Digital Urban

Posts?

2009-07-06T10:08:00.002+01:00

Apologies for the last few days without posts, we have been unexpectedly out of town.

We will be back up and running tomorrow....

Lecturer A in Geographic Information Science (GIS): Birkbeck

2009-07-01T08:58:00.003+01:00

We have close ties with Geographic Information Science group over at Birbeck College, they are a great group and have just put a call out for a new lecturer:

School of Social Sciences, History and Philosophy

Department of Geography, Environment & Development Studies

Lecturer A in Geographic Information Science (GIS) Ref: 10275

Full time position, 3 years fixed term contract in the first instance

The Department of Geography is seeking to appoint a Lecturer in Geographic Information Science. We are looking for well-qualified candidates who have experience with GIS and competence in spatial statistics. An interest in programming is also desirable.

You should have a good first degree and a PhD in a relevant area, or be close to completion. Evidence of published research or exceptional potential is essential to this role. Teaching experience at degree level is also desirable.

Salary range: £33,501 rising to £38,376 per annum, inclusive of London Allowance.

This job is full time and fixed term for three years. The salary quoted above is inclusive of London allowance. The initial salary award will be dependent on the skills and experience of the successful applicant. The appointment may be subject to a probationary period of up to three years. Birkbeck also provides a generous final salary pension scheme, 31 days paid leave, flexible working arrangements and other great benefits.

The closing date for completed applications is Tuesday 22 July 2009.

Interviews are due to be held in the week commencing 3 August 2009.

Click here to apply for this post (Search using Ref No. 10275)

Birkbeck is an equal opportunities employer and encourages applications from all candidates irrespective of gender, ethnicity, age, disability, religious belief and sexual preference.

GPS Visualisation: Urban Art and Urban Cycles

2009-06-29T14:46:00.001+01:00

Urban cycle studies are the science of everyday life, they focus on the daily routine of the city with its habits and rhythms as they occur in most citizens' lifes. It is the power of the normal that brings stability and the routine that ensures security with the cycles dynamic flow and continuation that keeps the city ticking. This is from urbantick.blogspot.com who are looking into the life of the city.

As part of the research they are compiling a list of ways to visualise GPS data, complete with software links. Below is one such example, using GPS to create urban art:

GPS Art from gallo1 on Vimeo.

Head over to http://www.urbantick.blogspot.com/ for more examples and thoughts on using GPS to look at cycles in the city.

SketchUp: San Diego High Speed Rail Station

2009-06-29T11:44:00.001+01:00

For his spring quarter 3rd year design studio Josh Ayer was asked asked to design a long span high speed rail station. His concept, designed with SketchUp, was the form of dolphins being that the site was right on the bay of San Diego. We don't know what grade the work archived but we really liked the movie:

Of note the renders were produced using Kerkythea, a standalone renderer, using physically accurate materials and lights, allowing for high quality output - its is also free so well worth checking out.

Hull-ness? Opening the Debate Digitally on the Future of a Historic Town

2009-06-29T08:00:00.001+01:00

The future direction of towns and cities is often a controversial subject tackled traditionally by local councils, interest groups and developers via pubic meetings and exhibitions. The use of blogs, Flickr groups, tweets and forums by architectural centres and councils is limited to say the least which is why it'll be interesting to keep and eye on the developments at Arc in Hull in Northern England.

Arc is a CABE funded architecture centre that promotes excellence in the built environment by running professional and public learning programmes, exhibitions, debates etc and they have just started a blog looking at the future of Hull.

Hull is undergoing a major architectural facelift, but sometimes it looks like the developers are having an identity crisis; does Hull try to compete with other towns by creating a sprawl of high tech steel and glass buildings at the risk of turning the town into a generic contemporary city? This has started a debate about what is Hull-ness?

In a city that has an unfairly negative stereotype as the grimmest of grim northern towns Arc want to identify the unique social, cultural and architectural character that should be reflected in all new developments. The blog is at an early stage but there are plans to take the project to the local community and schools.

With the addition perhaps of a Flickr group for residents to take photos of the parts of Hull they like/don't like and use of other digital tools this could be the start of an interesting debate on the future of a historic town.

http://www.hullness.blogspot.com/ is worth keeping an eye on...

