Monthly Archives

January 2011

NeighborhoodUrban
January 28, 2011

Transit Oriented Development

This video encapsulates almost everything i'm trying to achieve on re:kuwait in terms of transit oriented development and more walkable neighborhoods. It shows in a very concise and simple way how we can create the sort of neighborhoods that I describe in posts such as…
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January 28, 2011

Faith in Accountability

Money has no real value. We use it to exchange goods and services only because we all have faith in what we collectively agree to be its worth. If we lose that faith, money is worthless. I think a similar sort of faith exists in…
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Metro
January 27, 2011

Metro Worry

A mass transit system can potentially be a very valuable investment, but the success is dependent on dense development near the stations. A line along the 6th ring road wouldn't be very efficient because there's no real density there. In order for it to be effective,…
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Other
January 24, 2011

Kuwait 2030: Traffic Sanity

For males in Kuwait, traffic accidents are the second leading cause of death (after heart disease) with about 40 deaths per 100,000. For women, the number is much less at 8 deaths per 100,000. Something is very wrong with that number and it scares the hell…
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January 23, 2011

Kuwait 2030: Merit Pay

I think we need a way to better reward good teachers. Right now, there's a sort of secondary market where the best teachers are getting paid really well privately tutoring wealthy students. That's not fair because the energy and attention of the teacher is usually…
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Energy
January 22, 2011

Kuwait 2030: Solar City

I'm going to start a series of posts called Kuwait 2030 where I will outline  some ideas about where I would like Kuwait to be in twenty years. I'm going to outline each idea and then some realistic steps on how to achieve the goal.…
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Other
January 18, 2011

Collaborative Consumption

A beautiful presentation by Rachel Botsman about the rise of collaborative consumption and how technology is bringing us back to the ideas of sharing and trust. She covers the same ground as Clay Shirky and others but the presentation is too good to pass up.…
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Energy
January 18, 2011

A 1000KD Gift is a Terrible Idea

As if to prove my point, this 1000KD 'gift' is a perfect example of short sighted gimmickry. People don't want to think about how it will cause accelerated inflation, how most of the money will be spent outside Kuwait and what it means when Kuwaitis think of this as…
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January 10, 2011

Sacrifice

I have a few thoughts in response to an interesting article in the Arab Times by Amer Al-Hilal. I don't think it's generally productive to lament gridlock and hope for progress. Kuwait has major structural problems, but those can be fixed if we can identify…
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NeighborhoodUrban
January 9, 2011

Qortuba Opportunity

There's an strange place in Qortuba, Block 1. It's a sort of dead space that came as a result of awkward road planning. The space is mostly asphalt now, and has a small two level shopping block and a mosque. The houses adjacent to it…
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