Grassroots Blockchain for Growth & Transport
With no space to sprawl, the Greater Toronto Area's populace grows 4 million in 30 years, bringing total population to about 11 million by 2050. Today, there's less than 10 years of developable land left in the GTA. And yet, with no time to waste, band-aid thinking remains fixated on new jobs going to the GTA with workers commuting to dormitory towns and cities -and provincial taxpayers forever funding new freeways within a confined GTA. The best way to confront urban sprawl is to promote compact and pleasant small towns.
DAO) was created a by a group of developers to automate decision-making. A blockchain Decentralized Autonomous Organisation would help curb explosive GTA growth: Members buy tokens to get a share in operations and to support DAO governance. Blockchain stores and secures documents of planning, development and IP, plus a Web portal for collaboration. That's the new way of working -not playing lone wolf.
See https://cardano.org/ • Share outlining/promoting a Southern Georgian Bay (SGB) freeway requires the energy, ideas (and blockchain skills) of graduates including active and retired professionals. Measures to protect and sustain our biosphere, jobs and quality of life in the GTA and across the counties north of the Green Belt takes collaboration on a grand scale. Proposals for a northern extension of Ontario’s freeway system plus new population centers were first sent to local and provincial politicians 15 years ago. We still await Ministry of Transportation's move to get a plan for new cities on a northern 519 freeway on their 5-year rolling transportation plan. Londont: April 2006 and 2018 followup.
1. Promoted is a multimodal freeway Right of Way from the 402 near Strathroy, north towards Walkerton, and then east to the 400 south of Barrie. With a wide corridor secured, construction can be staged over decades as an initial 2-laner and then built out to full freeway standard as mid-century needs dictate.
2. Making the freeway and associated new cities proposal visible to stakeholders and to local and provincial politicians is daunting.
3. Assessment of chaotic impacts of GTA congestion and rural disconnects across Southern Georgian Bay counties have to be part of freeway planning.
4. Ideally, rural and urban stakeholders raise issues, debate and reach consensus before top level provincial deliberation kicks in. Grassroots Blockchain is the vehicle to set the stage for planning new cities along a new freeway. For Ontario, the key to attracing and retaining industries is a combination of improved transportation corridors, transition to new energy technology and new leadership.
5. Resisting the impulse to map alternate routes is wise; let’s leave that to Ontario’s Ministry of Transportation.
6. Collaborative leadership in the counties, towns and cities is a must given extent of disinterest, turf wars and a variety of egos.
7. With GTA densification and sprawl nearing geographic and livable limits, planning new employment centers well before onset of mid-century chaos is urgent.
8. A 30-yr approach eases GTA congestion, while enabling healthy economic and population growth across the counties.
9. Rural economic revival stalls and quality of GTA life worsens unless a compelling northern solution goes to Counties, Cities and Queen’s Park.
10. The notion of a bullet train from Quebec to Michigan sits on a rail siding pending 22nd Century population density -and affordability of levitation and tunneling.
The mature commercial blockchain is a system of blocks storing transaction data between parties. As a multiple-copy database managed by users, it can’t be manipulated on a single computer or server. Diversity of stakeholders with blockchain familiarty and some “skin in the game” influence business ROI through assets and reputation. These commercial portals minimize forgery, whether by businesses or consumers.
A regional growth/transport "decision-support" system based on a cryptographic ledger (without central control) can be structured to help resolve the rural/urban/political impasse. Push innovation acceptance by universities, businesses and engineering associations -and ultimately by smart voters -and the resulting political leadership. Required are 3 or 4 corporate sponsors plus visionary political champions. The initial goal of grassroots intervention: Core members modify a blockchain platform to deliver the ultimate Mission Statement.
Given the maturity of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), the remedy for most of the 10 points lies with a futureistic GTA/SGB region-wide blockchain strategy. This is the vehicle to kick-start planning new cities along a new freeway.
