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Airoots / Eirut is a multipolar blog that I annimate together with Rahul Srivastava, an Indian urbanology guru living between Mumbai and Goa. Oscilliating between imagination and dreamality, this blog is about adventitious roots, urban forests and villages, natural cities, lost tribes, new nomads, and everything in between and around. |
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NATIW (April 20-25, 2007) is a seminar and workshop on "Open Web 2.0" in Geneva, Switzerland: workshop on AJAX Javascript, DOJO, and Ruby on Rails. If that doesn't mean anything to you: go to the seminar on the wonderful world of "Web 2.0": open source, collective intelligence, architecture of participation, collaborative content production”, “rich users experience",“perpetual beta”, and "the hegemony of the amateur"! This is not just about your computer or mobile phone, but also about your virtual, real, indeed "virtureal", life. Come hear the digital prophecy! |
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Urban Typhoon (June
26-29, 2006) was a workshop about Shimokitazawa, one of the coolest neighborhoods
of Tokyo, which is now being threatened by a big development plan.
The government and private developers want
to make a 26 meter wide road right through the neighborhood, cutting
through historical streets (not destroyed during WW2). The workshop produced alternatives to the plan of the government
and a multimedia testimony to the unique spirit of Shimokitazawa.
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Ubiquitous City was a symposium organized at the University of Tokyo on June 28 2006, focusing on the potential of ubiquitous information technologies for public involvement and participatory planning. Taking an experimental approach, the symposium was directly connected to the Urban Typhoon workshop. Panelists included Shunya Yoshimi, Shin Mizukoshi, Yehuda Safran, Taro Igarashi, Yolande Daniels, Masami Kobayashi, Carla Leitao, Hiroya Tanaka, Pablo Corvalan, Masashige Motoe, and Kengo Nakajima. |
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i-Harlem:
Pepared for the Harlem Business Summit, New York City September 2005.
Harlem is probably the most famous inner-city in America.
Currently Harlem residents spend at the very least $100 million a year
for their telephone connection. With a Harlem-wide wireless internet network
all residents could have access to broadband internet and telephone for
less than half a million dollars a year. This is how. |
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Medina Market is a proposal for a
world-class street market in Bedford-Stuyvesant,
Brooklyn, New York. The idea is to use the
entrepreneurial
dynamism & cultural capital of
the people of Bed-Stuy to organize
a weekly international street market, which would become a major stage
for black culture in New York. We are currently looking
for partners to undertake a feasibility study. Design study by Vito
Baltus. |
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Bogota Urban
Lab is a website dedicated
to the city of Bogotá, which is a real laboratory for new
urban practice. Bogotá, capital city of Colombia, went from
being renown for corrupt governance and urban chaos to being a model
for visionary politics and progressive urban planning. Urbanists from
Bogotá and
elsewhere provided articles and images for this website. |
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Organicity
is a multidirectional study of the city as an organism. Rather than being
a parasite, the city can live in symbiosis with its natural environment
. This web project is the product of a sustainable development lab I coordinated
at Columbia. The lab was informally attached to a seminar taught by Thomas
Vietorisz. Thomas' future students will keep developing this site. |
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Bed-Stuy a.k.a. Bedford-Stuyvesant,
is a neighborhood in movement. In the last century it went from being
one of the most upscale area of Brooklyn, to being the biggest slum
in the US. Today Bed-Stuy is one of the most upcoming neighborhood in
New York City. This is a study of the impact of immigration on the economic
development of Bed-Stuy, with a focus on the informal economy, the real-estate
market, and gentrification. http://urbanology.org/BedStuy |
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Urbz is a database
of urban images, videos, texts, sound, and whatever else you want to upload.
It is all about sharing knowledge and networking with fellow city freaks.
It is still under development but you can already log on, create your
profile, upload and download images. Looking for sponsors / investors to take it where it should be. |
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Urbanist.org is a project I
proposed to the Urban Planning Program at Columbia University. The idea
was to create a multidisciplinary web review on "the city" with
contributions from students, professors, and practitioners. The project
did not go through then, but if you have money or time we could make it
happen. http://www.urbanist.org |
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Internet GIS
is a prototype for an Internet Geographical Information System integrating
maps, texts, statistical information, pictures, and movies. We designed
an interface allowing the user to navigate a multi-media database
on a specific location, in this case Time Square. Our idea was to
add interactivity and sources of information to a set of GIS maps.
The user can use the different features of the interface to obtain
different kind of information.
Collaboration with Jaime
Ortiz. http://urbanology.org/I_GIS |
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Nomades
is a media center based in Geneva Switzerland. In plus of opening the first cyber-cafe
and ICT training center we were hosting the wildest parties in the city,
from 1996 to 2001. We invited djs such as Keb Darge, dj Vadim, Mr Thing,
Mandrax, Crazy B, Jack de Marseilles, and more recently dj Diplo from Philli. We still organize parties once in a while to keep in shape.
The ICT training is definitively going on strong. http://www.nomades.ch |
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Penitentiary Urbanism
& Evasion Tactics: Politics of Space in the Ghetto. The institutional,
social, economic, and cultural pressure exercised on the ghetto increases
the need for spaces of decompression. If it was not for the wall on which
it stands the graffiti would not exist. http://www.urbanology.org/ENY |
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Ghetto Spaces are blind spots on the psycho-geographic map of the rest of population.
Like a brain, the city forgets and hides what it does not want to acknowledge.
Walking through East New York in Brooklyn can teach you a lot about the state of the
city. These are a drafts for a biggest, more comprehensive project to be
realized. http://www.urbanology.org/ghettospaces/index.html http://www.eastnewyork/home.swf |
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in process ...