Sense of the City Contest

Where has partnered with new travel and exploration site NextStop.com to bring you, our wonderful readers, the Sense of the City contest. Check out the contest page and use NextStop's super-intuitive site to create a tour of your city to enter. The contest will last for two weeks from today, and can be accessed easily during that time by clicking on the big fancy link at the top of the right sidebar at Where's homepage. The winner (to be determined by a public poll) will be announced on Thursday, May 14th, and will receive a $50 Visa Gift Card. So check out the prompt below, and get to work! We're looking forward to seeing what you come up with.

What defines your city's sense of place? The way that a city makes you feel is determined by so many things -- that's why the same city, or even the same neighborhood, can mean so many things to so many people. Where is hosting this contest to give you a chance to communicate how your city makes you feel, and why. Tell us about the places -- neighborhoods, public spaces, transit stops, buildings, businesses, whatever! -- that capture what your city is all about.

Three Short Urban Navigation Blogedankens

No prizes this time, but I do encourage you to leave comments if these exercises lead to any interesting answers...or more interesting questions. Click the links to see the inspiration for each thought experiment.


Blogedanken #1: Imagine that your city were like Venice; where would the Grand Canal be located? What streets would remain streets, and what ones would be sunken to form the city's canal network? Create a corresponding map. Does this map tell you anything about transportation and infrastructure networks in your city? How could such a map be used to plan transit lines, or a park system?


Blogedanken #2: If someone asked you to write a guide to your city for visitors that didn't want the tourist experience, where would you send them? Determine 5-10 places and/or experiences that you consider essential for the un-tourist in your city. Now create a walking-tour route that connects these spots in a way that creates a meaningful way -- a way that can direct the visitor's interpretation of your city. Compare your route to a map in a typical tourist guide. How do the two differ? What does this tell you about the way that you have experienced the city, yourself? What has your city taught you?


Blogedanken #3: Cities are very much about paths. Numerous networks of people, information, and physical infrastructure create a massive web often referred to as the urban fabric. Almost every city has one or two once-crucial cords in this web that have faded from prominence, or even disappeared completely. Imagine that you are creating a virtual guide, using GPS and voice recordings, to one of these defunct lines in your city. How have the areas around this forgotten path adapted since its decline? If they have not adapted particularly well, speculate as to why that might be. Based on what need the path and its surrounding infrastructure originally served, what currently vibrant paths through your city could become deserted or forgotten in the future? How might this be averted?

(Photo from Flickr user Damiel. The original full-color version can be viewed by clicking the photo.)

The Next Street Art

Say there was a place that had some special meaning to you. It could be the alcove where you had your first kiss, the alley where you were mugged, the square where you participated in an important rally, or the location of an historic uprising. Good or bad, we all infuse places with our memories. This is what makes physical places so powerful, and why peoples' opinions and experiences of the same place can be vastly different. Places are what people make of them. Now, technology could be making it easier for tech-savvy street artists to etch their own experiences and opinions onto physical places, communicating the artists' own sense of a place to others who pass through it.

Barcodes are most commonly used in retail environments, but their size and informational storage capacities make them ripe for adaptation for more inventive uses. In Japan, barcodes are now being applied to gravestones to store and transmit information, when scanned, about the deceased. The idea here is that family members will, through videos, photos, and stories, be able to reconnect with the deceased in a less mournful, more celebratory way. Imagine "a sort of gravestone based, family fueled, wiki of the dead."

This technology could easily be used in public spaces to represent a political viewpoint or a historical event. Imagine walking down a street for the first time and noticing a bright green barcode sticker affixed to the facade of a building. Using a scanner-enabled mobile device, you could access a website loaded with the history of the building site, or a series of short stories about the surrounding blocks, or photos of a lifechanging event that a stranger experienced in the very spot where you are standing. Reading or viewing material like this would give the place a new gravitas, and would change your perception of what might otherwise be a mundane stretch of asphalt and brick.

