Urban Neighbourhood

Pay your subscription or watch it burn.

The big question today in Tennessee is whether or not libertarian fire services should be an option. Last week firefighters watched a house burn because the owners had neglected to pay the 75$ annual subscription fee for fire protection. The optional aspect of fire coverage comes from the fact that the property that burnt down is not within the city limits where the citizens automatically pay for fire protection with their taxes, its a rural property outside the city that provides users outside South Fulton with the option to ‘opt in’ to rural fire service by paying a 75$ annual subscription. In this case the property owner hadn’t done so.  Thus leading to the scene wherein the firefighters were on site to protect the neighbours but did nothing to protect the owners.

What do you think? Should there a be a good Samaritan clause? Or is the fire department and town right to let the place burn? A debate has been rageing on the Internet about whether the city was right to let the house burn or not. What do you think?

Kevin Williamson writes at the National Review Online:

The situation is this: The city of South Fulton’s fire department, until a few years ago, would not respond to any fires outside of the city limits — which is to say, the city limited its jurisdiction to the city itself, and to city taxpayers. A reasonable position. Then, a few years ago, a fire broke out in a rural area that was not covered bythe city fire department, and the city authorities felt bad about not being able to do anything to help. So they began to offer an opt-in service, for the very reasonable price of $75 a year. Which is to say: They greatly expanded the range of services they offer. The rural homeowners were, collectively, better off, rather than worse off. Before the opt-in program, they had no access to afire department. Now they do.

And, for their trouble, the South Fulton fire department is being treated as though it has done something wrong, rather than having gone out of its way to make services available to people who did not have them before. The world is full of jerks, freeloaders, and ingrates — and the problems they create for themselves are their own. These free-riders have no more right to South Fulton’s firefighting services than people in Muleshoe, Texas, have to those of NYPD detectives.

The Mayor makes his case over at NWTN TODAY.

Vowell explained that the property owner was not a paying member of the rural fire subscription service offered to county residents by the City of South Fulton. He said as per city policy, established by city ordinance, the call was declined and the city’s fire department could not respond.
“I have no problem with the way any of my people handled the situation. They did what they were supposed to do,” he said. “It’s a regrettable situation any time something like this happens.”
He said the South Fulton Fire Department did respond to a request to protect the property of the adjacent property owner, who is a member of the rural fire subscription service.
Vowell said county residents do not have guaranteed fire service since there is no countywide fire department to cover rural areas, but many municipalities offer rural fire coverage to residents in specified coverage areas for a nominal annual fee. South Fulton’s fee is $75.
However, Vowell said residents in those rural areas cannot be forced to pay the fee and it’s their decision whether to accept the coverage.

Vowell said people always think they will never be in a situation where they will need rural fire protection, but he said City of South Fulton personnel actually go above and beyond in trying to offer the service. He said the city mails out notices to customers in the specified rural coverage area, with coverage running from July 1 of one year to July 1 the next year.
At the end of the enrollment month of July, the city goes a step further and makes phone calls to rural residents who have not responded to the mail-out.
“These folks were called and notified,” Vowell said. “I want to make sure everybody has the opportunity to get it and be aware it’s available. It’s been there for 20 years, but it’s very important to follow up.”
Mayor Crocker added, “It’s my understanding with talking with the firefighters that these folks had received their bill and they had also contacted them by phone.”

Green Security

Natural Barbed Wire (c) SINNOVEG

The problem with most security fences and barriers is that they are, to put it simply… UGLY. Barbed wire fences and concrete blast walls are not often referred to as attractive, but when it comes down to a matters of security and safety from suicide bombers, the aesthetics are rarely considered an issue.

But what if there was an alternative? What if you could have a wall of green that would repel those would be intruders and still look nice to anyone not trying to get through?

