is Block 5, a service block which has the shopping center, park, a couple of schools and some other services. On the corner, though, there’s a dead space. It’s huge, but it’s been deserted forever. Sometimes we have Eid Prayer there, but not last year, so we can cope without it. What can we do with this dead space?

The best opportunity is to expand the park to fill up all the sand. We can’t move the big boxes, as they’re power transformers and such, but we can still use them. We should build small boutiques and selected restaurants, all anchored by a large, outdoor fruit and vegetable market. These would all be attached to the existing walls of the power buildings.

The feel of the place would be one of ‘healthy living’. You go there for the health related shops, to enjoy the green space and nature, to run in the track (the brown thing) or just hang around in one of the coffee shops. You can take your kids out for a walk and to enjoy the playground in the park. The point isn’t that this stuff can’t be found in Kuwait. Places like this exist, but they’re too far away. I want people to walk to here. There’s lots of parking, anyway, but I still want people to walk.

The co-op would make money renting out the space and the residents will enjoy the new ‘third place’ in their lives instead of staring at the dusty nothing that was there before. What would it take to make something like this happen? The land is already zoned for commercial use (I think). Who owns the land?

Edit- I took a few photos of the site:

Click to embiggen

I was strolling through Qortuba Public Park this afternoon. The place is actually pretty decent, there’s a fair amount of benches and lots of trees and grass. The problem is that it was filthy. There was litter everywhere. The bathrooms were disgraceful. The security guard quarters were abandoned (I don’t think a security guard works there anymore). Graffiti was on every surface and half the lights weren’t working.

I thought about what we could do to fix things and I realized the answer was internet social media; Facebook.

I propose that we create a ‘Qortuba Public Park’ Facebook page. The purpose of this page is to do two things:

1. To act as a bulletin-board for activities that residents of Qortuba would initiate; fostering a stronger sense of community and being a safe place for young kids to meet new friends and play.
2. To serve as a forum to identify and act on negligence on behalf of the authorities. If you see litter in the park, you can access the page to find the telephone number of the people responsible for cleaning and you can complain. If enough people do that they will fix things. If you see graffiti you can photograph it and upload it to the page and demand they paint over it. It’s basically a way for local constituents to reach the people responsible and is a way for us to be empowered.

(photos taken a few months ago, when the park was much cleaner)

On the page we would have the contact numbers of all the people responsible for the maintenance and security of the park; specifically the names and telephone numbers of the local government of Qortuba, and the people responsible for them in the Baladiya (in case they don’t answer the phone), as well as the numbers (and photographs of) the actual workers who work on the park.

Once a large enough number of people sign up to the Facebook page, the first event would be a mass clean-up/education event held in the park. Families would be invited to join in and paint the walls, clear up all the litter and then celebrate with games for the kids to get to know each other. This would help teach the kids about responsibility and get them to develop a sense of ownership towards the park. It becomes theirs.

After that anyone can then propose an event on the page, and there’d be a schedule of things to do. For example, I could schedule a football tournament for boys aged 8-12, with teams from every block competing, and I could referee. People want to be involved in their communities, but there was never a viable medium to spread information to people quickly and spontaneously. Facebook changes that. With one quick invite, you could create an event and get it together without much hassle. Spontaneous book swaps, art events, bake sales, you name it. The park becomes the heart of the community. I hope and have a feeling that young mothers would really get into this and make it work. It has to happen naturally and in small clusters where people feel responsible to each other and to the park itself.

Of course, this would be replicated for every area in Kuwait. People always complain about the government, but this is a way for us to combine and focus all of our voices to do something good one small step at a time. I would love it if someone would take this idea and run with it, but I wouldn’t mind doing it myself for Qortuba first.

A few months ago Jasem, Amenah and I were interviewed for an article in the in-flight magazine of Jazeera Airways. The issue is now in print and is on all of their planes. Thanks again to Lara Dunston and Terence Carter for taking the time to interview us.

I’m going to try a quick redesign of Qortuba Block 2. First, here it is as is:

I’m going to restrict myself into not altering the inlets to Qortuba, and leave the institutional buildings on the main road as they are. What I can change are the street layouts and the density and location of the residential plots. The goal is to turn it into a self-sustaining, livable and walkable area while still having a similar number of homes as before, which is about 750 villas. Right in the middle of Block 2 is a strange little island of commercial properties along with a large Kindergarten that I attended as a kid. The first thing I would do is take that island out and spread it in a linear fashion along the perimeter, where the heavy traffic is. It doesn’t make sense to hide it the way it is now.

I’d also expand the green belt that surrounds the block further in, and restrict the residential block to a squarish element that runs parallel to the main roads of Qortuba. The commercial strip would have ample parking at the front and back. I’d imagine a long line of cafes, grocery shops, hair dressers, laundry, daycare centers and lots of other stuff that you need close to home. Most people will be able to walk to these from where they live. The green belt would have lots and lots of trees (it already does!) and would be open to the public. This means that it’s no longer considered an ‘irtidaad’ the way it is now. There would be a long well lit place to run, maybe a caged football pitch and lots of benches.

Now this is where it gets tricky. I would design two different street widths. The main perimeter streets are two-way, while the interior streets are one-way. The point here is that since streets take up so much space, having them be one-way means that you save half the space. The interior streets would alternate directions, with odd number streets being one direction and even numbers in the other. This means that every home is only accessible from one direction, but I think this is an inconvenience worth having for the sake of saving space.

The slices are pedestrian streets. They will chop up the boring boxes into weird little triangles. These ‘in-between’ spaces are what gives each neighborhood its own distinct character. This is how people would walk to the commercial strip or to the green belt. The slices sometimes create an awkward space. This doesn’t go to waste. It can turn into a simple playground, or if it’s big enough, a mosque or a library. The purpose is to layer a pedestrian network over the street, so that people don’t always feel as if they’re subservient to cars. In order for this to work there has to be a reason to go out to walk and place to walk to; the green belt, the commercial strip and the little things to do in the awkward spaces.

The homes themselves would be very dense and they would all be attached to each other, separated only when a pedestrian street slices through them. This would further intensify and direct people into the pedestrian streets as it’s easy to identify them. The reason why I want the house to be attached is because you save lots of space and they shade each other.