The 1970 Visa re-structure is precursor to the current blockchain proposal of a more modest regional growth and transportation one. Before recruiting core members for a grassroots SGB/GTA organization, let’s see what we can learn from a frontiersin.org report on Saving the Planet: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2020.00033/full http://neuenergy.blogspot.com/2019/05/dee-hock-on-chordic-organizations.html See Sweeney’s synopsis of the lengthy 2020 blockchain proposal for solving global environmental problems. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2020.00033/full Here's frontiersin's approach to minimual administration for Saving the Planet:
Where daily oversight is not tied to contracts and pressures of co-located colleagues, wide-ranging participants must deliver at highest efficiency. “Wisdom of the crowd” shows this is best obtained by a self-organized diversity of stakeholders.
In absence of government direction, citizens provide input for infrastructure projects. It's kick-started by pitching an idea rooted in a simplified model gathering data, applying problem-solving skills and requesting funding. An outside panel of experts consults on the opportunity, implementation plan and requested resources. Later steps involve validation by another panel of vetted investors. Upon their positive report, the team carries out the project, and publishes or proceeds to market.
In science and academia, defects are addressed by peers whoes reputation is based on the amount of funding raised, the number of publications, their citations and weighting according to the “Hirsch Index.” Similar metrics are used as a coarse measure of “best practice.”
A collaborative platform shares information and protocols for technical and scientific work. The potential for crowdsourcing is stimulated by making “things” with 3D printing and Fab Labs (Fab Labs, 2020) as well as cloud services for volunteer data.
Software vulnerability via downloading from insecure, fake sources and email attachments are security issues. Handling highly sensitive data such as passwords is discouraged.
Blockchain has already mastered market projects: blockchain’s Hyperledger, 2020; R3’s Corda, 2020). Grassroots projects by loosely organized regional and global communities are implemented through cryptographically secured public-private key and file distribution schemes. Trust in commercial blockchains relies on crowd-based mechanisms referred to as proof-of-work or proof-of-stake. Several blockchain portals support scientific publishing (ARTiFACTS, 2020; Bloxberg, 2020) and Deip.world, 2020).
Vetting by experts helps self-organize, fundraise, monitor and govern borderless projects. Community engagement addresses complex challenges of sustaining global biospheres.
Poor internal governance causes setbacks on some projects. Blockchain has already suffered the hack of “TheDAO,” the biggest crowdfunded project of its time, having raised over $150 million from more than 10,000 supporters. Since then, improvements in smart contracts have enabled larger projects. (Rooney, 2018; Block.one, 2020).
Given the diversity of members and their contributions, governance protocols ensure equitable distribution of value and mitigation of opportunism.
Newer blockchain networks, such as Telos (2020b), implement easily upgradable smart contracts (Telos, 2020a,c). Members hold each other accountable through “voting out” by token holders.
Poor understanding poses roadblocks. Experienced blockchain users contribute valuable leverage. Compared to the Internet of the early 1990s (with its confluence of the WWW, HTML, ICT infrastructure and affordable hardware), shows multifaceted projects can be initiated and led by organized communities.
Governments shun funding and implementing measures to shield the global biosphere from climate change since risky projects jeopardize re-election. Still, there are important developments in government-sanctioned blockchains, e.g., in Germany (Bundesblock Bundesverband, 2020; Huillet, 2020). Tamper-proof ledgers and smart contracts as well as formal reputation schemes and governance endow transparency and trust.
Acquisition and validation of crowdsourced data followed by decision making supported by a diverse group (who put reputations and assets on the line) provide credible assessment and direction. These for-profit systems are fueled by crypto-assets.
A large scale mechanism driven by shared-interest groups, rather than government is necesssary. Dispersed communities, a unified approach to design and protocols across geo and digital environments are enabling. Creation of efficient and transparent Commons projects also provide vehicles for crowdfunding from individuals and grants from charities and organizations.
Projects organized by communities using distributed ledgers, contracts and governance are encouraged by frontierdsin. So much for grassroot's schemes for Saving the Planet!
