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SharingUmbrellas.org |
A 2014-2015 Celebration of the 50th and 75th Anniversaries of the Auto-Centric 1939-40 and 1964-65 NY World's Fairs as a bottom-up, creative, participatory, cycle-design event |
Attaining Vision Zero SharingUmbrellas.org will be the first World's Fair to take place all over the world at the same time. Participation is gained by scheduling a regular and convenient time and place, for yourself and your neighbors to exhibit and work, on local, muscle-powered-vehicle building projects. We need to accelerate the design and development of human-scale and human-powered and electric-assisted transportation for work, travel, pleasure and exercise. We can celebrate these Fairs' high-tech surprises, International favor and good fun, with few rules to limit originality, (only pedal-activated vehicles please), while enabling crowd-sourcing and cooperation to help us solve serious problems. We need cycles and wheelchairs that are safer, healthier, more affordable, more beautiful and unique, and easier to access, share and use. We need many creative people to initiate these efforts. Individuals and small groups are being encouraged to begin projects to re-define these modes of transport, and bring them from their current 19th century configurations into the 21st Century, with weatherization and motorization etc. Submissions will be sorted by type, cargo, passenger, multimodal, amphibious etc., and also by geography, and will be freely viewable on SharingUmbrellas.org Artists, engineers, mechanics and designers are all being invited to take part in the creation of much better, and greener, transport options, for everyone and from everywhere. The end of the Anniversary Celebrations for the 1939 and 1964 World's Fairs will be on October 16th and 27th 2015. We will use the 11 days between those dates, to commemorate the legacy of these historic events, through exhibits and demonstrations of the futuristic human-powered vehicles being designed and built over the next two years. We will congregate during those days in Flushing Meadows/Corona Park in New York City, site of the original Fair, and in all the other places around the world being used for these regular gatherings over this time, to be amazed, learn from one another, take some rides and have some serious fun. |
Sign up form (*Entry required) |
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BikeRodnKustom | IHPVA | Trend Hunter | VelomobilUSA | Recumbent | Work Bikes | Cargo Cycling | Matador Network |
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Bike Design | Designer Daily | Bicycle Art | epedaler.com | designboom | ICBL | Bigfish Bikes | Bio Planet |
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USA Tech Guide | Future Wheelcheirs | The Gimp Parade | Roll a Ramp | Web Urbanist | Creativefan | Gizmodo | Wheelchairs Design |
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UV Light Sweden | Wild Wadi Dubai | Soviet-Era | De bus du futur | MIT to Florence | Transit Hub | Lemon Drop | Young Farmers |
SHARED |
SPACES AND FACILITIES | VEHICLES AND RIDES | |
Communication/Information/Transportation/Shelter Parkland/Sidewalks/Streets/Neighborhoods | Transport/Utility/Human-scale/"Wheelchairs" | |
Muscle-powered/Electric-assisted/Urban-friendly |
Images used in Sharing Umbrellas website links are the samples of possible development and they are not an official part of this undertaking. |
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Celebrating the Anniversaries of the 1939 and 1964 New York World's Fairs
By Steve Stollman at EV World http://evworld.com/focus.cfm?cid=29 |
This Anniversary Celebration of the two notable World's Fairs staged in New York City during the Springs and Summers of 1939-40 and 1964-65, intends to preserve the essential spirit of these events, the varieties of Cultural Expression, the marvels of Cutting-Edge Technology, the Fun, the Food, the Rides and all the rest. Taking place in 2014 and 2015, its focus will be on a bottom-up, modern and fully interactive interpretation of this classic exposition, while adding the novel notion of simultaneous mini-events, taking place at many diverse locations around the country and the world at the same time, instead of just in one place. As a prime focus, artists, craftspeople, designers, mechanics and engineers are being encouraged to begin immediately to fabricate the next generation's human-scale transportation system, the weather-protected bikes and wheelchairs that will fill our urban spaces. We will work to motivate individuals and small groups to begin this work, where they are and right away. In the Spring of 2014 we will invite them to bring their creations to the World's Fairgrounds in Queens New York, to show them off and exchange ideas with other participants. Meanwhile, they will have been working for a year to expose these ideas to their own communities while also exhibiting them on our website SharingUmbrellas.org. We will also be reaching out to individuals and institutions here to provide hospitality to visiting builders and transportation companies, to help get their vehicles here for the show. Another theme prominently featured will be Agriculture and Nutrition, with opportunities developed for city-dwellers to experience growing environments directly, by facilitating inexpensive travel to rural environments while also providing ethnically-rich and nutritious foodstuffs to all. The ultimate goal here is to habituate people to eating more consciously and healthfully, while also more greatly appreciating the range of tastes and preferences enjoyed by those with different backgrounds and influences. The third major subject category is the ways in which neighborhoods can become friendlier and more supportive of their own resources, both human and natural. We want to help answer the question: How can members of communities organize and express themselves more fully, in order to take more responsibility