Image thanks to Jez.Atkinson on Flickr

'INFINITY' CITIZEN by WOW

2009-06-28T09:51:00.006+01:00

BASELWORLD 2009, the world's biggest and most essential event for the watch and jewelry industry, is being held from March 26 to April 2. 2009 in Basel, Switzerland. You wouldn't think it would be the place where you would fine one of the finest urban and architectural visualisations but take a look at the clip below:

Developed by WOW the movie was created to to enhance Citizen's booth at the week long event. The theme of the movie is infinite possibilities for the Eco- Drive, Citizen's new model in its range. WOW combined images and meanings of constant change and energy in Tokyo with the infinite possibilities of Eco- Drive allowing them to express how the energy of Tokyo dynamically circulates.

Music by Masato Hatanaka
http://www.hatanakamasato.net/

Thanks go to Roy of sfcomplex.org for dropping us a email on this one...

CGI Architectural Visualization: Alfredo Navarrete

2009-06-28T08:38:00.001+01:00

Perhaps the ultimate test of an architectural render is if it looks real or not. The ability to light, texture and create scenes that approach reality is an art in itself and in the movie below some of the renders come close to that 'is it real' point.

The movie was created by Alfredo Navarrete, aka enoch30 on YouTube.

City Timelapses: Tokyo and Yokohama

2009-06-27T07:45:00.000+01:00

The latest in our timelapse movies thread features Tokyo and Yokohama in Japan. Japan is one of the best places for timelapses in the world due to its vibrant nature and pace of the city that compliments timelapse photography:

Tokyo & Yokohama - A High Speed Journey from Andreas Doppelmayr on Vimeo.

Andreas Doppelmayr only had two nights to film the sequences, despite the tight schedule the result is a fascinating glimpse into the city in a manner that only timelapses can achieve.

See http://andreasdoppelmayr.squarespace.com/ for more examples.

Goodbye London by Luke Jackson

2009-06-27T00:01:00.001+01:00

We seriously love this one, not only is it a great track and based mainly around Camden - our bit of London Town - but it also features some neat animation, stop motion and camera tracking work. Luke Jackson's video for Goodbye London, written and directed by Murray John:

Goodbye London is taken from Luke's new album ...And Then Some

Stream:
Myspace http://www.myspace.com/luke_jackson

Download:
Bandcamp http://lukejackson.bandcamp.com/
itunes: http://tinyurl.com/lukeitunes

Samparkour: Parkour in São Paulo

2009-06-26T13:51:00.003+01:00

Samparkour is a short by Wiland Pinsdorf that reveals the city of São Paulo (Brazil) under the unique view of Parkour. Where people see obstacles, Zico Corrêa visualize new possibilities. Parkour (sometimes also abbreviated to PK) or l'art du déplacement (the art of movement) is both a discipline with the aim of moving from one point to another as smoothly, efficiently and quickly as possible using principally the abilities of the human body, but is also built on a philosophical premise, perhaps more similar to martial arts than to a sport such as gymnastics.

SAMPARKOUR from Wiland Pinsdorf on Vimeo.

The clip was shot in HD with 35mm lens adapter and while not strictly digital it provides a great view of the city and thus we thought well worthy of a post.

Lectureship available in Architecture Planning and Landscape at Newcastle

2009-06-26T11:53:00.002+01:00

A lectureship open to urban geographers, designers and planners is available in APL at Newcastle University in the UK the Global Urban Research Unit (GURU) http://www.ncl.ac.uk/guru.

Ref B239A (SAPL)
Faculty/Services Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences
Department School of Architecture, Planning & Landscape
Newcastle University, UK

Salary: £31,513 - £43,622 (with potential progression to £49,096)

Closing Date: 22 July 2009

The School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape http://www.apl.ncl.ac.uk is seeking to appoint a suitable qualified person from an academic background to be part of the academic team delivering the accredited planning programmes, related research and relevant consultancy.

The School welcomes all suitable applications but particularly from those with experience in one or more of the following: urban regeneration, spatial planning practice and theory, quantitative techniques/GIS.

Candidates wishing to discuss this post may contact:

John Pendlebury, Head of School on 0191 222 6810or by email: j.r.pendlebury@ncl.ac.uk
or Tim Townshend, Director of Planning and Urban Design, on 0191 222 7814 or by email: t.g.townshend@ncl.ac.uk

Full details are available from the Newacstle University job vacancy site:
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/vacancies/

Its quite a tempting job to be honest- talking of jobs, the closing date for the 7 positions working in CASA, 3 of which are directly with us here at digital urban, is Tuesday July 7th...

