Tagcities

Not a Crime

not a crime

Not a Crime: “A series of billboards featuring local graffiti artists will be on display for one year in Portland, Oregon.”

Seven riddles suggest a secret city beneath Tokyo

Japan Times reports:

He has a great story — evidence of a network of tunnels and possibly an underground city beneath Tokyo that the public is totally unaware of. “Why am I ignored? Can I be on to something, and there is a conspiracy to silence me? I believe so.”

Full Story: Japan Times: Seven riddles suggest a secret city beneath Tokyo

Google wants to know where you are

Business 2.0 speculates that Google may be readying a free wifi program. Sounds cool, but: “Google’s interest in Feeva likely stems from the startup’s proprietary technology, which can determine the location of every Wi-Fi user and would allow Google to serve up advertising and maps based on real-time data.”

A number of people, notably Abe, have been concerned with Google’s emerging “big brother” status for quite some time. I’ll be the first to admit that geolocative advertising would be useful to both businesses and consumers… but I also have to admit that yes, things are getting scary.

Could this work like Dodgeball as well? Search for your friends, pull up their location on Google Maps? Now’s the time to check out Headmap if you haven’t… this stuff’s finally happening.

Prisoners to design own jail

Hmmm…

The scheme was initiated by Rideout (Creative Arts for Rehabiliation), a company that promotes the arts within the prison system. Co-director Chris Johnston says its aim is “to influence the decisions that are made about prison architecture and design, which almost always relegate education provision to a low priority and the role of the arts even lower.”

Full Story: The Guardian: Prisoners to design own jail

Apprently it’s “purely conceptual” with the prisoners only building models of otheir projects at the end… but the idea of engaging prisoners in a different way is facinating. This will no doubt raise questions about prisoners being treated too well, etc. But if it helps keep these people from coming back to prison, why not?

(via Cool Hunting)

Basic priniciples from Japanese Design Solutions for Compact Living

Basic principles from Michael Freeman’s Space : Japanese Design Solutions for Compact Living:

1. Enjoy – somethings should be small (ie tea ceremony rooms)

2. Maximize – partition, compartmentalize. Multiple levels. Temporal partitions.

3. Compress

4. Open – remove partitions.

5. Conceal – multifuntional design elements.

Probably useful strategies for designing anything compact

Drive through shopping centers planned for 2005

Xeni Jardin says “One less reason for America to get up off of its increasingly fat ass!” *sigh*

Among the more than 17 classifications of products and services that AutoCart said it will offer at the proposed supercenters are grocery, pharmacy, banking, movie and game rental, bakery, office supplies, florists, photography development, dry cleaning, liquor, and lottery sales.

I have to admit this does sound convenient.

Read all about it here

See also: Exporting Exurbia.

Designing Black Rock City

The “urban design” of a temporary autonomous zone.

Burning Man: Evolution of Black Rock City.

Superheros and the City

Guardian book review of Matters of Gravity:

His final chapter is the best: a reading of superheroes in their various urban environments that is studded with lovely aperçus. Bukatman draws an analogy between the 1811 imposition of Manhattan’s grid street system and the rectilinear layout of traditional comic strips which was subsequently exploded and dissolved for artistic effect. The strange fact that superheroes always live in big cities persuades him that the liberating sight of Superman flying, Spider-Man swinging or Batman leaping through the skylines is again an attempt to domesticate the dehumanised concrete sprawl. Superman, Bukatman says, “represented, in 1938, a kind of Corbusierian ideal. Superman has X-ray vision: walls become permeable, transparent. Through his benign, controlled authority, Superman renders the city open, modernist and democratic; he furthers a sense that Le Corbusier described in 1925, namely, that ‘Everything is known to us’.”

(via City of Sound)

Interview with magick author Christopher Penczak

Saw City Magick mentioned on LVX23 and ended up finding this on google:

Another Moon: Christopher Penczak interview

Tearing down Moscow

This is a series of articles examining the crisis facing Moscow’s historical buildings, the effects it is having on local communities, the activists fighting the changes and ideas from experts on how the design and planning of the city could be improved.

(via Things magazine)

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