#urban (23 links)
- 15min-City whatif.sonycsl.it
The 15 min City platform lets you explore how much worldwide cities are close to this ideal, by merging open data about venues within cities, population grids and routing algorithms. With 15 min City, you can check which activities or places are accessible to a neighbourhood on foot and by bike, and compare it to other urban areas. You can also check which city is the closest to the 15 minutes ideal looking at our city rankings in the map.
- Why Tokyo Works | Metropolis Japan metropolisjapan.com
- The Citizen Network reimaginingthecity.scot
The citizen network is a coalition of people working to re-imagine the city as a place for people to live in, one of social justice and equality, not just a space for consumption and profit.
- The strange world of urban exploration - Robert Macfarlane theguardian.com
<blockquote>Urbex is not for everyone. Let me put that differently: urbex is hardly for anyone. Participation is high in profile but small in number (perhaps 20,000 globally), and the thrills are niche. Not for urbexers the sturm und drang of mountains or the arid elegance of desert exploration. Their epiphanies are mucky, their metaphysics mephitic. The short-term risks are grim: drowning in sewage, falling from girders, gralloched by razor-wire, skewered on scaffolding. Longer-term dangers include respiratory problems from exposure to dusts and gases. I know, I know: why would you? Who would? It is a hugely strange scene, and – occasional claustrophiliac with an intermittent taste for decay that I am – I find myself rather gripped by it.</blockquote>
- adaptive path » blog » Kate Rutter » On Amsterdam, bikes and the Copenhagen Wheel thingy adaptivepath.com
What makes my heart go pitty-pat is the swarm of data that the sensor in the wheel captures and transmits. Not only does it track info about the biker (riding time, effort, calories) but it also grabs info from the environment, like temperature, carbon monoxide, noise and humidity. You can share this info with friends, and also with your city by making an anonymous donation of your data. The end result? A community of data-contributors helping cities build more accurate models of routes, noise, carbon emissions and temperature. All this data can be used inform urban planning, transit systems and environmental policies in service to sustainable cities.
- Tom Roper's Weblog: North doesn't matter roper.org.uk
The Legible London project began in 2003 as an initial study working with the central London boroughs and business fora, aiming not just to improve signs, but to offer far better guidance for walkers. The project was to run a prototype, a measurable trial to prove the concept. They set about developing a taxonomy of walkers, but when they had discovered sixty different types and were still counting they gave up, and instead measured walking activity along two axes, the walkers' knowledge of the area and their speed, defined on a continuum from strolling to striding.
- Light pollution is complicated part 2 (or okay, do blame it on the lighting designer) - Headlessness headlessness.com
What if there was some shift in emphasis from designing for the building, to designing for the community, or the wider urban space? If everyone could agree just to turn the lighting down a bit, or even a lot, night-time city centres could become much less competitive, noisy places in terms of ambient light.
- Chris Heathcote: anti-mega: screens in context anti-mega.com
Whilst the advertising industry has one of the longest histories of trying to understand interaction, it’s a very different set of tools that digitalness brings; ones that designers at the coal face of web and mobile encounter every day. Everything can be considered in context, be timely, reactive, and data-driven. I’m going to try to outline some dimensions to think about, with some incredibly quick, simple, off the cuff dumb ideas (All brands are impersonated. Badly.) that hopefully push the advertising into being more useful or interesting.
"Over the past 2 months the city government, in cooperation with business groups and non-profits, has turned a corner of one of the busiest intersections in San Francisco into a public plaza. The 17th Street Plaza project took 72-hours to implement, and is carefully called a “reversible trial.” Like the phrase “reversible pilot”.
- Great London walks - Time Out London timeout.com
Explore London on foot with our suggestions for some great capital walks, including riverside rambles, architectural adventures, even the odd pub crawl.
- tweenbots | kacie kinzer tweenbots.com
Tweenbots are human-dependent robots that navigate the city with the help of pedestrians they encounter. Rolling at a constant speed, in a straight line, Tweenbots have a destination displayed on a flag, and rely on people they meet to read this flag and to aim them in the right direction to reach their goal.
- Headlessness - Light pollution is complicated (or, don't blame it on the lighting designer) headlessness.com
The lighting designers take the rap for light pollution once more. Allow me to say a word or two in their (or, er, our) defence.
- Landshare - What is Landshare landshare.channel4.com
Linking people who want to grow their own food to space where they can grow it
- russell davies: draping the city in data and dodging augmented urban spam russelldavies.typepad.com
It's like the way advertising ended up all over the web - it seemed a pain-free option and a way to get things paid for. But if we want to provide people with all this information all over the city do we want to do it the same way?
- space invaders > the story of an invasion space-invaders.com
- Italo Calvino sparks obsessions | MetaFilter metafilter.com
"Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities is so called because it asserts that what makes up a city is not so much its physical structure but the impression it imparts upon its visitors, the way its inhabitants move within, something unseen that hums between the
- Wooster Collective : Stickers / Posters / Graf / Culture Jamming woostercollective.com
- bungle street art bungle-art.com
The website for melbourne street artist bungle.
- Derelict London derelictlondon.com
The pubs section is worth a gander