In the city’s never-ending battle between bicyclists, pedestrians and automobiles, The Planning Collective wants to offer a reason for truce.

As Philebrity posted yesterday, The Planning Collective isn’t some official city organization, but a group of seven Penn grads that think the city could make better use of its space, especially vacant lots.

The for-profit company’s latest effort is to make the 12th and Morris intersection with Passyunk avenue into a pedestrian plaza. And they plan on doing it with funding from Pepsi through its Refresh project (vote here).

The Refresh Project is the soft drink company’s campaign to have customers vote on projects that help “refresh their community.” For a proposal to be awarded the cash, it in the top ten of its category at the end of the month. The Planning Collective is gunning to be eligible for the $50,000 grant for May.

“We are committed to changing the way things happen in Philadelphia,” says Clint Randall, one of the company’s co-founders. “We wanted to plan projects that were a little out of the box.”

If it wins the grant, the group plans on creating a pedestrian-friendly area that makes use of the awkward space created by the diagonal intersection of Passyunk Avenue, much like what the 67th Ward did with Madison Square Park and plans to do with 34th street.

So far, The Planning Collective has reached out to neighborhood groups to elicit feedback, and the city has offered to donate in-kind services if the $50,000 comes through. The grant would only have to pay for supplies and the city would help with the labor and instillation.

“It won’t be successful if the people that live and work in that area are not engaged and interested,” he says. “So far, though feedback has been great.”

The project would be the first for the year-old old company that, so far, has been paying the bills by creating geocoded maps and plans for economic development groups and groups like Penn Praxis. But if the project receives enough votes, the company hopes that it will be the pilot project for other, more creative city planning ideas.

“We see a lot of positive moment for the city,” he says. “[Philadelphia] is finally taking some great steps to make it easier to build real estate and do business here.”

See an interview with Amanda Wagner and Julie Thompson recorded by PlanPhilly:

Update: Added blogger interview.

Let the record show that Technically Philly has two immediate reactions to MidtownLunch.com, the blog that aims to showcase cool places to eat during your lunch break for under 10 bucks:

1. Wonderful idea, a man can only go to Wawa so many times for lunch.
2. “Midtown?” C’mon now.

The site, originating from The 67th Ward, first expanded to downtown Manhatten and on January 13th expanded to Philly. The site is popular among Manhatten-ites, even landing coverage in The New York Times . According to Compete.com data, Midtown Lunch’s traffic (which is presumably is mostly due to its NYC content) is more than most of its new Philly competition, even the ones with an established presence in The 67th Ward.

The site author, Jamie (she prefers not to give her last name) is from Flushing and has taken the trip down the turnpike to go to law school (though she won’t disclose which one).

“I just really dislike going to generic [lunch] places,” she said in a phone interview with Technically Philly.

Jamie did her undergrad in the state and said she was always visiting friends in the city while at college. She maintained her own food blog and was profiled by Midtown Lunch before becoming the site’s Philly writer. She said hopes to make Midtown Lunch an outlet where people can find a “more fun lunch for people that work in the city for under ten dollars.”

But will the site’s Philadelphia section catch on here, where food blogs are as abundant as Phillies hats?

We explore using the same +/- rating system that the site uses in reviewing restaurants:

Jamie, the site's Philadelphia author.

THE (+), (what someone who likes the restaurant blog would say):

• The city’s growing reputation as a “restaurant town” leaves us all with dozens of options for eating lunch.
• The site places a cap of $10 when profiling a new lunch stop. We all know that 10 New York dollars is like 18 Philly dollars.
• Midtown Lunch has a strict “no salads” policy.
• Jamie, the Philadelphia author, has just moved to Philly, so we all get a fresh perspective on the city.
• They didn’t go right for the cheesesteak debate.

THE (-), (what someone who does not likes the restaurant blog would say):

• Despite the efforts of Midtown Village, there is no “Midtown” in Philadelphia. Perhaps a separately branded “Center City Eats” would have been the better option here.
• Site founder Zach Brooks has since pulled a Chris Krewson and moved to LA, so he is not even on the same coast anymore.
• Brooks has confessed: “I don’t know nothing about Philly, except you should eat a pork and rabe sandwich at least 3 times a week.”
• First the NYC took the World Series, now they want our food blogosphere?
• Jamie, the Philadelphia author, is not a Mets fan. Or a Yankees fan. She said the only sport she follows is competitive eating. “I’d rather see people taking part in pure American gluttony,” she said.

Every Monday, Technically Not Tech will feature people, projects, and businesses that are involved with Philly’s tech scene, but aren’t necessarily technology focused. See others here.

It’s a long walk from Callowhill to the 67th ward.