Enter ”natural defensive weaved hedges.’ French businessman Jean-Marie Zimmermann travelled to Baghdad with a modest proposal. Replacing the multitude of blast walls and barbed wire fences with green walls made with tightly woven thorny plants. Zimmermann suggests;

“Why not make the Green Zone green? This is the kind of place where we can provide protection. We can remake Baghdad as a city focused on nature, ecology and the environment, with a new concept of security,” S

Its a simple principle really; plant a row of thorny trees and bushes 80 centimetres apart and weave the branches together. As the plants grow they form a dense and razor-sharp hedge that within three years can reach a height of six metres.  Protectionist Roses anyone? For those that don’t think that the plants alone will be enough Zimmmermann says its no problem to place traditional barbed wire, tire spikes, sensors, and other metal barriers within the hedge. Extra protection that is harder to see with the green camouflage over top.

Sinnoveg at installation

Natural barrier after (c) SINNOVEG

While the barrier won’t stop a tank, it will stop a truck, and the same holds true for most security barriers.

Hakim Abdel Zahra, the spokesman for the municipality, said the city was studying the concept of plant barriers ‘which was brought to us by a French investor’. ‘The idea of establishing security barriers made of plants has many benefits, both from the psychological side and for the beauty and attractiveness of the city.’

‘When you have five or six rows of thorny trees it will take at least an hour to cross, and that is more than enough time to capture the guy,’ he says.

‘Nothing is insurmountable, not even a concrete wall, but you slow down the infiltration. That’s the principle.’ Mr Zimmermann dreams big, and as he expounds on the product he starts to look beyond Baghdad and its government buildings to Iraq’s long and porous borders with its sometimes antagonistic neighbours.

‘A vegetation barrier on certain parts of the border would be perfectly compatible with sensors,’ he says, and unlike the minefields that criss-cross the Middle East it would not leave future generations with missing limbs.

And if infiltrators try to burn their way in? ‘It would take more than a blowtorch,’ he laughs. ‘These are living plants.’ S

I for one would like to see more of these green security walls. There are plenty of what would otherwise be nice city views that are ruined by the presence of a barbed wire topped chain link fence. If you would like to find out more you can also consult the SINNOVEG website.

Satellite Imagery School, Can you Spot the Missiles in your neighbourhood?

Think you are an expert at looking at google earth. Can you spot your house? The center of town? How about a missile silo? I came across this site while looking at urban issues as they related to military actions and war zones. The site has an exercise in reading satellite imagery, being that its a military centered site the exercise is to identify assorted military assets. Its an interesting exercise, though I have to admit I only kept to the instructed height of 14km for a very short period of time.

Spot the Military Assets

Type “Peenemunde, Germany” into the search box of Google Earth. Adjust your “Eye Altitude” to about 14 kilometers. Keep this ‘full’ picture in mind as I will refer to it in one of my questions.

Peenemuende is the tip of the island to the right of center. Center your picture on the SE tip of the main runway in view. Adjust Eye Alt to 7 kilometers.

Within the picture you now have in front of you, you should be able to locate:

• One A-4 (V-2) rocket
• One Fi-103 (V-1) cruise missile
• The original launch track for the Fi-103 as used in WW2
• Pruefstand VII (Test Stand VII), the launch point for A-4 rockets
• Two East German naval vessels
• A variety of East German aircraft

Find the rest of the assignment and exercise at; ArmsControlWonk: Wonk School: Overhead Images

Welcome to the Capital Bunker

Some of you may or may not be aware that the Washington Capital Building has been undergoing a significant renovation, with the addition of the new Capital visitors Center. The center is the largest addition that has ever been made to the building, however all that one can really see of the project are the two massive skylights in the forecourt in front of the building.

Glass floor panels were install to allow illumination of the original wall

The visitors center came about after a gunman killed two Capitol police officers in 1998. However much of the original design was scrapped after 9/11. It went from being a modest plan to a highly secure five acre subterranean complex.

