SpacePlace

[Locative Media] geourl is back!

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It seems that geourl is back from the grave: geourl reloaded! Update: after hubert's comment, I checked if it's related to geo-url and it's indeed something different did by other people (thanks joshua for the update).

Update 2: Hubert found the real author of geourl.info, it's Daniel Schaller:

Many amongst us bloggers know the the service www.geourl.org. It offered a way to register your blog in a directory for certain geographical coordinates. Furthermore, there was a way to get a list of other blogs which are near to your blog.

However, for what reason ever, since May/June this year, the service is down for renovations and has not relaunched yet so far. Since I liked the idea of this services and I realized that others do as well, I was setting up a re-making of it, which I have launched at the URL http://www.geourl.info now.

Please feel free and register your blog and tell your blog buddies to register their site, too.

[Mobile] A mobile monday in switzerland

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Jerome came up with the interesting idea of having a mobile monday-like meeting on a regular basis in Switerzland. The idea is pretty cool. Such meeting could deal with lots of concepts. I tried to sketch a list (it's actually broad): A another poitn would be to do something a bit more different than what the french people from mobilités.net does (so that there is no overlap). A mobiel monday would be interesting if it's free, not to crowded and not too small. Perhaps the event might also be structured with concrete activities and not just chitchat...

[Space and Place] Motility: a new capital

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Commuting from Lausanne to Geneva as usual, I read a very nice paper by Vincent Kauffman about the concept of motility:

this construct describes the potential and actual capacity of goods, information, or people to be mobile both geographically and socially. Three major features of motility – access, competence, and appropriation – are introduced. In this text, we focus on conceptual and theoretical contributions of motility. In addition, we suggest a number of possible empirical investigations.

Kaufmann, V., Bergma, M, and Joye D. (2004) Motility: mobility as capital, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Vol. 28, No 4, pp. 745-756

[Space and Place] Refuge wear: city outfi of the future?

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Refuge Wear is a project by Lucs Orta. She designed a kind-of urban armour:

In 1992, Lucy Orta began making a series of drawings entitled Refuge Wear as a response to situations of human distress and unsuitable social environments. She then fabricated a series of these temporary shelters that transformed into items of clothing and transport bags and gave them the generic term Body Architecture. The first in the series was named Habitent: a portable habitat catering for minimum personal comfort and mobility for the inhabitant. Further Refuge Wear prototypes were fabricated as personal environments in response to social condition and could convert according to need, necessity or urgency. Refuge Wear became synonymous for clothes and shelter in extreme conditions; they provided vital mobility and waterproof shelter for the Kurd refugee population; temporary protection and shelter for natural disasters such as the Kobe earthquake; mobile sleeping bags for the homeless; and immediate practical aids such as water reserves, integrated medical supplies and burial bags in an attempt to ameliorate the horrific hygiene problems of the Rwanda crisis (1994/95).


[Locative media] free-of-copyright street level maps of London

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Nice collaborative cartography project: UO Faculty of Cartography

We're making free-of-copyright street level maps of London, starting in the East End and working outwards. If you feel you need to know why, read our WhyLondonFreeMap document. We plan to rapidly develop evocative prototypes, working through Steps 1-3 below, and repeating, working outwards.
  1. Step 1 - Collect GPS data
  2. Step 2 - Normalise and Synthesise Data into Real Shapes
  3. Step 3 - Annotate Shapes with Real-World Semantics
  4. Step 4a - Annotate Completed Map with Civic and Historic Information
  5. Step 4b - Find Partner Organisations to Contribute to, and Back, the Project
  6. Step 5 - Give Everything Away

[Space and Place] Spatial structure of the network economy

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Yes, space matters...Mapping the Global Network Economy on the Basis of Air Passenger Transport Flows by F. Witlox*, L. Vereecken and B. Derudder

In this paper global air traffic data are used to attain an insight in the spatial structure of the network economy. The main emphasis is on identifying and mapping this network through the use of passenger transport flows. Our approach is unique in that for the first time a worldwide (i.e., truly global) perspective is taken because use is made of so-called MIDT data. This exceptional dataset contains information on global airline bookings and connections relating to more than half a billion passengers. The data reveal and confirm interesting global economic and political patterns, typifying the current globalized network economy.

[Space and Place] A glimpse of Lyon Light Festival

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Few pictures taken this week end at the Light Festival in Lyon, France. The pieces work showed here had been taken from the superflux exhibition in the 7th arrondissement. I am trying to put the names of the artists but it's hard to find from here. The third one is by Sanaz Azari (''poubelles lumineuses"). The fourth is by Severine Bonmartin, Amelie Cordier and Marie Faugnon.

[Space and Place] Architecture: interaction design

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Now that the candidate for the EPFL Learning Center is chosen, documents can be put on-line. Last year, I work with Pierre and David on interaction design scenarios and user personas. Basically the idea was to imagine the different potential 'users' of the building: students, teachers, phds and visitors. Then we envisioned their activities there during one day. The point was to show the architects what should be the building: a fruitful context to support learning, work as well as access to resources. The document can be found here (.pdf, in french).

[Space and Place] The Zahavi\'s hypothesis

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Very interesting notion: “Zahavi’s hypothesis”, i.e. the assertion that, independent of the conditions of passenger travel, individuals’ daily travel time budgets remain constant. An increase in travel speeds would then imply an increase in daily distances travelled, a less dense pattern of urbanisation and an increase in the problems of urban sprawl. While the costs of transport, and particularly time requirements for commuting, have impacts on urban form and city sizes, the statistical problems in the studies on Zahavi’s hypothesis and the lack of attention to what determines firms’ and households’ location choices do not allow immediate conclusions to be drawn on urban policies.
ZAHAVI Y., 1973, « The TT-relationship : a unified approach to transportation planning », Traffic engineering and control, pp. 205-212.

[Space and Place] The Zahavi's hypothesis

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Very interesting notion: “Zahavi’s hypothesis”, i.e. the assertion that, independent of the conditions of passenger travel, individuals’ daily travel time budgets remain constant. An increase in travel speeds would then imply an increase in daily distances travelled, a less dense pattern of urbanisation and an increase in the problems of urban sprawl. While the costs of transport, and particularly time requirements for commuting, have impacts on urban form and city sizes, the statistical problems in the studies on Zahavi’s hypothesis and the lack of attention to what determines firms’ and households’ location choices do not allow immediate conclusions to be drawn on urban policies.
ZAHAVI Y., 1973, « The TT-relationship : a unified approach to transportation planning », Traffic engineering and control, pp. 205-212.