for their surroundings and have a greater influence over them? The last major area of interest here is in Cultural Expression and the diversity which characterizes our planet as expressed through music, dance, poetry and other distinctive ways of interpreting our lives. As well as seeking out opportunities for these expressions to take place during the event, in keeping with the traditions which have characterized events such as this historically, we intend to invite demonstrations of the role that technology does and can play, in helping us to enjoy these creative performances. The ordinary definition of a World's Fair is a collection of exhibits, put together by large corporations, industries and Governments, to impress the public with their grasp of the future and value to us in the present. Visitors are expected to congregate where huge, expensive but temporary pavilions have been constructed, to house elaborate exhibits. Spectators are expected to be dazzled and impressed with the importance of these enterprises and their products and take home souvenirs which will someday earn them a fortune on ebay. Despite the typical grand scale and the sense of remoteness that it sometimes invokes, the fact is that most attendees enjoy these spectacles enormously and never forget the impression that they made on them. Of course, now that TV (first demonstrated in NYC at the 1939 Fair) has rendered the most exotic the most commonplace, we need a re-working of this experience and a more inter-active approach. Communications and information are two fields that have developed extraordinarily in recent times, much of it through miniaturization and already have changed the way we live dramatically. Transportation, the next field to be revolutionized, and miniaturized, is a subject which has been overly influenced by the self-centered agendas of those in a position to benefit from maintaining the status quo. A car today is, in an urban environment, as absurd as a twenty pound cellphone. The President of the United States says our “Economy is built on innovation”. Around the world, many of the tasks we perform are done with archaic tools, oversized cars and trucks prominently among them. Intensive research into available alternatives is crucial. By creating conditions that permit us to more easily learn from one another, we are better able to use the benefits that are generated by this activity, while continuing to fuel our researches and making it easier to adapt our thinking and behavior to best utilize our new knowledge. The Chinese Politburo many years ago decided to favor funding road-building and car manufacturing over mass transit and more recently had even begun to ban bikes and electric bikes from some roads, until popular discontent forced them to reverse their stands. The wisdom of giving more attention to the needs of the majority of the population is clear but the means to accomplish this is less so. What is obvious to nearly all is the need to begin to conserve resources. The danger of simply following the example of the United States and the Western industrialized world, which defines progress as growth, is manifest, and traffic jams now plague every continent. Substituting quantity for quality in determining the nature of our economic success is causing enormous problems. In a world where hunger is still a serious problem, converting food into fuel for cars is only the most obvious example of our folly, but not the only one. We must figure out how to provide ourselves with the level of creature comfort that we are now accustomed to in our transportation system, without the enormous economic and environmental costs that this now entails. The most direct path to this end is human-scale and human-powered vehicles, with electric-assistance. They can provide the means for this conversion to take place, from industrial-scale vehicles, especially petroleum powered, which are inherently both dangerous as well as unsuitable for crowded urban environments. If the internal combustion engine had just been invented there is no way that we would have allowed it on our streets. Poison gas in any quantity is forbidden in indoor spaces, but so common that it is virtually invisible in our shared spaces. This insult to our health and well-being is only tolerable because it has been with us for so long. Those who benefit from its inherent hazards and inefficiencies spend enormous amounts of money to convince us otherwise. The real problem is the lack of suitable alternatives. There are not even wheelchairs (which could be another name for cars) or bikes, an essentially 19th century design, with umbrellas. Upgrading the least expensive modes of travel sufficiently to replace the outmoded ones we currently use will have an enormous influence on our surroundings. Multi-ton vehicles traveling at common speeds have an immense negative impact on our sense of peace and tranquility. While we now associate all of this hyper-activity with the energy of the urban experience, the noise alone is often so intrusive that you can not even carry on a normal conversation. It makes good sense to use the 1255 car-free acres of Flushing Meadows Corona Park, the World's Fairgrounds, to bring together a host of creative, ingenious and caring people, to take on this important challenge and demonstrate how it can be dealt with, to a vast local and global audience. |
Anniversary Celebration of the 1939-40 and 1964-65 New York
World's Fairs
All Summertime 2014 & 2015
WHAT:
Advanced Design Bikes, Boats and “Wheelchairs” to share and on exhibit,
and innovative visions of our human-powered future
Featured, along with more evolved human scale transportation, will be
improved nutritional options, creative uses of public space, healthier
recreational activities and fuller appreciation of the natural world
WHERE:
Flushing Meadows Corona Park, Queens, N.Y. and 1255 acres of car-free
public space, N.Y's World's Fairgrounds, & in localities around the
country & the world.