Also relevant are bottom-up organized measures in health management: pandemics (McVeigh, 2019), life-style related diseases (Sharma and Majumdar, 2009; Tabish, 2017)], financial crises (Nakamoto, 2009; Fricke, 2017), education (McBurnie, 2006), fair trade (Thompson, 2019), food and animal welfare (The Humane Society of the United States [HSUS], 2020), natural [e.g., earthquakes (Xu and Lu, 2018), tsunamis (International Tsunami Information Center [ITIC], 2020), asteroids (Center for Near Earth Object Studies [CNEOS], 2020)], and nuclear power (Diamond, 1986; MIT Technology Review, 2015; Nuttall et al., 2017), wildfires (Givetash, 2019), monoculture (Liu et al., 2018), microplastics in food chain (Toussaint , 2019)] disasters where question is “when,” rather than “if.”
Sweeney’s advocacy/awarenes efforts wind down with appeals to local universities and civil engineering consortium to run with the Blockchain Growth/Transportation project. With the "unprecedented" beoming the norm, Mayors, Wardens, Stakeholders -and Politicians have to instill long-term resiliency in transportation planning and implementation. As distributed solutions begin to empower communities, blockchain tends to shift some value from shareholders to stakeholders.
The Smart Growth Planning Act was eclipsed by the limited Places to Grow Act. Now we try to introduce a visionary growth structure; one that establishes protocols for MZOs Ministerial Zoning Orders, levels the planning field across the Counties -and protects what's left of prime agricultural land in the south. Indeed, there are rivers to cross and bridges to build. Grassroots Decision Support to the rescue.
Einstein said, "Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them." For graduates and retirees, researching and steering solutions to intractable problems gives purpose and structure to life-long learning -and to work that matters. Where's that can-do and will-do spirit? All it takes is Blockchain expertese, leadership and superb online collaboration./b>
Let's release pentup/locked-down knowledge and deliver a formal Grassroots Decision Support vehicle:
1. Make case for worthy project. 2. Assemble a quality A-1 team. 3. Collaborate in defining goal. 4. Sript the mission statement. 5. Source Grassroots platform. 6. Use highest-leveraged approach. 7. Define Decision-Support (D-S) deliverables. 8. Mobilize Farmer, Rural Commercial and Universitiy Associations. 9. Move fast. Capitalize on pandemic slack time. 10 Hand D-S report to MOT to assist timely freeway phase-in.
Much thanks goes to Frontiersin authors: ME provided input on various blockchain technologies and concepts. MG advised on specific blockchain concepts. SB coordinated the Blockchain for Science community from which various concepts entered the manuscript. RW advised on blockchain technologies and networks. TH contributed to business and management aspects.
Conflict of Interest: ME was employed at Akasha Foundation. SB was sole proprietor and owner of Blockchain for Science GmbH. MG was sole proprietor and owner of Digital Scarcity LLC. Remaining authors declare the research was without any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
References: 23andMe (2020). 23 and Me. Available online at: https://www.23andme.com/ (accessed July 24, 2020). Google Scholar Anchor (2020). Stablecoin Offering Users Long-Term Price Stability and Protection from Inflation, while Hedging Against Daily Market Volatility. Available online at: https://theanchor.io/ (accessed July 24, 2020). Aragon (2020). Available online at: https://aragon.org/ (accessed July 24, 2020). ARTiFACTS (2020). Researcher Recognition Accelerated. Available online at: https://artifacts.ai/ (accessed July 24, 2020). Augur (2020). Augur - Put Your Skills to the Test and WIN!. Available online at: https://www.augur.net/ (accessed July 24, 2020). Balagurusamy, V. S. K., Cabral, C., Coomaraswamy, S., Delamarche, E., Dillenberger, D. N., Dittmann, G., et al. (2019). Crypto anchors. IBM J. Res. Dev. 63:12. doi: 10.1147/jrd.2019.2900651 Baldwin, M. (2018). Scientific Autonomy, Public Accountability, and the Rise of “Peer Review” in the Cold War United States. Isis 109, 538–558. doi: 10.1086/700070 For full list of references, go to the source report.
Learn More: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/11435/research-directions-in-blockchain-2020
Ps 1 https://themetrorailguy.com/bmc-mumbai-coastal-road-information-route-status/
DAO) was created a by a group of developers to automate decision-making. A blockchain Decentralized Autonomous Organisation would help curb explosive GTA growth: Members buy tokens to get a share in operations and to support DAO governance. Blockchain stores and secures documents of planning, development and IP, plus a Web portal for collaboration. That's the new way of working -not playing lone wolf.