Parallel Tracking and Mapping on the iPhone: Augmented Reality App Development

2009-06-25T09:37:00.005+01:00

The porting of Augmented Reality to mobile devices has notable implications for data distribution and navigation in the city. Georg Klein, a post-doctoral research assistant in the Active Vision Group of the Oxford University Engineering Department, has posted his results developing 3D Augmented Reality (AR) on the iPhone. The clip details an adaptation of the parallel tracking and mapping system to an iPhone:

Georg notes that it still needs a lot of work - the camera's narrow field-of-view is problematic - but they can already make and track small maps. Of note is the use of the iPhone 3G rather than the 3GS with the built in compass see
http://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~gk for full details and past projects.

Thanks go to Greg Downing for the link, anyone interested in panoramas and 3d modelling techniques should take a look at his work via http://www.gregdowning.com/

See also Augmented Reality for Android: GIS in the City and Location Based Augmented Reality for Android: Enkin

Unique Animated Map Service from Viridian

2009-06-23T10:58:00.000+01:00

The movie below by Viridian was originally created as a talking point for their own site, the animated maps proved so popular that they have now become a bespoke mapping service for clients' websites and blogs.

We kind of like it - as a small animated map in the corner of a website or on a contact page we think its a neat idea.

See http://www.viridian-online.com/ for more details.

Trump Tower - SketchUp School Project

2009-06-23T09:34:00.003+01:00

One of the joys of SketchUp is the way it has moved architectural visualisation and design out of the studio and into the classroom at all levels, from primary to under grad the software has provided a quick and easy way to explore design.

The movie below is by a YouTube user known as tomcatinlovee, she used SketchUp as part of a school architecture project to design a new Trump Tower Hotel:

The music is Freestyler by the Bomfunk MC's which featured heavily on our playlist while writing up a few years back so nice to see it featured.

Book Review - Visioning and Visualization: People, Pixels, and Plans

2009-06-22T13:52:00.005+01:00

Visioning and Visualization: People, Pixels and Plans is based upon a series of workshops over the last five years at the Lincoln Institute.

Michael Kwartler and Gianni Longo document principles, techniques, and cases based on their professional experiences in developing sophisticated public involvement processes that are used to apply information technology to planning and design. They suggest ways that digital visualization tools can be integrated in a public process to present participants with clear choices and help them make informed planning decisions.

Evidence from communities throughout the country shows that public involvement supported by visualization leads to better plans and more livable places and communities. From the application of 3D Tools to the development of master planning initiatives the book, through its use of glossy images and well laid out text, illuminates the subject and provides a glimpse of the level of innovation used throughout the workshops.

Chapter 4 on Visual Simulation Tools, takes a more detailed look specific tools and their uses in planning, such as representing existing conditions, visualizing alternatives, and monitoring impacts. Exploring the use of Community Viz and various rendering techniques to communicate a sense of location and place to the local community it provides a guide to best practice. These issues are introduced in the context of the origins of geographical information systems, developments in computer-aided decision-making and a look at the principles of decision making in general.

It is all very well having these tools to hand; the key is in their implementation, as the authors state, a plan created with strong public involvement establishes the context for implementation in three important ways. Firstly, it articulates the values of the community, secondly it translates the values into an agreed-upon and preferred sense of place and finally it stimulates a sense of ownership for the plan, which in turn translates into support for its implementation.

A sense of ownership at any level of community planning is essential to ensure the public not only feel part of the planning process but also to feel as if their views are valued. Trust from communities is there to be earned and by introducing digital means the communication process can be eased with the ability to easily integrate the communities views into planning options in real-time.

The use of 3D GIS within a public environment is still far from the norm, especially in a UK context, indeed it could be argued that techniques to involve the public in the decision making process have declined in recent years. There is therefore a need for the lessons, through the case studies documented in this book, to be learned and built upon to ensure use the latest digital toolsets are used in new and interesting ways.

In a world of Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and others allowing communication and visualization with increasingly greater ease those involved in the planning process are perhaps more than ever in need of techniques to reach out to the public at large in an open way.

In short - we really liked it - see The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy for more info.