One must admit that the facility is a beautiful piece of work. There is a grand lobby, food court, shops, public washrooms, a large food court and a history exhibition. Very little expense has been spared and rooms are well appointed. There are a number of expansive entrance halls and the renovation is an excellent melding of the modern treatment given to the center while still respecting the original structure. The renovation has also restored the original 1824 sandstone facade, which was mostly hidden behind drywall when the East front was extended 32.5 feet by the 1958-62 renovation work.

The building has been recognised by the Washington Building Congress with a number of 2008 Craftsmanship Awards and the interior is has been done very well.

The new visitors center however has a number of other features that in some way are symbolic of a nation that has suffered a number of high profile blows to its feelings of safety and security and is hunkering down. The way that visitors will now enter the building is rather emblematic of this shift. In the past visitors would approach the capitol much the way any other law maker would, with a walk up the East Front Plaza through the Columbus Doors and into the rotunda. Visitors had an immediate feeling of being in, and a part of the Capitol, travelling on the same level as the law makers who do the nations work in the building. When the new visitors center opens visitors are no longer able to walk right up and into the building but instead descend into the new center by entering through state of the art security checkpoints that are removed from the Capitol building itself.

There are a number of other features that the visitor will never see, a new network of restricted access tunnels for both staffers and vehicles. Needless to say security has played a big factor in the redesign and the visitor will no doubt be aware of it. One only has to look up at the bomb proof skylights, (which almost didnt’ make it into the final design due to security concerns) to see the Capitol Dome crossed with a metal grid that on some level, whether conscious or not will remind the visitor that this is a nation securing itself.

But these are the times we are living in…

There are plenty of photos after the first link

Sources:

The Architect of the Capitol

Freedom Check: Metropolis Magazine

Big Brother Buildings… without the cameras

Yuri Ivanov of the Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories has come up with a comprehensive building monitoring and tracking system that may actually be less invasive of peoples privacy then current CCTV systems. He and his college Christopher Wren outfitted their office with 215 detectors placed at 2 meter intervals. These detectors capture less information in terms of raw data, but they are actually able to generate much more data then a conventional CCTV system. To understand how this is possible one only needs to think of the way that these sensors work.. a motion sensor picks up and relays if and when a person goes by, by having the sensors spaced closely together they are able to track a persons movements through the office. A CCTV on the other hand captures images of the areas they surveil regardless of whether anyone is there or not. Wren explained the difference as such;

“It’s not going to catch you picking your nose. You can only tell that some person went by,” Wren explains, “maybe this is better than living under thousands of cameras.”

The system basically knows that you are in the building but you could be walking around naked and it wouldn’t be able to tell. In order to make sense of all the data that these motion sensors capture the pair developed a software package that we have only seen before in Harry Potter of all places, they developed their own version of the marauders map. People on the display show up as bright spots of light with a comet tail that fades away behind them. Giving viewers the ability to both see where they are and what their trajectories are. The program also allows them to compile this movement data over extended periods of time and look for anomalies and patterns.

The implications for security and human traffic data collection are exciting. The pair was able to analyse data from a fire drill to discover that two out of three of the fire exits went virtually unused. The congregation habits of people and how long they stay at work also have implications for making air conditioning and heating systems more efficient. The system seems like an excellent trade off for better security without compromising personal privacy.

Anarchy In The City

Life in the city has its hazards, crime, pollution and in some cases rioting. During the playoffs in Montreal the down side of city life was on display, the Montreal Canadians won the first round of the Stanley Cup play offs and fans drank and celebrated long into the night. While they were celebrating the Wu Tang concert let out and those drunken concert goers met up with the drunken hockey fans and then madness ensued.

Of course Montreal has a bit of a history with playoff rioting so the Wu Tang concert crowd may have had nothing to do with it.

Evil Gentleman over at citynoise has put together a collection of photos taken in the aftermath of the ‘party.’ Sometimes Urban life isn’t pretty.