Whereas these top-down projects are struggling, some existing cities are getting smarter from the bottom up. Amsterdam is considered to be a leader of the pack. Instead of coming up with a master plan, it has put together what officials call a “smart-city platform”: a combination of institutions and infrastructure that helps businesses and citizens develop and test green projects. The initiative’s website lists 30 projects, ranging from installing smart meters to connecting ships to the electricity grid so that they no longer have to use diesel generators when berthed in the city’s port. Other ideas include something called “Climate Street”, which aims to reduce the energy use of an entire shopping street, and a new superfast fibre-optic network. (via International: Mining the urban data | The Economist)
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Whereas these top-down projects are struggling, some existing cities are getting smarter from the bottom up. Amsterdam is considered to be a leader of the pack. Instead of coming up with a master plan, it has put together what officials call a “smart-city platform”: a combination of institutions and infrastructure that helps businesses and citizens develop and test green projects. The initiative’s website lists 30 projects, ranging from installing smart meters to connecting ships to the electricity grid so that they no longer have to use diesel generators when berthed in the city’s port. Other ideas include something called “Climate Street”, which aims to reduce the energy use of an entire shopping street, and a new superfast fibre-optic network. (via International: Mining the urban data | The Economist)

Source: economist.com

Visible Cities #12 Dawn of the Drones

It was impossible this year to open a newspaper or watch the news without seeing them: Drones. The unmanned airplanes are no longer only deployed by the US Army in Pakistan to ‘silently kill’ but are appearing in cities around the world as they did with the London olympics.

What does the rise of drones mean for the citizens of cities? What are the moral implications of robot warfare? And what applications can designers, companies and governments find for the wellfare of the future?

We will talk about these questions at Visible Cities #12, Dawn of the Drones and invite you to be part of our discussion.

With Lars Anderson, Ruben Pater, Juha van ‘t Zelfde, Boris van Hoytema and others.

10 October 2012, 20:00 at de Verdieping/Trouw. Wibautstraat 127 Amsterdam. Door €5

RSVP on Facebook

Source: facebook.com

Visible Cities #11 - the robot-readable world

VISIBLE CITIES #11: the robot-readable world

Guests:
MATT JONES (BERG, LONDON) http://berglondon.com/ *
MATT COTTAM (TELLART, AMSTERDAM) http://tellart.com/
ERIK VAN DER ZEE (GEODAN, AMSTERDAM) http://geodan.nl/

Host:
JUHA VAN ‘T ZELFDE (VURB, AMSTERDAM) http://vurb.eu/

* Unfortunately Matt Jones has missed his flight and will not be present. Instead, we will show a video of his presentation, and we will ask him questions afterwards via Skype.

“We’re the ones making the robots, shaping their senses, and the objects and environments they relate to.” Matt Jones
http://berglondon.com/blog/2011/08/03/the-robot-readable-world/

Visible Cities, the long-running evening (since 2009) on cities in the age of ubiquitous networks, is back in De Verdieping.

On this 11th edition we will look at the the emerging presence of autonomous objects, pattern recognition software, and algorithms that command vehicles and control traffic systems without human interference.

Guests on this edition are Matt Jones and Matt Cottam. Matt Jones is a Principal at BERG and has been delivering digital products and services since 1995. He was creative director for the launch version of the BAFTA award-winning BBC News Online. Between 2003-2005 he worked at Nokia on areas as diverse as RFID/NFC applications of tangible/physical interfaces and the human universal experience of play. From 2005-2007 he was director of user-experience design for Nokia’s Nseries range within Nokia Design. In early 2007 he co-founded and designed Dopplr.com, which grew into an influential and popular start-up travel service, before being sold to Nokia in the autumn of 2009. The title for tonight’s Visible Cities comes from his infamous talk and blog post on the subject.

Our other guest is Matt Cottam. As Tellart’s CEO, Matt provides inspiration and strategic direction for the company through active involvement in conferences, workshops, academic teaching, and industry projects worldwide.

Since co-founding Tellart in 1999, Matt has become an internationally recognized lecturer at prestigious venues such as Google Tech Talks, the d.school at Stanford University, ETech (O’Reilly Emerging Technologies), Future Technologies Research Summit at Intel, PICNIC, SIGCHI, IDSA/ICSID, Designing User Experience (DUX), Quantified Self, Fab Lab International Conference, IxDA, LIFT, and many more. He has directed projects and strategy for clients such as Google, Nokia Design, Humana Inc., and Otis Elevator.

Always an educator, Matt has been teaching studio courses at Rhode Island School of Design since 1999, and is currently an Adjunct Professor at Umeå Institute of Design (UID, Sweden) and a Visiting Faculty at Copenhagen Institute for Interaction Design (CIID, Denmark). Matt has also been a visiting lecturer at Oslo School of Architecture and Design (AHO, Norway), The Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA, China), and The Technical University Delft (TU/Delft, The Netherlands).

Erik van der Zee is geo-IT architect and consultant at Geodan (http://www.geodan.nl/), a Netherlands-based system integrator developing and implementing geographical solutions. With more than a decade of consulting experience spanning several sectors including Security & Public Safety, Transport, Water Management, Environment and Energy, Erik was instrumental into bringing to life several major IT infrastructure projects, including the Dutch National Geospatial Data Infrastructure System, the Dutch National Crisis Management System, Dutch National Subsidy System for Nature- and Landscape Preservation and the i-Bridge innovation platform for crisis management and defence.

He consults widely with clients ranging from Government (ministries, provinces, waterboards and public safety organizations) to large technology corporations like Shell, as well as collaborates in projects with ESRI, Oracle, Microsoft, CapGemini, KPN a.o. He has a particular interest in turning innovative technology like service and event driven architectures, sensor and mesh networks and the internet of things into new business concepts and making them reality. 

Van der Zee holds a M.Sc. degree in Geography & Information Systems from Utrecht University and a M.Sc. degree in Economics from Enschede Saxion University

Visible Cities is organised by VURB, in collaboration with De Verdieping and Stad-Forum. It is made possible with generous support from the Amsterdamse Fonds voor de Kunt and the Stimuleringsfonds voor de Architectuur.

De Verdieping, start 20.15, entrance 5 euro
Wibautstraat 127 

http://www.verdieping.org/
http://visiblecities.eu/
http://vurb.eu/

The continuous partial everywhere: The aspatial city

“Peer-to-peer sharing in a talent-based information economy was the theme running through the talk by Juha van’t Zelfde from vurb, underpinned by thinking around the new atemporal, aspatial, ‘new kind of sensibility… senseable’ world that we inhabit.” Guardian

“In contemporary practice, I guess this Vurb verbiage from FutureEverywhere boils down to “my pocket keeps beeping all the time,” but, well, of course in a network society you can take everyone you know and everyone you own, and scatter them across the planet’s surface. Especially if they already did that with you.” Bruce Sterling, Wired

juhavantzelfde:


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