RFID tags are another method of remote-storing information that, thanks to increased range, provide the opportunity for a bit more mischief. With the technological know-how, a clever street artist could program a chip to send a text message or photo to any wi-fi enabled mobile device passing by. Imagine again: you're walking down a street and you pass a hidden RFID tag; your phone rings. You answer. An audio recording plays, recounting a woman's personal account of a riot that took place across the street a decade earlier. Later, walking through a park, your text alert sounds. You open the message to find a set of coordinates and the time of an upcoming event, perhaps a flash mob or a constructive riot. Or, perhaps, a photo of the view from the very place that you are standing, hyperlinked to a database of stories and photos of places around the city (along the lines of Invincible Cities, linked below).

While they would only be accessible to those with the proper devices to read the information that they stored, RFID tags and barcodes have distinct advantages over more traditional forms of street art like posters, graffiti tags, and murals. For one thing, they are smaller, and less intrusive. While this could be seen as a weakness (especially for barcodes, which require direct interaction), it is also a strength in that RFID tags and barcodes are less likely to prompt their own removal than more readily noticeable artistic interventions. These tiny storage units can also provide more vivid, personalized accounts of events or viewpoints, and have the potential to be more impactful on their viewers.

RFID and barcode street art has the potential to turn the urban environment into a virtual minefield of information. While the potential for abuse by malicious hackers or marketing drones is there, the idea of being able to literally "tag" a place with multimedia information is an exciting one. Perhaps it's already being done. Anyone know of some examples?

(Photo from Flickr user cloverst. The original full-color version can be viewed by clicking the photo.)


Links:
Barcodes on tombs to connect with the dead (The Inquirer)

Invincible Cities (Thanks, Pete!)

W(e are )here

The following post contains the introduction that this blogger wrote for the W(e are )here show, which opens today at the Intermedia Arts Gallery in Minneapolis. The show is being curated by the founders of Solutions Twin Cities, one of whom happens to be Mr. Colin Kloecker of BLYGAD fame. If you're going to be around the Cities at all between now and May 9th, 2008, do stop by and take a look. For more information, see the link at the bottom of the post.

------------------
During the Age of Discovery, great explorers crisscrossed the planet in search of uncharted territory. They left a visual legacy in the maps that recorded their journeys, and with each new discovery, mankind's knowledge of Earth grew. One can only imagine how thrilling it must have been to live in a world that was seemingly growing larger by the day. The very concept of "where" -- humanity's understanding of our relationship to the world around us -- was expanding.

Today, the internet revolution has democratized exploration in ways that Columbus and Magellan could never have imagined: everyone has become an explorer. New cartographers are adding their personal explorations to existing maps and creating new records of their own experiences. If that which is observed is inherently altered, it follows that a person's experience of a place directly changes the place itself; places are what people believe them to be. That means that today's maps are about much more than hills, valleys, rivers, and roads. Maps have become tools for examining the emotional, sociological, and philosophical aspects of the human experience.

The concept of "where" is changing once again, expanding to include increasingly minute and varied facets of our world. The ever-ephemeral sense of place is created by human interaction with the physical world. Maps have always charted changing systems, but in the internet age the more intense focus on the hyperlocal has sped up the rate at which cartographers work. Slower-moving features of the planet -- shifting continents, growing cities, and eroding shorelines -- have already been adequately mapped; places are now being recorded as they exist for short periods of time. New maps record what could be termed the "hypercurrent."

Within this gallery, you will find a sampling of how cartography is being redefined by this change in scale. Whether recording a tiny patch of previously unremarkable forest floor down to the tiniest twig and blade of grass, reorganizing the contents of the Bible to visualize cross-references and social relationships, or taking a fresh look at urban growth by examining the construction date of houses currently on the market, today's cartographers are rethinking how the world around us is recorded and represented to assert the fact that we are here. This new breed of explorer is taking the impersonal maps and graphs of yesterday and making them deeply personal.