WHEN:
June through September 2014 and 2015, to
coincide with the 50th
and 75th
anniversaries of the 1939-40 and 1964-65 New York's World's Fairs.
WHO:
Though Queens is already home to the broadest assemblage of peoples,
speaking more different languages than anywhere in the world, it is the
intention of the organizers to involve local communities everywhere,
from 191 other countries, 49 other States, 61 other counties and 59 NYC
Community Boards, 360 venues, all, in effect, represented by their local
residents’ entries. Through the Internet and a focus on sustaining
localized activities, we will endeavor participation to be maximized
everywhere and thereby enable everyone who desires, whether here or in
their own community, to be involved.
2014-15 World's Fair Anniversary Celebration Exploratory
Committee: Kent
Barwick, Former Director of Municipal Art Society and NYS Council on the
Arts David Gurin,
Former Commissioner of Transportation, Toronto Canada Carlos
Pujol, CEO Cemusa, NYC Street Furniture Contractor Garrett Brown, Inventor of the Steadycam and Skycam James
Weisman, Legal Director of United Spinal Association Sherry
Huss, Director of The Maker Faire Jay Townley,
Consultant at American Bicycle Industry Wendy
Brawer, Founder of The Green Map Project Dr. Alan
Moore, Art Historian/Exhibit Organizer
John Dowlin, Publisher
Bicycle Network News
HOW:
Like Fairs of the past, the emphasis here will be on creativity,
expression, tolerance, education, technology and enjoyment. Unlike the
usual format, there will be no large and expensive pavilions meant to be
dismantled after the event. Instead of limiting participation to
large-scale organizations, it is the intent of the organizers to put the
focus here on the accomplishments of individuals and small groups of
people by demonstrating our ability to have a positive effect on our
common existences, to contribute to healthier and more active lives and
to reduce the harm we may, even unintentionally, cause each other.
Financing is always an issue and first of all, as befits an anniversary
celebration, we will invite all of the former exhibitors to be a part of
this event. We will ask them to provide as many small grants as they
can, to various deserving local efforts, to commemorate their previous
involvement. We are also inviting any other business or government unit
to do the same thing, to provide small amounts of money to individuals
and small groups within their communities to help them develop a project
which can be part of this event. The Organizing Committee, charged with
turning this idea into a reality, will be comprised primarily of
volunteers and will largely use their own resources and contributed
facilities to guarantee the success of this effort. We can further
encourage these developments by expediting access to travel, hospitality
and other needed support to visiting designers and builders, by
soliciting help, especially from those who hail from their home towns,
to help enable the broadest involvement possible.
While experienced professionals in various areas will be needed to help
guide this undertaking, it is our intention that, through the broad
participation of students and non-profit organizations we can keep costs
to a minimum. A detailed working plan and timeline will be developed
soon and distributed to all those aiding in this effort.
WHY:
As the place where the Flushing Remonstrance occurred, one of America's
earliest attempts to establish universal respect for the differences in
belief that exist, and the first home of the United Nations, there is no
location more suitable to building upon these efforts to venerate our
humanity. As in previous Fairs, appreciation of others from different
backgrounds, having a good time, experiencing evolving technologies and
exposure to varied forms of expression are central to the event.
What will be different about this version of a World's Fair will be a
vigorous effort to encourage direct involvement in these issues, to
maximize participation by individuals rather than institutions and an
emphasis on heightening appreciation of the potential for people of any
age or background to make significant contributions to our common
evolution, to engage their own creative energies in the service of
others. Applying ourselves to issues like nutrition and the use of
natural resources that concern all of us will enable participants from
everywhere to relate to these important questions and their resolution.
