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Monthly Archives: January 2008

Academic spaces and citizen researchers

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Despite the fact that academics like to research all kinds of social spaces, there are hardly any studies of the social spaces where research is done. But every now and then we get glimpses, like this story about Parisian academics being “banished to the banlieues”:
The three institutions that are being turned out of their ancestral [...]

Filed in Cities & urbanism, Europe, Geography & environment, Power & resistance | | Comments Off

When water becomes ice

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

No sooner had the Thames acquired a sufficient consistency than booths, turnabouts, etc. were erected, and puppet-shows, wild beasts, etc. transported from every adjacent village. Many thousands of persons crossed upon the ice from Tower Wharf to the opposite shore. The watermen broke in the ice close to the shore and erected bridges with toll-bars [...]

Filed in Everyday life, Geography & environment, Mobilities, Spatiality & temporality | | Comments Off

Ubiquitous space and culture

Thursday, January 17, 2008

For those not familiar with Korea’s New Songdo City, it’s “the first new city in the world designed and planned as an international business district. Overall, it will include 45 million square feet of office space, 30 million square feet of residential space, 10 million square feet of retail, 5 million square feet of hotel [...]

Filed in Asia, Cities & urbanism, Techno-science | | Comments (1)

Urban Panic

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Where shall we run? Can Matt Tiessen’s desire paths be collective? Thanks to Pruned and Nicholas my attention was drawn to the increasing interest in simulating city life – in this case, Paul Torrens’ geosimulation work on predicting the actions of pedestrians and crowd behaviour. Maybe simulated crowds could help the depopulating [...]

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Future cities, exposed behaviours and the problem of public agency

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

My dissertation looks at how pervasive computing and locative media practitioners treat cities as interaction design spaces and publics as co-creators, so I’m always interested in how people are envisioning future cities. Dan Hill recently pointed to the Living City project, in which three alternative and parallel futures are explored:
Living City is an ecology of [...]

Filed in Architecture, Art & design, Cities & urbanism, Everyday life, Power & resistance, Production & consumption | | Comments (2)