As most cities are reducing the number of meters needed to manage parking spaces, the opportunity for municipalities to create new revenue streams is being overlooked.As I had sketch out in my thesis project iLink (2003) the parking meter's function can be extended to serve as the device that not only parses physical space as it has done since its adoption, but the new opportunity is for the same device to parse the virtual spaces of our new digital world and to serve as an infrastructure node of a free wireless network within city environments.
USA Today Article: Smart Parking Meters
NYTimes Article: Broadband Expansion
1 comment:
You're absolutely right that parking meters offer a great chance for the city to interact with the people. The new generation of meters have the technical capabilities, we just need designers to observe, understand and articulate the human needs.
Check out the new funcationalities in some of the newer products:
http://www.cash-handling-systems.com/VendingProducts.html
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