May 2011
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Watch“Searchscapes: Manhattan” is an attempt by Juliana Sado Yamashita to create a tri-dimensional map of Manhattan, using existing data from the web. The goal is to compare the city’s “physical spaces” and “information spaces” (search results), in an attempt to materialize information and give it dimension, and physicality. Juliana Sato Yamashita is a New York Based, new media artist/designer...
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Digital Urban Renewal →
Retro-fitting existing cities with smart solutions is the urban challenge of the 21st century
New tools created by the ICT industry have the potential to help city governments address the growing range of challenges that they are facing. However, the tools themselves are not a “silver bullet” that will solve urban problems in one stroke. Deploying them will require a new discipline of...
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Melbourne: A Pedestrian Paradise
Melbourne: A Pedestrian Paradise from Streetfilms on Vimeo.
A look at Melbourne’s central business district, which has successfully been transformed into a pedestrian-friendly area with a change of priority from car traffic to pedestrian traffic.
Article explaining changes here
via urbanplanner:
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A Web App to Empower Urban Food Communities →
CITIES is a European urban research institute who, in late 2010, began work on a pilot project which aimed to ‘empower and support the creation of a local food system’. With the pilot deemed a…
thisbigcity:
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New York Releases 'Road Map for the Digital City'... →
New York City will develop an open government framework featuring APIs for city data, relaunch its website and make a host of changes to the way it presents government information online, according to a report prepared by the city and announced today.
The city’s newly minted chief digital officer, Rachel Sterne, prepared the report as her first task upon arriving in city hall. ...
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Digital Urbanisms: The overlap of social media and... →
Here’s a great article from Metropolis Magazine (Here but Not Here, by Andrew Blum) that addresses the yet to be discovered overlap in architecture and social media. This overlap is precisely what my research in China is about - how the use of cellphones and computers changes people’s…
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Top 10 Indicators of Good Urban Design →
There are so many things to consider when designing a city- but when considering urban design specifically, here are what I believe to be the top 10 indicators of a well-designed place (in no particular order):
1 A Space Becomes a Place
2 Built on the Past
3 Connected to the Landscape
4 Expect the Unexpected
5 Mix and Match
6 Cohesion, Not Uniformity
7 Economically Viable
8...
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Bounty hunting: an inside look at a successful... →
Last spring, I had the pleasure of following the farm-to-market process with one of the “successful” upstart organic farms in Minnesota. Laura and Adam from Loon Organics let me film and work through their Friday-Saturday operation. I had been idealizing the idea of starting a farm: seeing the beautiful produce stacked up at the market made me want to take out a loan, buy 50 acres, and...
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Open Gov West Conference: May 13 & 14 in Portland
From EngagingCities:
The speakers and panelists [at the Open Gov West] span the whole gamut of topics relevant to the future of cities: from mapping to crowdsourcing for crisis communication; from participatory budgeting processes to expanding government’s use of social media for outreach with citizens; from the benefits of using open source software, to the possibilities enabled by open data...
EngagingCities: Got ideas? Grab a sticker. →
Vacant buildings and boarded-up windows can make for a disheartening view when they appear on the streets of your hometown. Passers-by may shake their heads at the wasted space, but at the same time, empty storefronts and abandoned lots are full of possibility — they provoke…
via engagingcities:
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A Smarter Planet: IBM Global Entrepreneur |... →
Looking for global entrepreneurs who want to build a smarter planet
SmartCamp is an exclusive event aimed at identifying early stage entrepreneurs who are developing business ventures that align with our IBM Smarter Planet vision.
These mentoring and networking events put entrepreneurs in touch with investment firms, serial entrepreneurs, academics, marketing, communications, and...
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50 Ideas For The New City
Urban Omnibus has created a list of 50 ideas for new cities. Each idea links to a related article. The first idea, Combat climate change by adapting our existing building stock, relates to this article. The list is part of an online project from the Architectural League to create a new kind of conversation about design in New York City, but the ideas can be applied to any city.
The list can be...
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“What exactly do we mean when we invoke the emergence of a ‘Sentient City’? The...”
– - Martijn de Waal, The Urban Culture of Sentient Cities: From an Internet of Things to a Public Sphere of Things (via underpaidgenius)
Submit your fav books on urban policy
humanscalecities:
I have just added the submit function. As this tumblr is giving more and more attention to books on urban policy and related issues, maybe you can suggest your favourite books, the most provoking, the most insightful, your must-read books,…
These are the ones that already appeared.
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The Urban Culture of Sentient Cities: From an... →
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A silver bullet for urban traffic problems →
Enter Streetline, a 30-employee company in San Francisco that creates and installs wireless sensor networks to monitor parking spaces. Each sensor uses a magnetometer to detect the presence of large metal objects nearby.
“If the sensor is within two or three feet of the car, it will register a huge increase in metal,” explains Zia Yusuf, 45, the company’s chief executive. “When the metal...