One subject that concerns us all is the production and provision of
healthy and nutritious food. This also involves the growth and gathering
of foodstuffs as well as improved guidance in the preparation and
consumption of life-preserving and life-enhancing nutrition. Being
exposed to comestibles from everywhere in the world gives us the
opportunity to improve and change our habits, to appreciate the lessons
learned from different cultures over time regarding the best ways of
appreciating our natural environment and its products, expanding our
tastes and improving our choices. We will encourage suppliers to focus
on healthier, more economical and therefore preferential foodstuffs.
Keeping in mind the effect of these choices on the health of our planet
is another important dimension. How we use our land is a factor in how
the future looks and must not be ignored.
While a number of subjects will receive significant attention here, we
recognize that important technological advances have made real
breakthroughs in lightweight transportation possible today and the
economic and environmental burdens of the current system are
considerable. This high-profile, prestigious showcase can serve to
motivate designers, builders and allied enterprises from everywhere to
bring new ideas forward, and into the real world quickly. Developing
variations on the common bicycle, to help bridge the gap between minimal
and maximal transport, is long overdue. We know that bicycles,
wheelchairs, artisanship and stress on shared resources are common
features in the lives of people from every corner of the world.
Using our combined ingenuity, creativity and experience, we can re-shape
how we get ourselves, and our goods, around, how we deploy our shared
resources and how we help influence others to understand their best
choices. If we do this in the process of enjoying pleasurable
experiences, there is hardly a better way to illustrate this potential
and its desirability. While the public is accustomed to regard
“educational” activity as possibly boring or tedious, here the opposite
is the case.
For instance, these machines, whether previously called “wheelchairs” or
“recumbent trikes”, can be used by everyone, if made well enough, not
just a special population. Making available colorful, easily-usable,
creative vehicles, new varieties of electric-assisted and human powered
transportation, regardless of former definition or category, can
completely remove the existing onus of using a “wheelchair”. The best
designed vehicles can enjoyably be used by the young, the old and
everybody in-between. These machines might well end up resembling each
other more than they look like their current versions. We can vault over
ancient and worn out categories into new and more relevant distinctions.
Is it weather–protected? Is it beautiful? Can you carry your friends on
it? Is it different than anything you have ever seen? Do you wish you
had made it? Can you use it when you want to and leave it conveniently
for somebody else to enjoy when you are finished?
Encouraging innovation and accelerating the healing process of the
planet is now job number one. There can be an infinite number of worthy
projects catalogued, described, shown in action. This resource will
begin by culling the best examples from existing databases. To help
bring attention to the importance of preserving our aquatic resources,
we can include a wide variety of boats, from radio controlled to
wind-propelled, scale models or full sized, which can look and work
beautifully on the quiet waters of what was once known as “Fountain
Lake”. Additionally, this lake can be utilized to exhibit artworks, some
in the form of boats, others launched for fun or art’s sake.
We will encourage new ideas, even if only in the form of a drawing, a
model or something that only the designer/builder rides, which can be
practically anything and may be used by other designer/builders only, in
a kind of exchange. If the public is going to be allowed to use it
within a confined space and protected environment, another, more strict
set of standards will have to be used. If it can be ridden away, to use
in the rest of the park, the most stringent requirements will exist. We
will employ a peer-review process, so that selection of participating
vehicles is as fair and high quality as possible and so that all parties
to this activity can have what amounts to a continuing ongoing forum so
they can contribute their ideas and concerns, and participate in the
process of addressing them.
Everybody needs green spaces, exercise and safe, non-destructive and
affordable ways to get around.
Providing some shelter, as little as a large “Umbrella” is essential in
making our public spaces fully habitable. This endeavor will also
encourage the design and construction of unique, beautiful and
interesting structures, to provide weather protection, especially to
public transit users. We will also encourage a process which will enable
local artists, craftspeople and others to formulate these structures for
their own neighborhoods and for those communities to have a hand in this
process.
We are dedicated to improving everyone’s ability to enjoy their shared
spaces, especially parks by preserving and enhancing their natural
beauty, while expanding accessibility to new, healthful, non-intrusive
activities. In the words of urban historian Lewis Mumford, the Godfather
of the 1939 New York World's Fair, “Year by year our cities grow more
complex and less fit for living. The Age of Rebuilding is here. We must
remold our old cities and build new communities better suited to our
needs”. |
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A World’s Fair Celebration for Everyone
Preserving the Most Important Classic Features of these Historic
Occasions:
International, Inclusive, Technology, Education, Fun, Rides, Shows and
Snacks
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Links: Local Expression | Light Wheels | Contact Steve Stollman: 212 431 0600 or Email |
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