See https://cardano.org/ • Share outlining/promoting a Southern Georgian Bay (SGB) freeway requires the energy, ideas (and blockchain skills) of graduates including active and retired professionals. Measures to protect and sustain our biosphere, jobs and quality of life in the GTA and across the counties north of the Green Belt takes collaboration on a grand scale. Proposals for a northern extension of Ontario’s freeway system plus new population centers were first sent to local and provincial politicians 15 years ago. We still await Ministry of Transportation's move to get a plan for new cities on a northern 519 freeway on their 5-year rolling transportation plan. Londont: April 2006 and 2018 followup.
1. Promoted is a multimodal freeway Right of Way from the 402 near Strathroy, north towards Walkerton, and then east to the 400 south of Barrie. With a wide corridor secured, construction can be staged over decades as an initial 2-laner and then built out to full freeway standard as mid-century needs dictate.
2. Making the freeway and associated new cities proposal visible to stakeholders and to local and provincial politicians is daunting.
3. Assessment of chaotic impacts of GTA congestion and rural disconnects across Southern Georgian Bay counties have to be part of freeway planning.
4. Ideally, rural and urban stakeholders raise issues, debate and reach consensus before top level provincial deliberation kicks in. Grassroots Blockchain is the vehicle to set the stage for planning new cities along a new freeway. For Ontario, the key to attracing and retaining industries is a combination of improved transportation corridors, transition to new energy technology and new leadership.
5. Resisting the impulse to map alternate routes is wise; let’s leave that to Ontario’s Ministry of Transportation.
6. Collaborative leadership in the counties, towns and cities is a must given extent of disinterest, turf wars and a variety of egos.
7. With GTA densification and sprawl nearing geographic and livable limits, planning new employment centers well before onset of mid-century chaos is urgent.
8. A 30-yr approach eases GTA congestion, while enabling healthy economic and population growth across the counties.
9. Rural economic revival stalls and quality of GTA life worsens unless a compelling northern solution goes to Counties, Cities and Queen’s Park.
10. The notion of a bullet train from Quebec to Michigan sits on a rail siding pending 22nd Century population density -and affordability of levitation and tunneling.
The mature commercial blockchain is a system of blocks storing transaction data between parties. As a multiple-copy database managed by users, it can’t be manipulated on a single computer or server. Diversity of stakeholders with blockchain familiarty and some “skin in the game” influence business ROI through assets and reputation. These commercial portals minimize forgery, whether by businesses or consumers.
A regional growth/transport "decision-support" system based on a cryptographic ledger (without central control) can be structured to help resolve the rural/urban/political impasse. Push innovation acceptance by universities, businesses and engineering associations -and ultimately by smart voters -and the resulting political leadership. Required are 3 or 4 corporate sponsors plus visionary political champions. The initial goal of grassroots intervention: Core members modify a blockchain platform to deliver the ultimate Mission Statement.
Given the maturity of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), the remedy for most of the 10 points lies with a futureistic GTA/SGB region-wide blockchain strategy. This is the vehicle to kick-start planning new cities along a new freeway.
The 1970 Visa re-structure is precursor to the current blockchain proposal of a more modest regional growth and transportation one. Before recruiting core members for a grassroots SGB/GTA organization, let’s see what we can learn from a frontiersin.org report on Saving the Planet: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2020.00033/full http://neuenergy.blogspot.com/2019/05/dee-hock-on-chordic-organizations.html See Sweeney’s synopsis of the lengthy 2020 blockchain proposal for solving global environmental problems. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2020.00033/full Here's frontiersin's approach to minimual administration for Saving the Planet:
Where daily oversight is not tied to contracts and pressures of co-located colleagues, wide-ranging participants must deliver at highest efficiency. “Wisdom of the crowd” shows this is best obtained by a self-organized diversity of stakeholders.
