In the article “I’m in a hurry… to slow down”, Chris Carlsson mentions how he has been riding his bicycle for the past 40 years of his life. He chose to cycle because he’s an impatient person who cannot really stand traffic and this allowed him to notice all the changes that occurred in the city over specific time periods since he can actually explore the world around him while cycling. The evolution of technology lead to the appearance of more cars on the streets and accordingly more parking lots and space for cars. This left a much narrower place for cyclists to cycle and people walking by to explore the view and the wonderful nature around them. People also lost touch with one another and became more involved with the idea of technology and communicating with each other only on social networking websites. As a result, people are now going through the same routines each and every day; they wake up, work, eat and then sleep for few hours. Not only are the streets getting overcrowded and much less space is now available for all the shops and outlets, most people are becoming obsessed with money and tend to value time more than anything.
In another article “The third transportation revolution”, John Zimmer also mentions how we live in a world that is only surrounded by cars and how we are not making use of all the available space. He however, provides a solution for all this free space; he came up with the idea of “Lyft”. Lyft is the new group or application in which Zimmer plans to have autonomous vehicles that do not involve any private owned cars rather rented cars that are run by drivers who are tracked. With the evolution of technology, people can request cars easily on the Lyft app from their smartphones and they pay the drivers money depending on where they want to head or the miles it takes them to arrive at their destination. This idea of Zimmer will actually reduce the large amounts of useless space and can actually use it in an effective manner.
Both Carlsson and Zimmer are in a way addressing the same issue of space and how our society is currently surrounded by cars and by everything that has to do with cars such as parking lots. They also care about the society as a whole, how we view the world and mentioned how technology in general developed over time and people have based their lives based on it. Carlsson, explained the idea and his own beliefs without mentioning any type of solutions while Zimmer came up with the idea of Lyft that in itself has the potential to make things better and eliminate some of the useless space. I personally think that Zimmer’s solution could be the start of something big and has the potential to change some of the disadvantages in the city like getting rid of traffic.
As for my spatial observation expedition, I chose to visit the California Tennis Club and watch the final tennis battle between USF and the University of Arizona. From where I stood and started cheering for the players, there were four tennis courts. They were playing both singles and doubles against each other. I watched only one game which lasted for about an hour and a half. It was between two girls from the USF team and two other girls from the Arizona. Speakers were scattered all around the area where I was sitting and the judge who was monitoring the players’ performance, kept on describing what was happening in the game. I also heard the sound of the racket moving through the air as the girls shot the ball. The sound in general took a considerable amount of space. There were also people cheering for the teams sitting at the benches near the court which also took up most of the space. Booths were present at every corner, either promoting a certain cause or distributing flyers about the upcoming tournaments. And all the empty space at the tennis club was covered with grass and beautiful pink flowers. The tennis club is a mile away from the USF campus so some of my friends cycled to the club while others took the muni bus. The coaches, however, used their cars and parked them in the small parking lot at the club.
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