Time and Territory: Time Policies of the Cities - Papers

2009-06-22T13:37:00.005+01:00

The Barcelona Institute of Regional and Metropolitan Studies (Institut d'Estudis Regionals i Metropolitans de Barcelona) is an entity that merges academic and public administration interests in matters relating to the analysis of economy, society and territory of urban, metropolitan and regional environments in Catalonia.

Their 'Papers' collection (ISSN 1888-3621) has the aim of making the debate revolving around the problems and options of the Barcelona Metropolitan Region, which is at a decisive point of its development, reach a wide range of people and institutions that are interested in the future of this region. The content of 'Papers' encompasses a wide range of subjects, from expert's opinions and summaries of relevant investigations, all the way to texts and collections of data from diverse origin that are considered to be of reference value.

Of note is the latest edition online entitled Time and Territory: Time Policies of the Cities, the full edition can be download in both Catalan and English - note the English version is the final .pdf on the page containing a translation of all the papers.

Experimental Japan: Stop Motion

2009-06-22T09:58:00.006+01:00

Experimental Japan from Dave Lee on Vimeo.

Stop motion timelapse can be a very powerful way to communicate a city, director Davie Lee of davidleedop.com has used the technique to capture his return trip to Japan.

It is interesting how evocative of place a 41 second clip can be...

FullView Panoramic Camera: Google Tech Talk

2009-06-19T12:43:00.005+01:00

Panoramic and spherical-view cameras today are by and large one of three types:

1. A single camera with wide-angle optics, such as a fisheye lens or curved mirror;
2. Multiple cameras looking out directly in different directions; or
3. Multiple cameras looking out off flat mirrors, which is FullViews patented approach.

Whereas multiple cameras offer much higher resolution than any single camera, multiple cameras looking out directly are in general incapable of producing seamless, artifact-free and blur-free composite images no matter what, because of parallax. FullView evades parallax through its patented approach in which multiple cameras look out off flat mirrors such that all the cameras are effectively looking out in different directions but from the same single viewpoint. As a result, FullViews composite images, whether a video or still view panorama, and irrespective of their resolution, are always seamless, artifact-free and blur-free, and they provide much higher resolution than outwardly pointing cameras.

The Google Tech talk below by Vic Nalwa, President of FullView, is a must see for anyone interested in panoramic imagery:

See http://www.fullview.com/ for more technical details - pdf link

Urban Generator: The SLEUTH Model

2009-06-18T17:12:00.006+01:00

Sanna Iltanen from the EDGE Laboratory for Architecture and Urban Research (Tampere University of Technology) who is currently a visitor at our lab gave a talk the other day entitled "Experiments with SLEUTH-model". She discussed the SLEUTH model, the input data needed to initialize the model, its calibration and explored some simulation results from different land-use policies in the Helsinki and Turku city regions of Finland.

The SLEUTH model is a tightly coupled, modified cellular automaton model of urban growth (and other land class change) which has been applied to over 100 cities and regions over the last decade (click here to see some of them). For example, it has been used to explore future land use patterns under different policy scenarios in the Washington-Baltimore metropolitan area.

The name SLEUTH was derived from the simple image input requirements of the models: Slope, Land cover, Exclusion, Urbanization, Transportation, and Hillshade.NASA have also used the model to look at the growth of Washington. The model was applied to 23,700 square kilometers (9151 sq. miles) of the Washington-Baltimore metropolitan area. The initial aim was to simulate the impact of future policy scenarios on the area and Chesapeake Bay watershed.

You can download her Sanna's talk from here, thanks go to gisagents.blogspot.com for the info and background on the SLEUTH model.

Experimental Indoor Positioning Service: Nokia Kamppi

2009-06-17T17:21:00.004+01:00

Location is everything in terms of communicating data on our environment. GPS is all well and good but its not much use indoors or in urban canyons, as such the new experimental service by Nokia is interesting. The Nokia Kamppi trial is focused on about indoor positioning, and it is currently running at the Kamppi Shopping Center in Helsinki, Finland. Anyone inside the shopping center can access indoor maps, information and vouchers by going to kamppi.nokia.mobi using any mobile browser. The indoor positioning functionality, however, is only available on Nokia S60 devices equipped with Wireless LAN.

