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Riverside Info » About Riverside

91. chrisrobling
    Member

    Fascinating session last night. I urge all who are interested in planning to visit the CMAP website. It has several levels of aggregation about the regional plan, as well as listings of other sessions like last night, should you wish to participate.

    Regarding the regional 2040 plan, CMAP is seeking both individual and "group" input. Individual input takes place via the web and several kiosks that are moving around the region (don't wait for a kiosk, head for the web). The group input is an aggregation of the sessions like last night, in which groups come together, are led through the process by a facilitator, and make about eight or ten choices about public goods and, in one case, a private market. Those stated preferences are then portrayed to the session participants at the conclusion of their session. The same results are rolled up into CMAP's big magilla -- its regional preference database.

    They are out doing sessions like last night, which take at least two staffers but are helped by having three or more depending on size, to build the number of entries in the big database. Obviously, since the sessions are open to all, this element of their activity is grounded in the law of large numbers more than inferential statistics. They are probably doing a big survey with a statistically significant random sample (one would hope, an "oversample") as a validation, though I am not sure about that.

    As regards Riverside, the new technology for real-time preference presentation, in which participants are given a clicker to reply to multiple choice questions, is quite clearly applicable. I was delighted to see a Trustee there personally experiencing the method. He was enthusiastic. I think this approach to building a visual preference vocabulary for the town is the key to identifying areas of agreement and common purpose, around which we can build our responses to planning issues.

    If you missed it, you may want to go to another session. They are happening all over, so I am sure one will take place in Brookfield or LaGrange.

    Posted Friday Jul 17, 2009 09:25 #

92. spatny
    Member

    I had to leave early to fetch my frau, but it was clearly and interesting exercise. There is something nice about voting on a question with your little "sender" and seeing your vote, and those of others, tally. These things are quite sophisticated and if you make a mistake or change your mind they only record the last vote from your device. I couldn't help thinking what it would be like to see this type of response in action at a Board meeting.

    The idea that the six county area will have an additional 2.8 million people here by 2040 is quite daunting. With manufacturing fast disappearing one has to wonder what all these people will do for gainful employment - deliver pizzas and sell each other insurance? With mileage increasing and presumably less use of fuel somewhere down the road (pardon the pun) there will have to be new ways to raise revenues for the road building and public transportation and inner suburb rehabilitation that people seem to want. With an aging population requiring more services, health and otherwise, and fewer people working at good jobs to pay for them, what happens. I think I may be part of the last generation that will not be hunted down by the younger ones who will be saddled to pay for them.

    We've messed with nature's life cycle and now we will have to straighten it out before it strangles us. And of course, this is worse in most places in the world. The BBC has been doing a comparative study of populations in developed countries and it seems that without immigration of young, lower end workers from other areas, Europe is on the brink of disaster. Probably, if one looks at the facts, there are simply too many people on earth, consuming and wasting too much, to be sustainable. This sounds like anathema nowto those unaffected, but wait twenty years and see what the next generation in power thinks. There are big changes coming... more than just Chinese automobiles on Lake Shore Drive. (What's a Geely, you ask.) You'll find out in about three years.

    Posted Friday Jul 17, 2009 10:33 #

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