PUBLIC MARKS with search citizen

Local Code : Real Estates uses geospatial analysis to identify thousands of publicly owned abandoned sites in major US cities, imagining this distributed, vacant landscape as a new urban system. Using parametric design, a landscape proposal for each site is tailored to local conditions, optimizing thermal and hydrological performance to enhance the whole city’s ecology—and relieving burdens on existing infrastructure. Local Code’s quantifiable effects on energy usage and stormwater remediation eradicate the need for more expensive, yet invisible, sewer and electrical upgrades. In addition, the project uses citizen participation to conceive a new, more public infrastructure as well —a robust network of urban greenways with tangible benefits to the health and safety of every citizen.

The City of Nanaimo is not alone in recognising this global need. The US Federal Government has recently committed to embrace OpenID to allow simple access to citizen resources (http://openid.net/government/). As of November 2008, there were over 500 million OpenIDs on the Internet and approximately 27,000 sites had integrated the OpenID standard*. (* see - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenID)

It starts by including citizen to elicit and describe the local dynamics and needs to feed the data analysis process of their city. They can create their own point of view with the ability to observe and capture their environment. This potential to capture, observe and replay the city echoes very well with the recent interest of some architects, urban planners and designers in unconventional data sources (e.g. beyond traditional surveys). But how does it integrate into the current practice? Is there a spot for some vernacularism? How can urban scouts and urban safaris communicate with practitioners and decision makers?

Michael Goodchild’s notion of Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) on the emergence of geographic data provided voluntarily by individuals, to discuss the greater presence of unvoluntarily generated geographic data. In the talk “Not So Volunteered Geographic Information“, I present my method to analysis these new kinds of citizen generated data, and use my work to discuss the induced opportunities, limitations and concerns.

The brochure is part of the new communication of the city of Tramelan which is given to every new citizen. It’s a collection of all important and basic information on the public life in Tramelan. A city map offers additional information as well as orientation guidance. The center part of the brochure retraces the history of the region.

This was preserved because the author had been Emperor. How much ancient wisdom was lost because the common Roman citizen lacked TCP/IP?

The 5th Montreal Citizen Summit is a social forum open to all and is based on the concept “The City We Want”. This event will take place from June 5-7, 2009 at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) and will be an opportunity for citizens and civil society practitioners to strengthen their ties in order to collectively organise social action initiatives. The Summit will also be the opportunity for citizens to learn and exchange on urban issues related to this year's themes: 1) Economy 2) Urban planning 3) Social justice, inclusion and citizenship 4) Environment 5) Democracy 6) Culture.

What would you say if I told you that there was a nation that was at the forefront of technology, an early adopter of ecommerce, leading the world in 3G mobile adoption, in wireless broadband, in wired broadband adoption, as well as in citizen-driven media. Sounds like an amazing place, right? Technology utopia?