But Avencia, the geographic analysis and software development firm, is bringing Walkshed, its web application that uses advanced technology to calculate and map walkability, to New York City.

Avencia’s Aaron Ogle first developed the application for Philadelphia, as we previously reported, but now, using open government data from New York, the company has developed a version for the five boroughs and submitted it into the much publicized BigApps Contest, a municipally-sponsored initiative asking for software applicants that use the city’s NYC Data Mine.

Winners can receive $20,000 in cash prizes and a strategic lunch meeting with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

BigApps winners will be determined by a panel of judges, in addition to a public vote that runs until Jan. 7. Vote for Avencia’s Walkshed NYC, which may be the only Philadelphia applicant, here. A free registration is required. Currently Walkshed is in the running for first place.

Below, video from the October event in Manhattan that kicked off the competition.

New York’s Deputy Mayor Robert C. Lieber addressed the Oct. 6 New York Tech Meetup to talk about BigApps.

It’s almost as Philadelphian as the cheesesteak. Example: “Hey, hand me that jawn.” Or, “Later this month I’m going to the Geekadelphia and Technically Philly jawn.”

Which makes the word more than fitting for the namesake of the up-start Philadelphia arts and culture magazine McJawn.

Founded by Wen Vo and Yis Goodwin in the Summer of 2008, McJawn’s content ranges from the art on local bathroom stalls to what its like to spend time in a Philadelphia jail, and its blog has become a barometer of the Philly arts and music subculture.

Oh, and did we mention they are hatching plans to take over the 67th ward?Last June, longtime friends Wen Vo and Yis Goodwin gathered in a coffee shop. Goodwin started to lament the death of art and publishing when Vo finally asked Goodwin, “well, what are you going to do about it?”

Shortly after, the duo launched McJawn in blog form to build up some momentum for the release of the first magazine issue. The blog — as well as the magazine – is staffed by mostly students and artists working for free, though they get the perks of claiming the free stuff that is sent to the magazine.

Before McJawn launched its first issue, the blog caught on, receiving over 3,000 hits a day. So when Vis and Goodwin held their issue release party at South Philly gallery Rarebreed, more than 200 people showed up and attendees were spilling into the streets.

“We realized that we can throw [events] for free and market our brand, as it’s hard to get online advertisers” says Vo who added that one of McJawn’s early sources of revenue was throwing events and putting the leftover sponsor money back in the business.

Now, the magazine has more than 22 contributors and a masthead full of staffers. It has received its own dedicated display in the University City Urban Outfitters and has hosted or promoted dozens of events, including a block party with Philly.com property Phrequency.

“With online media, no one knows what’s going on,” Vo says, so the magazine is up for anything including expansion.

While spending her weekends covering Philly subculture, but going to school at New York-based Fordham University, Vo says she began to notice a large degree of overlap between Philly and NYC. As a result, the magazine is looking to release a smaller edition of McJawn in New York City. The new mag aims to be a welcome reversal of the NYC magazine exporting culture to Philadelphia.

“We’re just trying to bring integrity to Philly’s subculture,” says Vo.

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Every Monday, Technically Not Tech will feature people, projects, and businesses that are involved with Philly’s tech scene, but aren’t necessarily technology focused. See others here.

Hold on to your clunky digital cable boxes Philadelphia, because a good old-fashioned capitalist throwdown is brewing between local cable giant Comcast and its feisty competitor Verizon.

You may remember that Verizon received approval from City Council earlier this year to build a $1 billion FiOS network in the city. According to the company’s franchise agreement with the city, it will fully cover the city in FiOS within seven years with initial service offerings beginning by the end of 2009.

If recent moves by Verizon in the 67th ward are a sign of things to come, Verizon may be challenging the cable giant’s Comcast Network news channel as well.

During a conference call yesterday, Verizon announced the creation of local news-based channels in its New York and Long Island markets to compete with similar offerings by Cablevision. The new channel is slated to feature 10 hours of live news programming each day, and will cover regional high school athletics.

In Philadelphia, such a channel would likely compete directly with local news broadcast and Comcast’s newly retooled Comcast Network.

While Philly is roughly a year behind its neighbor to the north, residents can look at the roll out of FiOS there as a sign of things to come. Although, there Verizon faces two entrenched competitors in Time Warner and Cablevision, while in Philadelphia Comcast is the only major cable provider in town.

If download speeds in other cities are any indication, Verizon FiOS will likely offer faster speeds than Comcast. And to top it off, Verizon isn’t the second most hated company in country.

The company already created a similar locally focused channel in Washington D.C which is roughly on the same roll out schedule as Philadelphia.