Welcome to the New Age of Discovery.
Where is expanding. W(e are )here.


Links:
W(e are )here (Intermedia Arts)

Solutions Twin Cities

Blog Like You Give a Damn

The Linkdump

NaNoWriMo 2007 is officially over! Congrats to all of the participants around the world who made it past the 50,000 word mark before midnight last night. As for me, I crossed the finish line around 11:30pm. Now I'm trying to catch up on my reading from the past month. Here's a quick jolt of urbanism for all you lazy folks spending Sunday in bed with a laptop and a latte. Happy December, everybody!

Contemporary World Tour goes to Brasilia {} dezeen scopes out the Wind Dam {} The difference between community and "associations, citizen committees and commissions" {} Coney Island wasn't broke, but they fixed it anyway {} A great piece on Jean Nouvel (or: Rupe hasn't killed the WSJ yet) {} The Antisuburbanites {} Toronto embraces its ugliness {} Invisible Landmarks in LA {} GOOD on Homeboy Industries {} Age-old rule #834: Don't understand it? Call it a gimmick! {} Check out the clusters on this map {} Belfast murals at WebUrbanist {} Sarcasm, light rail, and overbearing parents {} Digital Urban calls for a Second Earth {} Who's squatting the squatters? {} The corporatization of Universities {} Bad planning Mixtape {} The World Edition on architecture in Bucharest {} The Urban Planning Generation {} Commercial Revitalization Conundrums {} 26 Different Endings {} Incredible Nonphotography (photo credit) {} Guerilla culture in Paris via Spacing Wire {} Bannerman: The Willy Wonka of Weaponry {} Getting serious about agriculture {} Obama's urban agenda {} Cheering congestion in Sydney {} Gentrification: flood or forest fire? {} Mobile Metrix {} Report from Pakistan {} Downtown revitalization goes Hollywood {} Brazil halves extreme poverty {} Neighbors Project's 7 Rules for talking about gentrification {} The Happiness Project on the benefits of wandering {} Jane Jacobs podcast! {} The best sites for urban photography {} Milwaukee's industrial legacy is fading {} Wikiurbanism {} Miss Representation strikes again {} The City Fix (great transportation blog, added to sidebar) {} Cool Town on Trendwatching's 8 trends for '08 {} Integrating transit and land use

Mapping Manifest Destiny @ The Newberry Library

From a curatorial standpoint, Mapping Manifest Destiny at the Newberry Library (which is in a gorgeous building, in case you were wondering) is an excellent exhibit. The gallery space where the maps are displayed is large and quiet, and the information is carefully organized into four color-coded areas that chart the history of the North American West through cartography. The four sections illustrate the progression of the continent from exotic terra nova at the edge of the world to civilized nation linked by a sophisticated network of railroads by defining the primary focus of mapmaking in four different eras of exploration. You can basically watch the centuries-long process of the formation of the United States (and Canada and Mexico, to lesser extents) take place in under an hour. In addition, scale is provided by the inclusion of maps that detail Chicago's own growth from a swampy outpost into a major transportation hub for the rapidly-growing nation. It's downright artful curation.

Oh, and the content is pretty good, too. ;-)

In fact, the collection is a perfect illustration of the fourth use of maps as explained by the Field Museum's Festival of Maps exhibit: these are maps that "bear witness to and shape history." The first two sections, which explore Maps for Empire and Maps to Serve the New Empire show the evolution of the shape of North America as ever more sophisticated cartographical methods and new knowledge about the continent became available over time. Centuries-old European maps are on hand, as are some of the earliest maps of several modern major American cities, such as San Antonio, New Orleans, and Pittsburgh (the last one being drawn and annotated by none other than the young George Washington).

Halfway through you'll find a real treat: William Clark's (of Lewis & Clark fame) original, hand-drawn map of the Corps of Discovery's exploration of the American West in search of an overland river route to the Pacific. The edges are frayed and the ink slightly faded, but this is history, staring you in the face. It almost glows; it gave me goosebumps.