Key features:

* Unique indoor positioning capability for locating shops, restaurants and friends
* Option to share your location with friends by SMS (the SMS contains a link to the indoor map and details of your location)
* Ability to search for friends nearby and view their position on the map
* Easy access to Kamppi Shopping Center information and discount vouchers

Compatibility and system requirements

The actual trial takes place in Kamppi shopping center in Helsinki Finland, but anyone in the world can access the mobile site at kamppi.nokia.mobi.

Such experiments are beginning to make us feel connected to the city - see our previous post on Connected to the World but not the City - things are changing, escpecially in light of the launch of Layar on Android phones.

du on Flickr

2009-06-17T15:53:00.006+01:00

We have been rummaging around Flickr this afternoon for various reasons and we thought we would use their embed tool to share some of our images:

We also have an open Digital Urban group allowing readers to share their urban related images - embedded below are the images submitted so far:

You can join our group and share your images on the blog via http://www.flickr.com/groups/digitalurban/

The Sims 3: Building a House

2009-06-17T12:24:00.006+01:00

The Sims 3 is a strategic life simulation game engine in the popular and critically acclaimed The Sims franchise, originally created by Maxis. The Sims 3 allows players to seamlessly explore the world outside their homes with every lot synched to the main neighborhood time. As ever with the Sims series it is focused on building up your own section of the simulation with the ability to construct your own house. LuigiRules has uploaded an intriguing two part guide to creating a house in the Sims 3:

Part 1

Part 2

We really like the ability of anyone to unleash their inner architectural skills in the Sims 3, below is SimsAustrias first house build:

Simulation games are becoming increasingly sophisticated and the Sims 3 deserves a closer look in terms of the structure, the intelligence behind the simulation and the ability to design and build complex architectural structures.

Worlds First Mobile Augmented Reality for Android: GIS in the City

2009-06-17T10:54:00.009+01:00

Combine GIS with mobile devices equipped with a digital compass and GPS and what do you get? Datascapes that can be mapped and layered on top of any object in the city, the potential for moving GIS and locational based services direct into the field is to be honest huge and now the first service has launched in the Netherlands via SPRXmobile. Known as Layar, it is the worlds first mobile Augmented Reality browser, which displays real time digital information on top of reality (of) in the camera screen of the mobile phone.

While looking through the phone’s camera lens, a user can see houses for sale, popular bars and shops, jobs, healthcare providers and ATMs. The first country to launch Layar is The Netherlands. Launching partners are local market leaders ING (bank), funda (realty website), Hyves (social network), Tempo-team (temp agency) and Zekur.nl (healthcare provider).

How it works

Layar is derived from location based services and works on mobile phones that include a camera, GPS and a compass. Layar is first avaliable for handsets with the Android operating system (the G1 and HTC Magic). It works as follows: Starting up the Layar application automatically activates the camera. The embedded GPS automatically knows the location of the phone and the compass determines in which direction the phone is facing. Each partner provides a set of location coordinates with relevant information which forms a digital layer. By tapping the side of the screen the user easily switches between layers. This makes Layar a new type of browser which combines digital and reality, which offers an augmented view of the world.

ARhrrrr! Augmented Reality Mobile Phone Gaming

2009-06-17T10:20:00.009+01:00

ARhrrrr is an augmented reality shooter for mobile camera-phones from the Augmented Environments Lab. The phone provides a window into a 3d town overrun with zombies. Point the camera at our special game map to mix virtual and real world content. Civilians are trapped in the town, and must escape before the zombies eat them! From your vantage point in a helicopter overhead, you must shoot the zombies to clear the path for the civilians to get out. Watch out though as the zombies will fight back, throwing bloody organs to bring down your copter. Move the phone quickly to dodge them. You can also use Skittles as tangible inputs to the game, placing one on the board and shooting it to trigger an explosion:

By merging graphics with props in the physical world, handheld Augmented Reality games pull the player through the small screen and into a larger merged play-space. Take a look at the project page for more info...

If you want to start experimenting yourself see our Quick and Easy Augmented Reality Tutorial.

Thanks go to Marek for sending us the link via Engadget.

Google SketchUp Tips and Tricks: Scaling from a Photo

2009-06-16T15:20:00.003+01:00

Today has been taken up by wordpress and a new photogrammetry project - more on that in later posts - but talking about photogrammetry the movie above by concept3Dmodeling is a good 3d modelling tip for finding out the height of a building using SketchUp.

Thanks go to http://www.concept3d.com for uploading the movie, their YouTube channel is well worth a look.