Stephen Graham - Sentient Cities
View more presentations from mobilecity2008.
Showing posts with label urban informatics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label urban informatics. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Friday, September 18, 2009
Urban Computing / BitTorrent servers project
Urban Computing / BitTorrent servers project
View more documents from Adam Simon.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Designing for Place-Based Social Interaction of Urban Residents in Mexico, South Africa and Australia
PDF Paper download
Abstract
The design of technology to facilitate social interaction of urban residents is increasingly important for many countries around the world. México and South Africa are particularly prone to issues that stem from urban densification and a lack of adequate affordable housing. Governments look to ICT to take on a mediating and facilitating role. This paper reports on research-in-progress of a tri-continental study. The external factors and aims of this pilot project identifying local case studies to prepare for a larger and longer term international comparison of local community networking approaches are examined. It is argued that by careful attention to cultural and social assets in the community, innovations will be engendered which enhance economic and social development. Preliminary design implications for the support of neighbourhood interactions across different socio-cultural contexts are presented.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Situated Technologies Pamphlets 1: Urban Computing and its Discontents
Description:
The Situated Technologies Pamphlet series, published by the Architectural League, explores the implications of ubiquitous computing for architecture and urbanism: How is our experience of the city and the choices we make in it affected by mobile communications, pervasive media, ambient informatics, and other “situated” technologies? How will the ability to design increasingly responsive environments alter the way architects conceive of space? What do architects need to know about urban computing and what do technologists need to know about cities? Situated Technologies Pamphlets will be published in nine issues and will be edited by a rotating list of leading researchers and practitioners from architecture, art, philosophy of technology, comparative media study, performance studies, and engineering.
Geospatial info-mobility service by real-time data-integration and generalisation
Objectives
The objective of the project is to develop methods for delivering geospatial data to a mobile user by means of real-time data-integration and generalisation. The project aims to a seamless data service infrastructure providing access, through a common interface, to topographic geo-databases maintained by the national mapping agencies. The sub-objectives comprise of developing methods for real-time generalisation, integration of national primary geo-databases by means of thematic harmonisation, and real-time transformation of the data to a common EUREF-based co-ordinate system for seamless geometric representation. Emerging standards, like XML, are used for transferring vector-formatted spatial data in the Web. A study on small-display cartography, and an analysis on the requirements of the mobile use of geospatial data are carried out. The approach is tested using a prototype system in a multinational context.
NML: Neighbourhood Markup Language - David Rokeby
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
I am not, by nature, a utopian dreamer. But I felt compelled in this instance to propose a constructive project with a positive slant. I decided to try and imagine a new kind of social frame, a way of reactivating the shared experience of public space, enabled by the properties of convergent devices. To my surprise, and despite my intent to dream way beyond implementability, I have ended up with a project that poses more social complications than technical ones.
In considering the issues raised by the project themes, particularly the implications of communications networks and devices with respect to locality, I found myself returning again and again to the persistent, spatial scent-based animal communications networks, like the rich (to dogs) olfactory mappings of urine marked trees and hydrants and the marker trails that lead ants to food and back to the nest. And so I am proposing a system for annotating physical space.
All content in the proposed system is addressed (for both saving and accessing) using the GPS determined location of the reader/writer. A message, image or sound saved from a certain location is only retrievable by someone physically located within a certain radius of that same position... it can only be summoned up in its physical and social context.
Annotations might include reminder notes left for oneself or friends (perhaps encrypted), personal observations, public notices, sounds, historical or architectural notes (official and personal), memorials, recommendations of interesting side-streets for the casual walker, exchanges of views on local issues, a story, a game, personal tours, markers for a treasure hunt.
Access is possible from any wireless networked portable computing device with a GPS unit.
The user would be able to configure the device to continuously scan the content attached to the immediate vicinity for the presence of annotations, with customizable filters to reduce local data clutter to those of greatest interest to the user. Things already accessed would be marked as read and filtered out as well, unless intentionally called up. As the aim is not to further fragment public space by encouraging people to walk around with faces glued to small LCD screens, audio would be a preferred format for the annotations.
The device would indicate, perhaps through vibration, when data comes into range. On the other hand, a discrete but distinctive audible indicator (the social calls of crickets or frogs?) might be interesting as a signifier of data reception. Having a sound that is not personalizable might result in a positive confusion: "It was not my device, but then what is here that someone else is interested in..." Browsing or searching the entire set of annotations for one's current position would be possible through a familiar web-style interface.
