Each week we will be focusing on blogs from around the world dealing specifically with urban environments. We’ll be on the lookout for websites outside the country that approach themes related to urban experiences and issues.
• Much of the digital infrastructure that surrounds us is invisible, yet it shapes our environment profoundly. A team of designers at the Institute of Design in the Oslo School of Architecture & Design and the BERG design firm in London have created a Light Painting WiFi Project to reveal the invisible internet ether. Using blinking lights which respond to WiFi signal strength, the team used long exposure photographs to make visible an immaterial component of the urban environment. (Singularity Hub)
• Attention cartography and urban history nerds: the New York Times has a great interactive map which allows users to compare John Randel’s 1811 proposed grid with modern day Manhattan.
• Those in need of a burst of spring colour may benefit from a look at BLDGBLOG‘s feature on the Arc en Ciel building in Bordeaux, France. While the building isn’t to everyone’s taste, the author offers a good reminder that sometimes reality improves upon the rendering.
•In the final installment of a three part series on improving public transit, Next American City identifies key opportunities to improve transit through real-time mobile information. Their suggestions? Make it easy to be good, foster collaboration between competitors, and integrate transit with other local information.
• While we often think of China as the bastion of economic growth, Grist speaks to the early signs of an unnervingly large real estate bubble in the People’s Republic. Massive commercial and residential real estate development in the service of promoting ever growing GDP figures has outstripped consumers’ needs and created an oversupply of “too big to fail” properties.
Image from Timo Arnall, Jorn Knutsen, Einar Sneve Martinussen, courtesy of Singularity Hub
Do you have a World Wide Wednesday worthy article you’d like to share? Send the link to www@spacing.ca
