Environmental Data Collector
sensory traffic light
See this entry from this year’s Greener Gadgets Design Competition.
A prototype device that visualizes environmental data collected at various urban nodes.
Digital Urban
Interesting research sources, mapping and visualization projects, etc at Digital Urban
Info: “Digital Urban is written by Dr Andrew Hudson-Smith, aimed at examining the latest techniques to visualise the city scape via digital media it covers a lot of the work going on at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, University College London. Dr Andrew Hudson-Smith is, when not writing the blog, a Senior Research Fellow and Research Manager at CASA.”
Boston’s reclaimed city landfill.Over
A plug for a great book of amazing images by a Rome friend of mine. Can be ordered here.
“For more than twenty years, Alex MacLean’s aerial photographs have captured the evolution of the American landscape and the complex relationship between its natural and constructed environments. Over: The American Landscape at the Tipping Point by Alex S. MacLean, Introduction by Bill McKibben (Abrams; November; 336 pages; US $45; CAN $48.95) is an ambitious and visually breathtaking catalog of the extraordinary patterns and profound physical consequences brought about by natural processes and human intervention.
“Alex MacLean’s pictures are an irreplaceable document bearing testimony to the precise forces now undermining our only planet. May they help give us the insight to make the changes that we must,” writes Bill McKibben, one of the pioneers of the environmental movement, in the book’s introduction. “ Over is divided into sections covering such topics as: Atmosphere; Way of Life; Automobile Dependency; Electricity Generation; Deserts; Water Use; Sea-Level Rise; Waste and Recycling; and Urbanism. Large-scale luxury housing developments and golf courses in Nevada, massive highway interchanges in Arizona, gasoline refineries in Texas, wind turbines and solar-electricity generating systems in California, Hurricane Katrina wreckage and coastal damage in Mississippi and Louisiana, a huge municipal compost facility in Chicago, New York City’s first green building, the Hearst Tower, and widespread tract housing in the suburbs of Phoenix are among the subjects of the spectacular photographs featured.
Some of his images below (from the websiste, not the book). Motorcycle tracks on black ice, and B-52 bombers at the “Bone Yard”, the military’s aircraft dump in Tucson.
World Mapping
<< Public health spending
<< Rabies deaths
It may be a bit late in the semester for this to be very useful, but the maps on this site are very extensive and informative. They’ve compiled an incredible amount of information globally, I’m certain everyones’ areas of interest are mapped.
Seed Salon – mathematics of complexity
In this SEED Salon, mathematician Steven Strogatz and architect Carlo Ratti suggest that there are laws of urban behavior from which the mathematician and architect can draw lessons. Feedback loops? Dynamical systems? The city of the future just might talk back.
Full transcript here.
Reading List
Some more for the studio bibliography:
306090 06: Shifting Infrastructures (2004)
306090 08: Autonomous Urbanism (2005)
Richard Burdett, Cities: People, Society, Architecture: 10th International Architecture Exhibition – Venice Biennale
Larry Busbea, Topologies: The Urban Utopia in France, 1960-1970
Felicity Scott, Architecture or Techno-Utopia: Politics after Modernism
Stanley Matthews, From Agit-prop to Free Space: The Architecture of Cedric Price
Jonathan Hughes, Simon Sadler, Non-Plan: Essays on Freedom, Participation and Change in Modern Architecture
Kazys Varnelis, Networked Publics
Lump together and like it
Cities and Growth article from the Economist
“The World Bank in its annual flagship World Development Report suggests that pessimism over the future of huge cities is wildly overdone.”
The Petabyte Age
Wired Magazine’s feature on the future of data.
“Sensors everywhere. Infinite storage. Clouds of processors. Our ability to capture, warehouse, and understand massive amounts of data is changing science, medicine, business, and technology. As our collection of facts and figures grows, so will the opportunity to find answers to fundamental questions. Because in the era of big data, more isn’t just more. More is different.”
Database City
Here’s a concise listing of key projects discussed at the VISUALIZAR’08 conferernce courtesy of serial consign.
browse urbanism to search urbanism
observations from a lecture by adam greenfield given at VISUALIZAR’08
“The city of the 21st century is one that will respond to the behavior of its residents and other user, in something like real time… underwriting the transition from browse urbanism to search urbanism.”
and here’s a video of a similar lecture given two weeks ago.
AMOEBA
Advanced Multiple Organized Experimental Basin, it uses standing waves to create patterns or letters. They got the software to be able to syncronize transitions between the different flows down to 15 seconds. Check out the video on the site. 
TransJakarta (busways)
TransJakarta is a bus rapid transit system in Jakarta, Indonesia. TransJakarta started on January 15, 2004 and currently has 7 corridors (or lines) with 32 new corridors under construction. TransJakarta was designed to provide the citizens of Jakarta a fast public transportation system to help reduce rush hour traffic.
Bangkok Markets
In these videos we could see the grand differentiation between the city’s social classes from location, architecture, scale, and accessibility.
Vehicular growth Mexico City
More New Cars Than Babies This Year in Mexico City
by Eliza Barclay on 10OCT08
For every birth in Mexico City, two new cars enter the city’s vehicle fleet each year, according to the Center for Sustainable Transport. The non-profit organization compared the city’s birth records to vehicle sales and found that the number of annual births is some 160,000, while the number of new vehicles added to the city’s fleet ranges between 200,000 and 300,000, according to Mexico’s National Institute of Statistics.
D.F.’s vehicular dilemma…
Mercado Central [Mexico city]
Juxtapose image exersice…follow the video movement into the market
Mercado Central
Reyner Banham Loves LA
1972 BBC documentary featuring Reyner Banham.
[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1524953392810656786]