Exclusives
BLOG POST
A Mobile Marketing Ecosystem?
Will the new urban ecosystem be wireless? And if so, will corporate American own this new ecosystem?<br /> <br /> That's the fascinating point Jeffrey Chester makes in his new article, "The Dangers of Corporate Wi-Fi", published on TheNation.com and distributed through <a href="http://www.alternet.org/story/34018/">AlterNet</a>. Chester argues that there's no such thing as a free wireless lunch:<br /> <br /> <blockquote>"Consumers and public officials should have no illusions that what is being touted as a public benefit is also designed to spur the growth of a mobile marketing ecosystem, an emerging field of electronic commerce that is expected to generate huge revenues for Google, Microsoft, AT&T and many others. Soon, wherever we wander, a ubiquitous online environment will follow us with ads and information dovetailed to our interests and our geographic location."</blockquote>
BLOG POST
Making Better Fake Cities
If you follow the entertainment/business news, you know that <a href="http://corporate.disney.go.com/index.html">Disney</a> <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4642116.stm">bought</a> <a href="http://www.pixar.com/">Pixar</a>, the digital animation company that made <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114709/?fr=c2l0ZT1kZnx0dD0xfGZiPXV8cG49MHxrdz0xfHNvdXJjZWlkPW1vemlsbGEtc2VhcmNofHE9dG95IHN0b3J5fGZ0PTF8bXg9MjB8bG09NTAwfGNvPTF8aHRtbD0xfG5tPTE_;fc=1;ft=23;fm=1"><em>Toy Story</em></a>, among other great movies.
BLOG POST
A Tricorder for Mapping Geeks
<a href="http://www.surveylab.co.nz/What_is_ike.html">This</a> is cool, right? A gadget called ike that combines "an array of different sensors, e.g. GPS, Laser Distance Meter, Compass, Camera and operating software into a rugged hand held mobile device, for rapid data capture." Not so useful for a desk jockey like me, but talk about going off to find yourself....<br /> <br /> Via <a href="http://pruned.blogspot.com/2006/03/prunings-xix.html">Pruned</a>
FEATURE
Top Ten Planning Issues Of 2005
From eminent domain to "condofication", Planetizen editors outline the top 10 planning issues from 2005.
BLOG POST
urban teasers
From Pew / Internet: "A new survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project finds that 45% of online American adults have taken virtual tours of another location online. That represents 54 million adults who have used the internet to venture somewhere else. On a typical day, more than two million people are using the internet to take a virtual tour."<br /> <br /> The need to represent urban areas on-line is greater than ever, especially when we consider the impact a movie can have on a City (The Sixth Sense is Philadelphia's best example of a tourist 'push' after release).
BLOG POST
public tech art
I'm finding this a bit late but i really like some of the projects and their potential for further exploration. "<a href="http://www.spectropolis.info/index.php">Spectropolis</a> Mobile Media, Art and the City is a three-day event (October 1-3, 2004) in Lower Manhattan that highlights the diverse ways artists, technical innovators and activists are using communication technologies to generate urban experiences and public voice. The increasing presence of mobile communication technologies is transforming the ways we live, construct and move through our built environment.
BLOG POST
Clean Air, Open Code
<img src="http://www.arb.ca.gov/images/arbheader1.gif" align="right" WIDTH="200" alt="California Air Resources Board" />I was interested to find <a href="http://www.madpenguin.org/cms/html/62/6296.html">this interview</a> with Bill Welt, the Chief Information Officer of the<a href="http://www.arb.ca.gov/homepage.htm">California Air Resources Board</a> (ARB), discussing with ARB is increasingly building models and applications using Open Source software. The interview appears on the <a href="http://www.madpenguin.org/">Mad Penguin</a>
BLOG POST
All Play and No Work for Jack Makes Jill a Better Planner
Several years ago I was with a group of people who decided to approach the makers of SimCity to see if we could convince them to develop a similar but more credible tool for planners, enabling towns and their residents to look at real planning challenges and experiment with different scenarios in their own community. The response was a solid "no, we're not interested, we're interested in making games.â€<br /> <br /> Can't blame them, considering the market for gamers is easily a thousand-fold greater than that for serious minded planners (not to mention realistic planning tools need real data to run credible analysis; imaginary cities don't).
BLOG POST
Top 8 Planning Technologies, 2006
<img src="http://www.planetizen.com/tech/files//20060224cssbccog.jpg" align="right" alt='Online Impact Analysis' />Thanks to a kind invitation from <a href="http://www.siembab.com/">Wally Siembab</a> to present at the well-attended<a href="http://www.southbaycities.org/"><strong>South Bay Cities Council of Governments</strong></a>' Seventh Annual General Assembly, I had the opportunity to unveil my annual list of the top technologies for planning.<br /> <br /> I briefly presented each of the top eight technology tools, and then provide one or more examples of each.
BLOG POST
Shouting out to a New City Site
<img src='http://www.planetizen.com/tech/files//CasitasGeo.jpg' width='300' align='right' alt='Mexican burbs' />My link-fu is strong. Please welcome to the Web <a href="http://burbmag.blogspot.com/">Burb</a>, a site dedicated to suburbs and New Suburbanism. From the manifesto:<br /> <br /> <br /> <blockquote>The suburbs, in short, are the American mainstream. Our major writers, dating back to Updike and Cheever, have focused on decoding suburban life, and today Richard Ford, Chang Rae Lee, Rick Moody and others continue that work. Suburban megachurches are the engine of American Protestantism. Eminem is a suburban boy, and a suburban phenomenon, as are the "soccer moms†and "soccer dads†fought over in the last few elections.<br /> <br /> Yet for those who live there, the suburbs can be a bewildering place. Urbanites who have moved out for more space and better schools gaze out the kitchen window into their new garden paradise and ask, "Now what?†Children of the suburbs return to find their sleepy burbs utterly transformed by commercialization. Those on rural routes watch in dismay as farms and tiny towns are supplanted by mass developments and strip malls. All of these people have common problems and solutions, from commuting to child care to what to put on the side of a house. Burb is for all of them.<br /> <br /> We talk about "the suburbs†as a state of mind, but only now have real connections begun to be made among the suburbs of even a single city, never mind nationally. Burb is proposed as a place where mutual recognition and the single purpose that comes from it might be achieved.</blockquote>
Heyer Gruel & Associates PA
JM Goldson LLC
Custer County Colorado
City of Camden Redevelopment Agency
City of Astoria
Transportation Research & Education Center (TREC) at Portland State University
Jefferson Parish Government
Camden Redevelopment Agency
City of Claremont
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