New Project: MySociety Travel Time Maps

Interactive maps of travel time and housing prices in London MySociety, an NGO which builds websites that give people simple, tangible benefits in the civic and community aspects of their lives, came to Stamen with a remit to explore two fascinating datasets: median prices of homes throughout London, and the time it takes to travel from one place to another throughout the city. Travel times from the Department of Transport Both of these datasets are fairly well understood, if not widely available for public consumption in graphic format. We thought that we could add the most value to people's experience of this material if we did two things: provided an exploratory (as opposed to search-based) way to navigate, and also combined the information into a set of interactive pieces that let you explore the various parameters on your own. For example, you may have decided you want to spend £200k on a house, and live within 1/2 hour of your work, and it's simple enough to search for that information. But what if the results that come back aren't quite to your liking, and you can't find a neighborhood that meets those parameters? Normally, you'd have to go back to the beginning, twiddle your search terms one way or the other, and start again. Travel times from the Olympic Stadium By introducing a set of sliders which control travel time as well as median house price displays, we can let you explore the data on your own terms. If you're willing to pay a bit more to live a little closer to work, for example, you can quickly adjust the sliders to reflect those choices, without having to go back to the beginning and start searching all over again. We think this way of interacting with information—exploring as opposed to searching—has alot to recommend it as more and more data moves onto our screens and into our lives.

To entice buyers to spend $1 million for one-bedroom apartments on the less glossy eastern edge of the Upper East Side, the builders of a shimmering glass tower going up at 91st Street and First Avenue advertise customized stone countertops, a private fitness center, "expansive sunrise and sunset views" - and the Second Avenue subway.

Now that construction crews have started work on the Second Avenue line after decades of delays, bullish real estate brokers and nervous neighborhood tenants alike expect New York's first new subway in 50 years to join the market forces that are driving Park Avenue-style prices farther east and replacing quirky Hungarian shops with high-end chain stores.

Ending commuters' long walk west to the Lexington Avenue subway will bring new cachet to addresses on Second Avenue and eastward - or at least that's what developers and real estate brokers are betting. Among them are the builders at 91st and First, who point to the subway's expected opening in 2014 and boldly declare that their tower, christened the Azure, stands at "the heart of the Upper East Side."

NATIONAL PERSPECTIVES; No Parking: Condos Leave Out Cars
By LINDA BAKER
Published: November 12, 2006

ANNEMIEKE CLARK and her boyfriend, Daniel Pasley, do not spend a lot of time driving. Ms. Clark, a 29-year-old nursing student at Oregon Health and Science University, takes the bus to school. Her boyfriend is a ''crazy bike rider,'' she said.

So when they decided to buy their first home last winter, they chose a one-bedroom unit in the Civic, one of the first new developments in Portland to market condominiums without parking spaces.

Ms. Clark said they bought the $175,000 condo, which will be ready next summer, because ''it was absolutely the cheapest one selling.'' Mr. Pasley also hoped a unit without parking would inspire Ms. Clark to sell her 1992 Subaru.

''So, part of it was idealism -- that we would get rid of the car,'' Ms. Clark said.

Although condominiums without parking are common in Manhattan and the downtowns of a few other East Coast cities, they are the exception to the rule in most of the country. In fact, almost all local governments require developers to provide a minimum number of parking spaces for each unit -- and to fold the cost of the space into the housing price.