Vector Places

The way we navigate cities is changing. Technologies like GPS absolve us of the obligation of memory, and hyper-reality apps promise new ways of interacting with our environment. How will this change us, and the way we build? About / Home

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Living inside a stadium - Osaka Japan

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[vectorplaces]

marksbirch:

nycdigital:

NYC Open Data makes the wealth of public data generated by various New York City agencies and other City organizations available for public use. As part of an initiative to improve the accessibility, transparency, and accountability of City government, this catalog offers access to a repository of government-produced, machine-readable data sets. 

The age of open sourcing government is upon us and it starts with open access to data.  The government is the single largest owner of data, covering every single sector of the economy and every single citizen.  Open data is a right that is as important as freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, and has much more potency than the right to bear arms.  With open data as a basic right of citizens, we ensure a government that is both accountable and transparent.

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Making Room

"New York City has a remarkably diverse population and, in many respects, a remarkably heterogeneous housing stock to provide it shelter...But even with the great resources of its varied housing stock and its strong tradition of housing advocacy and reform, New York has a hard time producing enough housing to meet demand. And in moments of economic and social transition, housing supply and housing need can get seriously out of whack."

"Over the last several years, the Citizens Housing & Planning Council (CHPC) has been researching and analyzing how and where New York’s residents live and the housing that is available to them. Their findings have revealed many discrepancies between the kinds of houses and apartments people need and those they can find. CHPC has identified New York City’s accreted mass of housing regulations and standards — all created with progressive and worthy goals in mind — as one of the factors that contributes to this mismatch. For example, regulations have tilted what the housing market produces towards larger units, for households assumed to be “families,” even though only 17% of New York’s dwelling units are occupied by traditional nuclear families. A huge underground or improvised housing market has developed over the last two decades as people try, often in desperation, to find places to live that are affordable and can accommodate their particular needs."

via Urban Omnibus

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"Cities could soon be looking after their citizens all by themselves thanks to an operating system designed for the metropolis. The Urban OS works just like a PC operating system but keeps buildings, traffic and services running smoothly. The software takes in data from sensors dotted around the city to keep an eye on what is happening. In the event of a fire the Urban OS might manage traffic lights so fire engines can reach the blaze swiftly.

The idea is for the Urban OS to gather data from sensors buried in buildings and many other places to keep an eye on what is happening in an urban area."

via BBC News

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stoweboyd:

climateadaptation:

Urban Renewal

These 10 global infrastructure and tech companies are among the early leaders in smart-city programs.

“Like Siemens and ABB, most of the beneficiaries of urbanization will be infrastructure and technology outfits that provide or utilize smartphones, sensors and software and services to track the use of a city’s assets and commit resources when and where they’re needed. Cloud technology, which can cut costs while boosting computing capacity, will play a big role. Even social media will participate, as cities multiply the ways a citizen can spot a problem–anything from a water-main break to a traffic snarl–and then alert others to avoid it or do something about it.

Technology researchers at IDC estimate the size of the smart-city information-technology market is now $34 billion annually and will gain 18%-plus a year to $57 billion by 2014. That’s not a huge amount to global giants, but certainly enough to help drive growth. (The companies don’t break out earnings related to these projects.) The market has broadened to include items like broadband connectivity, green belts, renewable energy, green buildings and other intelligent-city systems. “You are talking about smart water, smart transportation, better public safety,” says Jennifer Bélissent, a consultant at Forrester.”

Source: Barron’s “Dawn of the Smart City”

Related articles

“The bias lurking behind every large-scale smart city is a belief that bottom-up complexity can be…” (underpaidgenius.com)

Those Pesky Humans: Urban Planning and its Discontents (blogcritics.org)

Why The U.S. Government Should Embrace Smart Cities (fastcompany.com)

[new-aesthetic]

[vectorplaces]

new-aesthetic:

“Data is the new oil,” said Andreas Weigend, social data guru and former chief scientist at Amazon.com. “Oil needs to be refined before it can be useful. Big data startups are the new refineries.” (via In the Pipeline: A Tidal Wave of Data » Data Center Knowledge)

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[vectorplaces]

new-aesthetic:

“This is where the magic happens: the entire East African Internet (well, except for satellite links) squeezes through this little cable.” (Via Rezendi)

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[vectorplaces]

architizer:

Czech architect Petr Janda’s proposal to transform the walls of a waterfront promenade in Prague into gallery spaces.

