Tokyo is one of those cities with a very outspoken and recognizable style. This becomes even more clear when you take a look at remarkable lights on the roof of its taxis. The Japanese capital is filled with these colorful expressions that give identity to each of the cabs. Lifestyle and travel blog Been Seen refers to the Takushi signs as a “passing parade of neon art”.
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Travelling isn’t cheap. Even after you’ve paid for your flight, there is still the challenge of finding an affordable hotel. Trying to find the balance between cheap and comfortable is an art in itself, but Swiss-made portable hotel room Hotello might just make our search a lot easier.
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In spring of 2008 we started a little blog with great ideas that make a change in cities. A lot has happened since. Now, five years we can’t let our fifth birthday go unnoticed. For that special occasion we’re hosting The Pop-Up City Live, an experimental event for urban innovators at De Brakke Grond in Amsterdam on Tuesday May 21st in which we will bring The Pop-Up City to life on stage!
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Seeing an opportunity to unite the wide-ranging efforts of urban farmers worldwide, CITIES Magazine and Trancity have published Farming the City: Food as a Tool for Today’s Urbanization. Farming the City’s mission is to link international activists and thinkers to increase their potential for positive impact on society, actively ‘joining the dots’ between independent initiatives around the world. Farming the City provides a platform for knowledge-sharing, motivation and inspiration for the diversity urban farmers worldwide.
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The world is slowly starting to speak a new language. It is not a language like the ones we know, but rather a way of understanding between everything and everyone in existence. With the rise of the Internet of Things, where practically everything has a built-in chip, it is important that all these devices are able to communicate clearly. As long as my smart thermostat cannot ‘talk’ with the automatic lock on my back door, there is still some ground to be covered. And that is exactly what MQTT is going to do.
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French design studio Faltazi has presented a highly flexible outdoor urinal that recycles the pee of festival visitors into usable compost. The so-called Uritonnoir is designed as an eco-friendly way for outdoor sanitation for those moments it’s most needed.
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The City of Dublin has launched plans for a new central City Library at Parnell Square. This new 21st century cultural hotspot will help launch the northern part of Dublin’s downtown as a new cultural quarter. In times of financial crisis it’s hard to find money for new public buildings, particularly in the cultural scene and in a city like Dublin. What’s interesting about this project, initiated by Dublin’s City Architect Ali Grehan, is that it is financially made possible by a group of philanthropists. They will pay to make the plans and have committed to raise funding for the execution of the whole project. Peter Collins is Managing Director at Kennedy Wilson Europe. He represents the group of philanthropists that will pay for the massive building. We spoke to him about the library and asked him about philanthropy in urbanism.
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The so-called Big Belly is a high-tech solar-powered trash can that automatically compacts trash and recycables, and sends city cleaners a notification when it’s full.
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During our two-week Blogger in Residency in Dublin earlier this month we discovered quite an innovative approach to urban planning and development that other cities around the globe could learn from. Several departments within the Irish capital’s City Council have adopted urban hacking and interventionism tactics as serious tools to improve public spaces.
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On top of the roof of the Chocolate Factory in Dublin, a remarkable rooftop farm is being planted. Following the example of other great urban rooftop farms around the world, the Chocolate Factory farm is completely modular, made from only recycled materials, and is based on the concept of composting. This way, the small scale farm that looks out over the city of Dublin integrates an entire food system, from waste to food, on one roof.
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