Urban Atmospheres
Proactive archeology of our urban landscapes and emerging technology
Urban Atmospheres captures a unique, synergistic moment - expanding urban populations, rapid adoption of Bluetooth mobile devices, tiny ad hoc sensor networks, and the widespread influence of wireless technologies across our growing urban landscapes. The United Nations recently reported that 48 percent of the world's population current live in urban areas and that this number is expected to exceed the 50 percent mark world wide by 2007. In developed nations the number of urban dwellers is even more dramatic - expected to exceed 75%. Current studies project Bluetooth-enabled devices to reach 5.4 billion units by 2005 - five times the number of mobile phones or Internet connections. Mobile phone penetration already exceeds 80% of the population in places like the European Union (EU) and parts of Asia [3]. WiFi hardware is being deployed at the astonishing rate of one every 4 seconds globally.
We argue that now is the time to initiate inspirational research into the very essence of these newly emerging technological urban spaces. We desire to move towards an improved understanding of the emotional experience of urban life. We are currently conducting a number of Urban Probes - a lightweight, provocative, intervention methodology designed to rapidly deconstruct urban situations, reveal new opportunities for technology in urban spaces, and guide future long term research in urban computing.
Monday, September 14, 2009
NY Talk Exchange
on exibition at
MoMA The Museum of Modern Art
Design and Elastic Mind
February 24th - May 12th 2008 New York Talk Exchange illustrates the global exchange of information in real time by visualizing volumes of long distance telephone and IP (Internet Protocol) data flowing between New York and cities around the world. In an information age, telecommunications such as the Internet and the telephone bind people across space by eviscerating the constraints of distance. To reveal the relationships that New Yorkers have with the rest of the world, New York Talk Exchange asks: How does the city of New York connect to other cities? With which cities does New York have the strongest ties and how do these relationships shift with time? How does the rest of the world reach into the neighborhoods of New York?
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Situated Architecture
Once again going back to the current architectural discourse, we saw the icon of the diagram succeeding as a good selling spectacle, the logo as a form combining action and form, and the call for a refocusing on the traditional tasks of a 5000 year old Discipline. Can we really continue debating about regional styles, or architecture as a programmatic diagram? What kind of architecture should be taught to a Chinese student at an US American university by a Middle Eastern teacher grown up in Europe?
Not only in the current emerging field of “situated-”, “responsive-”, “interactive-” etc- architecture people tend to fetishize the detail. Loosing the heuristics and hiding behind technical problems seems to avoid the broader conflict.
Instead of trying to revive form or symbolic meaning whose functions have long vanished, architects must rethink its potential tasks in order to find its place and relevance in the future.
Architecture must differentiate itself from the execution of demands for structure and space.
If architecture fails to do so it will be absorbed by the marketing machinery and by the ideology of market economy.
We can’t assume that any space is constructed by society and is therefore legitimized or even inevitable.
It is not the “extended body” of individuals or society which constructs space, rather larger systems like economic networks can be described as acting “in their own advantage”.
In this sense Lefebvre’s notion that every society constructs its space might have to be questioned. If we are not able to remove ourselves from the space surrounding us than it might be indeed hopeless to speculate on active involvement. But if we have arrived at a point where we understand biological systems and even ourselves not as unities but consisting of parts with different agencies then we must acknowledge that the combined effects of whatever organic or non organic, technological or natural parts might creates its own space. Such a space cannot be considered as being constructed by society.
In my opinion this is the point where architecture has to situate itself: On the one hand we might not be able to change existing models, but we have to negotiate between them. We can’t change them because the constituting parts are self-supporting and anchored in many different domains. But the notion that there is a need for actually intervening in the spatial construction might be worth considering.
Architects must operate between the layers of space generated by networks and agents. Such architecture must not depend on clients it must be deliberately placed in between conflicting agencies. Of course there is still the need for the traditional construction business but I would see this as a secondary or detached aspect of architecture. Its preliminary task should be the exploration of a potential where it can get actively involved. It needs to negotiate the massive changes and conflicts we see on a territorial and spatial scale. Changes triggered by the clash between the agency of global networks and local identities, political agendas and individual resistance, as well as unforeseeable changes caused by the environment.
The second notion of a situated architecture is the task to design scenarios and environments.
We have to avoid designing emptiness but also answer the question how to draw a line between a consumerist spectacle and the concept of an open playable scene.
As opposed to closed systems the parts defining an environment doesn’t necessarily form a unity.
They must be defined as interfaces, links, switches boundaries, edges etc. At this level we can start thinking about technical applications and communication devices.