While the first half of Mapping Manifest Destiny shows how the land manipulated the people that explored it, the second half shows how, once the continent had been properly charted, people then manipulated the land. This half is separated into Maps for Enlightenment and Maps for Business, and details the United States' growth into a commercial juggernaut. The gridded system of land surveying that directed property sales and distribution as the US expanded westward, spurred on by the ideology from which this exhibit takes its name, shows up here. Maps for Enlightenment features see nineteenth-century text books opened to maps (my personal favorite was the one that color-coded the world on a scale from Savage to Enlightened). Maps for Business covers Chicago's rise to dominance of the field of commercial cartography. Several maps and books by Rand McNally (the company largely responsible for the Windy City's cartographical supremacy) are on display. The Business section is rounded out by maps of the expansion of the nation's railroad system and the California gold rush.

Mapping Manifest Destiny is short, sweet, and to the point. It's certainly not the kind of thing you'd bring the kids along for (especially if they're the crying type -- the ceilings are high, and everything echoes) as the material is presented in a very mature way. But anyone interested in US history (or the art of exhibit curation) will find the Newberry Library's contribution to the FoM to be a truly enlightening experience.

IF YOU GO
Mapping Manifest Destiny is on display at the Newberry Library on Chicago's Near North Side until February 16th, 2008. The library's exhibit galleries are open Monday, Friday, and Saturday from 8:15 am - 5:30 pm, and Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday 8:15 am- 7:30 pm; the galleries are free and open to the public. While you're there, check out Ptolemy's Geography and Renaissance Masters in the gallery across the lobby. A short bus ride down LaSalle Street is Encyclopedia Britannica's US headquarters; the building's lobby is host to a variety of maps from the Britannica collection, marking the company's contribution to the FoM.


Links:
Mapping Manifest Destiny (Newberry Library)

Ptolemy's Geography and Renaissance Masters (Newberry Library)

Encyclopedia Britannica

Festival of Maps

Maps: Finding Our Place In the World @ The Field Museum

About a fifth of the way through the Field Museum's Maps exhibit, I started to feel a bit giddy. As a long-time lover of maps, I'd been looking forward to this -- the centerpiece of Chicago's Festival of Maps -- for months, and it was clear early in my time at the exhibit that I knew that I would not be disappointed. Now, after having a day to reflect, I can honestly (and emphatically) say that Maps: Finding Our Place in the World is one of the most impressive museum exhibits I have ever attended.

Those are strong words, I know, so let that be my one burst of enthusiasm. Henceforth, I'll try to be as objective as possible...I'd hate to do that thing where I puff something up so much that it can't live up to my description. Not that I think it's possible to overstate -- oops, sorry. Almost gushed again.

Divided into seven sections, Maps begins by addressing what is probably the most common use of its subject matter: wayfinding. The content of this section is subdivided into two groups, the Itinerary (one route depicted) and the Network (many routes depicted together). The maps on display set the tone for the rest of the exhibit; there is a great variety of mediums, styles, and time periods represented. Highlights include a section of an ancient 60-foot Japanese scroll depicting the road from Kyoto to Edo (now Tokyo), a 1940s road map of America with road trip routes taken by an anonymous family highlighted and annotated, and an original print of Harry Beck's revolutionary redesign of the London Tube map.

The second section of the exhibit displays maps that give structure to the world. While many maps may not be used directly for getting from A to B, they help us to develop a concept of the vastness of the world around us. The exhibit charts the evolution of mankind's understanding of the planet through maps, showing how they were used to record progress and redefine the world as our knowledge grew. The undisputed centerpiece of this area is a set of two large (about 4 feet in diameter, but I'm guessing) wooden globes -- one that depicts the earth as it was believed by cartographers to look (curiosities include the island of California off of North America's west coast and the near-absence of Australia and New Zealand, though overall it's surprisingly accurate) and the other showing the celestial dome above, with full-color representations (i.e. a scorpion for Scorpio) of the constellations.