In absence of government direction, citizens provide input for infrastructure projects. It's kick-started by pitching an idea rooted in a simplified model gathering data, applying problem-solving skills and requesting funding. An outside panel of experts consults on the opportunity, implementation plan and requested resources. Later steps involve validation by another panel of vetted investors. Upon their positive report, the team carries out the project, and publishes or proceeds to market.
In science and academia, defects are addressed by peers whoes reputation is based on the amount of funding raised, the number of publications, their citations and weighting according to the “Hirsch Index.” Similar metrics are used as a coarse measure of “best practice.”
A collaborative platform shares information and protocols for technical and scientific work. The potential for crowdsourcing is stimulated by making “things” with 3D printing and Fab Labs (Fab Labs, 2020) as well as cloud services for volunteer data.
Software vulnerability via downloading from insecure, fake sources and email attachments are security issues. Handling highly sensitive data such as passwords is discouraged.
Blockchain has already mastered market projects: blockchain’s Hyperledger, 2020; R3’s Corda, 2020). Grassroots projects by loosely organized regional and global communities are implemented through cryptographically secured public-private key and file distribution schemes. Trust in commercial blockchains relies on crowd-based mechanisms referred to as proof-of-work or proof-of-stake. Several blockchain portals support scientific publishing (ARTiFACTS, 2020; Bloxberg, 2020) and Deip.world, 2020).
Vetting by experts helps self-organize, fundraise, monitor and govern borderless projects. Community engagement addresses complex challenges of sustaining global biospheres.
Poor internal governance causes setbacks on some projects. Blockchain has already suffered the hack of “TheDAO,” the biggest crowdfunded project of its time, having raised over $150 million from more than 10,000 supporters. Since then, improvements in smart contracts have enabled larger projects. (Rooney, 2018; Block.one, 2020).
Given the diversity of members and their contributions, governance protocols ensure equitable distribution of value and mitigation of opportunism.
Newer blockchain networks, such as Telos (2020b), implement easily upgradable smart contracts (Telos, 2020a,c). Members hold each other accountable through “voting out” by token holders.
Poor understanding poses roadblocks. Experienced blockchain users contribute valuable leverage. Compared to the Internet of the early 1990s (with its confluence of the WWW, HTML, ICT infrastructure and affordable hardware), shows multifaceted projects can be initiated and led by organized communities.
Governments shun funding and implementing measures to shield the global biosphere from climate change since risky projects jeopardize re-election. Still, there are important developments in government-sanctioned blockchains, e.g., in Germany (Bundesblock Bundesverband, 2020; Huillet, 2020). Tamper-proof ledgers and smart contracts as well as formal reputation schemes and governance endow transparency and trust.
Acquisition and validation of crowdsourced data followed by decision making supported by a diverse group (who put reputations and assets on the line) provide credible assessment and direction. These for-profit systems are fueled by crypto-assets.
A large scale mechanism driven by shared-interest groups, rather than government is necesssary. Dispersed communities, a unified approach to design and protocols across geo and digital environments are enabling. Creation of efficient and transparent Commons projects also provide vehicles for crowdfunding from individuals and grants from charities and organizations.
Projects organized by communities using distributed ledgers, contracts and governance are encouraged by frontierdsin. So much for grassroot's schemes for Saving the Planet!
Also relevant are bottom-up organized measures in health management: pandemics (McVeigh, 2019), life-style related diseases (Sharma and Majumdar, 2009; Tabish, 2017)], financial crises (Nakamoto, 2009; Fricke, 2017), education (McBurnie, 2006), fair trade (Thompson, 2019), food and animal welfare (The Humane Society of the United States [HSUS], 2020), natural [e.g., earthquakes (Xu and Lu, 2018), tsunamis (International Tsunami Information Center [ITIC], 2020), asteroids (Center for Near Earth Object Studies [CNEOS], 2020)], and nuclear power (Diamond, 1986; MIT Technology Review, 2015; Nuttall et al., 2017), wildfires (Givetash, 2019), monoculture (Liu et al., 2018), microplastics in food chain (Toussaint , 2019)] disasters where question is “when,” rather than “if.”