[dividedcities]

The shipping container is like a bizarre embassy: portable instead of stationary, for goods instead of people, logistical instead of architectural, but similarly self-contained and exported territory.

Rob Holmes & Stephen Becker examine the strange case of cities, miles from any national boundary, that are nonetheless border towns, for logistical convenience.

border box – mammoth // building nothing out of something

(via dividedcities)

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[vectorplaces]

npr:

sunfoundation:

Interactive map of the internet’s underwater paths

Ever wondered how your email can cross the vastness of the ocean and be delivered almost instantly, anywhere in the world? It’s all down to a network of fibre-optic cables that link up the continents and transmit terabits of data every second.

Yes, yes I always did wonder about this. —Wright

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adrianastyle:

Cities 2

Atelier Olschinsky

[vectorplaces]

“No Loitering” signage is commonplace not just in New Orleans, but in many cities, frequently in neighborhoods that mishmash both vacant buildings and retail. A structure on lower Magazine Street could hypothetically serve as a Loitering Centre. Hypothetically, the N(ew) O(rleans) Loitering Centre would invite the public to come in, and loiter.

The Hypothetical Development Organization, founded in 2010, is dedicated to the recognition and extension of a new form of urban storytelling. Members of this organization begin the narrative process by examining city neighborhoods and commercial districts for compelling structures that appear to have fallen into disuse —“hidden gems” of the built environment. In varying states of repair, these buildings suggest only stories about the past, not the future.

As a public service, H.D.O. invents a hypothetical future for each selected structure. Unlike a traditional, reality-based developer, however, our organization is not bound by rules relating to commercial potential, practical materials, or physics ... H.D.O. creates convincing renderings of these imagined future uses. These renderings are, in the tradition of the form, printed onto large signs, and shared with the public in general. Each structure selected by H.D.O. will, for a time, present to the world the fascinating potential future we have invented.

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"Shteyngart says the first thing that happened when he bought an iPhone “was that New York fell away . . . It disappeared. Poof.” That’s the first thing I noticed too: the city disappeared, along with any will to experience. New York, so densely populated and supposedly sleepless, must be the most efficient place to hone observational powers. But those powers are now dulled in me. I find myself preferring the blogs of remote strangers to my own observations of present ones. Gone are the tacit alliances with fellow subway riders, the brief evolution of sympathy with pedestrians. That predictable progress of unspoken affinity is now interrupted by an impulse to either refresh a page or to take a website-worthy photo. I have the nervous hand-tics of a junkie.  For someone whose interest in other people’s private lives was once endless, I sure do ignore them a lot now." - Alice Gregory, book review of Gary Shteyngart's "Super Sad True Love Story"

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slaughterhouse90210:

“And it occurred to me that in this new millennial life of instant and ubiquitous connection, you don’t in fact communicate so much as leave messages for one another, these odd improvisational performances, often sorry bits and samplings of ourselves that can’t help but seem out of context. And then when you do finally reach someone, everyone’s so out of practice or too hopeful or else embittered that you wonder if it would be better not to attempt contact at all.”  —Chang-rae Lee, Aloft

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[vectorplaces]

sabbatical:

Our lives are spent trying to pixellate a fractal planet.

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[vectorplaces]

sabbatical

[vectorplaces]

"Landscape architecture continues to experience a professional flowering based on the growing significance of sustainability and ecological issues as they relate to planning the broader built environment. But awareness is also growing among architects that they are no longer kings of the mountain. Gwen Webber scouts the perimeter of a possible turf war in the making."