Urban Informatics - Tracing the City

While I was in San Francisco it just happened to be Architecture week. I popped into the office to take part in an event run by a good colleague of mine, Engin Ayaz called ‘Tracing the City’. Literally we traced over images of The SF Mid Market District. It did help that I happened to ride my rent-a-bike past there the day before as part of my big trek to get across the bridge. (definitely better than going on a bus tour if you are in town)

Objective of the workshop:

Understand the potential for information to improve the lives of citizens. (Improvement in terms of economic, social and aesthetic)

Summary of the workshop:

1. Assume a role of a local in the area
2. Understand his/her needs and interests
3. Take tracing paper and trace over photos of the local area with an aim to ‘augment’ with information.

Workshop Photos

Workshop Slides

Start at slide 43

Arup Urban Informatics Workshop Sep 2010

View more presentations from enginayaz.

Visualisation for Sustainable Cities PechaKucha Vol.20 

On the 9th of December I presented at PechaKucha Vol.20 on the topic of sustainable cities and how data driven visualisation has an impact on triggering behavioural change for sustainability. On the 10th of December I delivered a similar but more detailed presentation to the International Conference on Smart Meters, Networks and Information Processing.

During this speech I played two videos to illustrate the point. They are below

(click menu on the bottom left to view full screen)

Sustainable Cities - The importance of visualisation

The Green Cloud Project, Helsinki

An artist’s projection of the energy consumption data of a local community over the smoke stack of its local power station. This led to an immediate sense of ownership and reductions in consumption. While we cant put a green laser light on every smoke stack, I invite people from all backgrounds to think of how we can borrow this concept in our own cities. How can we bridge the ‘knowing’ and ‘feeling’ gap?

Nuage Vert à Ivry from HeHe on Vimeo.

Ecological Age - City of Manchester Retrofit, Arup

This video shows the potential vision for the City of Manchester, UK after an extensive retrofitting program. You will notice that the technologies are currently available (although the algae system may be a while off). Notice also how there are no new ‘green buildings’. While improved standards in new build are certainly important, the future of our cities depends on our ability to improve the performance of our existing stock. This video was shown as it highlighted two aspects of visualisation that I think are important:

1. When giving someone a vision of something, make it realistic and achievable.

2. Using positive reinforcement to affect change (in this case inspiration) is potentially more effective than negative reinforcement.

3. Show it and not just say it. The concepts in this video are not new, and are often suggested in studies. 

At ISSNIP I spoke a bit about the Slim City initiative where Arup partnered with the world economic forum to produce a set of research cards. You can find them here:

http://www.driversofchange.com/slimcity/

Enjoy :)