Google Latitude As A Game
Recently Google released the official iPhone app for its location-service Latitude, which allows you to share your real-time location with friends, and also see theirs. It is an interesting and thought-provoking tool that brings a new boost to the world of ‘geo-social’ apps and games. Now it is the challenge to make it useful. Developers […]
World In A Shell: The Polliniferoused Container
Probably it is best to start off by asking what the World in a Shell installation is not? It’s just not yet flying, at least not by it’s own means, even though it looks like a spaceship. Besides that, the intervention by Blindpainters artist Hans Kalliwoda, whom some of you might know from the Europartrain […]
Streeeeeet Benches In Bat Yam
Our German colleagues of Rebel Art and Urban Shit report about a great piece of art called 'Streeeeeet Intervention'. The work was made by the Dutch Artist Vincent Wittenberg and Israeli/Australian artist Guy Köningstein for the International Biennale of Landscape Urbanism 2010 in Bat Yam, Israel. The installation is part of a series of works in which both artists explore the privatization of public space. During their explorations, the artists found out that, on the one hand, the borders of private and public spaces are not really tight and often quite flexible, while, on the other hand, formal rules of ownership are pretty straight. “Many residents do cross the border by claiming public or common space for their own private use. This behavior seems to be peacefully tolerated by the authorities and other residents.”
Prairie Home (Concert) Companion
Canada is a big place – and the nation has wrestled with the problem of small town isolation since its inception. The Canada Post itself was a major innovation in opening up rural communities to basic communication and consumer products previously only available in bigger cities. And several other initiatives have made access to essential […]
The First Dutch Sea Farm
Scientists at the Wageningen University in The Netherlands have announced to open the first Dutch sea farm in the region of Zeeland later this year. At the farm, that will be run by world’s first sea farmer Julia Wald, vegetables such as sea lettuce and sea weed will be produced. It consists of little floating […]
Top 10 Trends For 2011
Over the last year we have written articles about urban culture and innovation in cities on a daily basis. Reflecting on 2010 and looking into the new year, we have put together a Top 10 of the most remarkable trends that we spotted. We have deepened these out a little in a series of ten […]
Trend 1: Marketing Is Urbanism
In 2010 diverse campaigns broke the straight barrier between public space and brand promotion. Brand exposure goes beyond ordinary advertising and even one step further from guerrilla marketing — it has become an integral part of urbanism, urban planning. Since a growing number of governments have less money to spend, they need the financial support […]
Trend 2: Bloggers Are The New City-Branders
Most bloggers with an international audience write a lot about what happens in their home town — the place were they live and know about all the good stuff happening there. Doing so, they are great ambassadors of their city (most of the times unconsciously), and do a great job when it comes to promoting local […]
Trend 3: Do Good, Earn A Badge
Last year we showcased a number of projects, ideas and services that incorporate the concept of gamification — “the use of game play mechanics for non-game applications”, as Wikipedia describes it. The most prominent example among the location-based apps is undoubtedly Foursquare, the massively used check-in service that managed to hit 5 million users in 2010. Foursquare […]
Trend 4: Pop-Up Everywhere
Architects have to cope with a severe crisis due to the financial downfall. They have to find other projects to work on and broaden their professional scope. Temporary solutions and pop-up constructions have been built all over the globe. Each and every household product has been used to create little pavilions that often lack a […]
Trend 5: From Digital To Real
Many things happening in the digital space have a big impact on the physical. Specifically when it comes to urban art. Cursors pop up on urban squares and tweets are painted on walls and buildings. Over the last year(s) the Internet, and more specifically social media, have continuously inspired (street) artists to act in public […]
Trend 6: Everything Is A Coffee Bar
While Starbucks and other coffee companies are trying to colonize urban centers around the world with new shops, coffee culture itself has gone beyond the straightly designed hang-outs of the famous chains. We all know about the book stores that have a coffee bar inside, but relatively new are other urban shops, stores and services […]
Trend 7: The Reinvention Of The Wheel
Bikes become cooler and cooler in the world city of today. Adopted by hipsters as a sustainable, healthy and cool way of transport, we have seen bike shops, coffee bars and cafés pop up everywhere, such as Look Mum No Hands in London and the pop-up bars slash shops slash galleries Rapha’s Cycle Club and Lock 7 in […]
Trend 8: Location, Location, Location!
2010 was also the year of the definite breakthrough of the check-in. Foursquare, the most used location-based service, grew from 500,000 users in March to 5 million users in December. Predicts Mark Krynsky from Checkin Blog, “I, along with many others, feel that this will be one of the hottest sectors in tech over the […]
Trend 9: The Reinvention Of The Co-Op
The term 'co-op' and its principles are all over the Internet. It gives expression to a new trend in which people focus on working together instead of being in competition. In the game industry co-op games ask players to work together to create something fun, instead of killing other players. This tendency of working together has made a step from the Web to the urban space over the last years. People in cities around the world are looking for new ways to express their collective needs on a neighborhood level. One of the best examples of new forms of cooperative thinking in public areas are the urban agriculture initiatives. Groups of people reclaim public land and set up a co-op to organize costs and rewards. An appealing initiative is the Seattle Farm Co-Op, a community-based project supplying urban farmers in the Seattle area.