Sweeney’s advocacy/awarenes efforts wind down with appeals to local universities and civil engineering consortium to run with the Blockchain Growth/Transportation project. With the "unprecedented" beoming the norm, Mayors, Wardens, Stakeholders -and Politicians have to instill long-term resiliency in transportation planning and implementation. As distributed solutions begin to empower communities, blockchain tends to shift some value from shareholders to stakeholders.
The Smart Growth Planning Act was eclipsed by the limited Places to Grow Act. Now we try to introduce a visionary growth structure; one that establishes protocols for MZOs Ministerial Zoning Orders, levels the planning field across the Counties -and protects what's left of prime agricultural land in the south. Indeed, there are rivers to cross and bridges to build. Grassroots Decision Support to the rescue.
Einstein said, "Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them." For graduates and retirees, researching and steering solutions to intractable problems gives purpose and structure to life-long learning -and to work that matters. Where's that can-do and will-do spirit? All it takes is Blockchain expertese, leadership and superb online collaboration./b>
Let's release pentup/locked-down knowledge and deliver a formal Grassroots Decision Support vehicle:
1. Make case for worthy project. 2. Assemble a quality A-1 team. 3. Collaborate in defining goal. 4. Sript the mission statement. 5. Source Grassroots platform. 6. Use highest-leveraged approach. 7. Define Decision-Support (D-S) deliverables. 8. Mobilize Farmer, Rural Commercial and Universitiy Associations. 9. Move fast. Capitalize on pandemic slack time. 10 Hand D-S report to MOT to assist timely freeway phase-in.
Much thanks goes to Frontiersin authors: ME provided input on various blockchain technologies and concepts. MG advised on specific blockchain concepts. SB coordinated the Blockchain for Science community from which various concepts entered the manuscript. RW advised on blockchain technologies and networks. TH contributed to business and management aspects.
Conflict of Interest: ME was employed at Akasha Foundation. SB was sole proprietor and owner of Blockchain for Science GmbH. MG was sole proprietor and owner of Digital Scarcity LLC. Remaining authors declare the research was without any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
References: 23andMe (2020). 23 and Me. Available online at: https://www.23andme.com/ (accessed July 24, 2020). Google Scholar Anchor (2020). Stablecoin Offering Users Long-Term Price Stability and Protection from Inflation, while Hedging Against Daily Market Volatility. Available online at: https://theanchor.io/ (accessed July 24, 2020). Aragon (2020). Available online at: https://aragon.org/ (accessed July 24, 2020). ARTiFACTS (2020). Researcher Recognition Accelerated. Available online at: https://artifacts.ai/ (accessed July 24, 2020). Augur (2020). Augur - Put Your Skills to the Test and WIN!. Available online at: https://www.augur.net/ (accessed July 24, 2020). Balagurusamy, V. S. K., Cabral, C., Coomaraswamy, S., Delamarche, E., Dillenberger, D. N., Dittmann, G., et al. (2019). Crypto anchors. IBM J. Res. Dev. 63:12. doi: 10.1147/jrd.2019.2900651 Baldwin, M. (2018). Scientific Autonomy, Public Accountability, and the Rise of “Peer Review” in the Cold War United States. Isis 109, 538–558. doi: 10.1086/700070 For full list of references, go to the source report.
Learn More: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/11435/research-directions-in-blockchain-2020
Ps 1 https://themetrorailguy.com/bmc-mumbai-coastal-road-information-route-status/
Great article, I like how you laid out a multi year plan.
ReplyDeleteI think the rural areas between London - Chatham, London - Sarnia, and most importantly London - Owen Sound need better, easier to navage, and safer highways/means of transportation (Rail - CN, VIA).
The purpose being to increase local commerce in south western Ontario, and to attract new residence to rural areas of the Provence. Doing so draws Ontario newcomers away from the existing urban city centers, essentially making rural areas of the Province more accessible and profitable for business will create new urban centers and cities decreasing the swell of major existing cities (which I agree is unsustainable).
Great web link showing current and proposed MTO Highway and Bridge projects:
https://www.ontario.ca/page/ontarios-highway-programs