In all these scenarios the event, the moment when energy is exchanged between systems must be seen as the foundation of Architecture. Such a concept includes the micro scale where an event is defined as change or as exchange of information and the macro scale where an Event is usually understand as a accumulation of people.
Today such events like festivals are already creating new temporal places. The effect of lights blinking in the darkness can be compared to an agglomeration of people. It is the collectiveness that creates place not symbols or historic memory. Even supermarkets traditionally considered as the non-space are in fact complex environments of events creating places.
Codes and protocols rapidly evolve and vanish and places can exist for centuries as well as only for minutes. We can’t see spaces as closed systems but must focus on the wider networks of events in order to create a potential for negotiation.
I think the most important conclusion we can draw from this observation is that our traditional understanding of architecture as typology (making enclosures) has arrived in its must simplistic reduction of the global box which is like the economic model generating it, almost invulnerable and undisputed.
Avoiding the collapse of the discipline, which would be architecture only located in the world of luxury commodities, the framework of thought I tried to summarize here should point in a different, more optimistic direction.
At least inside the academic world we are talking not only about global cities but also about the forming of a global architectural culture which should be discussed in the near future. Such architecture has no culture per se it is action as well as space, it is physical and event simultaneously, and it establishes differences and negotiates the occupation of space.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Urban Atmospheres
Project link
Urban Atmospheres captures a unique, synergistic moment - expanding urban populations, rapid adoption of Bluetooth mobile devices, tiny ad hoc sensor networks, and the widespread influence of wireless technologies across our growing urban landscapes. The United Nations recently reported that 48 percent of the world's population current live in urban areas and that this number is expected to exceed the 50 percent mark world wide by 2007. In developed nations the number of urban dwellers is even more dramatic - expected to exceed 75%. Current studies project Bluetooth-enabled devices to reach 5.4 billion units by 2005 - five times the number of mobile phones or Internet connections. Mobile phone penetration already exceeds 80% of the population in places like the European Union (EU) and parts of Asia [3]. WiFi hardware is being deployed at the astonishing rate of one every 4 seconds globally.
We argue that now is the time to initiate inspirational research into the very essence of these newly emerging technological urban spaces. We desire to move towards an improved understanding of the emotional experience of urban life. We are currently conducting a number of Urban Probes - a lightweight, provocative, intervention methodology designed to rapidly deconstruct urban situations, reveal new opportunities for technology in urban spaces, and guide future long term research in urban computing.
In fact the very essence of person, place, and community are being redefined by personal wireless digital tools that transcend traditional physical constrains of time and space. New metaphors for visualizing, interacting, and interpreting the real-time ebb and flow of urban places will emerge. Urban Atmospheres is focused on exposing, deconstructing, and understanding the challenges of this newly emerging moment in urban history and its dramatic influence on technology usage and adoption.
Urban Atmospheres is a collection of newly emerging urban based research projects being conducted across Intel Research. This included not just the work at Intel Research Berkeley but also related projects at Intel's People and Practices (PaPR) Research group in Oregon and others.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
On Urban Markup: Frames Of Reference In Location Models For Participatory Urbanism
On Urban Markup: Frames Of Reference In Location Models For Participatory Urbanism
by Malcolm McCullough
Associate Professor
Taubman College of Architecture and Planning
University of Michigan
2000 Bonisteel Boulevard
Ann Arbor, MI, 48109
U.S.A.
mmmc [@] umich [dot] edu
KEYWORDS
urbanism, embodiment, ability, ontology, practice.
ABSTRACT
Phenomena such as embodiment, spatial ability, scale, and persistent physical pattern provide deep bases for a shift from universal mobility toward a more socially-centered approach to situated computing, and from merely positional media toward a semantic component of location models. The goal of this shift is to support the agility with intentions in context that characterizes rich urban life. This paper examines that change as a challenge in bottom-up cultural processes, and suggests "urban markup" as a way to understand the goals in knowledge representation.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Monday, April 20, 2009
Real time data collection methods, parametric modelling at the urban scale, and remote control urbanism
Noah Raford, US director, Space Syntax
Noah is a researcher at the Department of Urban Studies at MIT.
Space Syntax takes an evidence-based approach to the planning and design of buildings and cities, using advanced computer modelling technologies. Noah will talk about real time data collection methods, parametric modelling at the urban scale, and future possibilities of 『remote control urbanism'
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Google Earth with Flex (IE + Firefox on Windows only)
You can type in a location, and it will go there. You can also toggle the nav controls, and the grid overlay. This example requires the Google Earth plugin, and only works in browsers that are supported by Google Earth (IE + Firefox on Windows only).