Maps are also used, as shown in the third and fourth sections of the exhibit, to show important places and "bear witness to and shape history," in the curators' words. These two collections expand quite nicely upon the logic of the first two; the most obvious uses of maps are to chart the world and the routes that people use to move around it, but with a heightened understanding of the larger world, it makes sense that people started using maps to break the larger world down into smaller parts. Privatization and land division become central foci here. Several important names pop up up in a subset of the fourth section focusing on historical maps of the US: Lewis and Clark's map of their route is here, as are land surveys by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Benjamin Franklin.

Even more sophisticated maps make up the fifth section, which highlights maps that make the invisible visible. These are highly detailed creations that detail intangible or hidden details about places. One of Jane Adams Hull House's famous maps of Chicago blocks broken down (and color-coded) by ethnicity and income is on display (a print of the same map is included in the Chicago History Museum's Mapping Chicago exhibit). So is a huge, vividly-colored map of the geology of Great Britain, one of the first maps of its kind. Another first here is a small, unassuming map of northern Italy that is believed to be one of the first uses of shading to depict topography, pre-dating its common use in recent times by several centuries. A closer look at the plaque describing this piece reveals that its creator was none other than Leonardo da Vinci. Another of his quiet pieces, a plan to canal-ize the Arno, is nearby.

The sixth area is a showcase of maps that depict imaginary places. L. Frank Baum's map of Oz is here, along with several of J.R.R. Tolkien's hand-drawn maps of Middle Earth. This section contrasts nicely with the seventh, which shows maps in rather mundane use in everyday life. A RISK board, a needlepoint map of Great Britain, a kiosk showing mapping technology on modern cell phones -- these examples point out the many ways in which maps seep into our daily routines. This last section culminates in an interactive wall of video maps where you can touch cursors on large screens and navigate satellite imagery and zoom in on your hometown. (It can be a bit tricky to get these to work -- try holding your fingers a few centimeters away from the screen).

If there is one opportunity that is really missed here, it's that Maps does not spend any time on the way that the internet is currently democratizing the field of cartography. There is no mention of mashups or group maps or even Mapquest, the launch of which really was revolutionary moment for mapping technology (though Mapquest's prominence in online mapping has since been usurped by Google and Microsoft). In fact, I kept expecting to see this theme threaded throughout the other sections of the exhibit, but it never even made an appearance.

Overall, Maps: Finding Our Place in the World is a suitably rich and creamy center to the FoM's gourmet chocolate. It's an exhibit that keeps you moving, looking forward to the next map even before you've finished reading about the last. If you don't live in the area but you've been looking for a reason to visit Chicago, this exhibit would even make a good excuse to come. If you live within driving distance and have even a passing or newfound interest in cartography, you have no excuse not to make the trip.

IF YOU GO
Maps: Finding Our Place in the World is on display at the Field Museum until January 27th, 2008. The museum is open 9:00am-4:30pm, seven days a week; the entry fee for the museum and the special exhibit is $19 for adults, $14 for students and seniors, and $9 for children under 12.


Links:
Maps: Finding Our Place in the World (Field Museum of Natural History)

The Festival of Maps is Coming

"All maps are good, but they are all different."

Tonight's opening quote comes from Vladimiro Valerio, a Venitian historian, and was pulled from a fantastic little article over at the International Herald-Tribune on the politics of globe- and map-making. It serves, I think, as an excellent introduction to the first of a series of posts that will cover the upcoming Festival of Maps in Chicago.

The FoM is described on its website as "a citywide celebration of humanity's greatest discoveries and the maps that record our boldest explorations." Dozens of museums, galleries, universities, and other cultural institutions across the Chicagoland area will host special exhibits of maps from and of all periods and places. And Where is going to blog it all. Well...most of it, anyway.

Keep your eyes peeled in the coming months for the image at the top of this post, as it will mark all FoM-related posts. Things will get especially interesting in early November when the event officially kicks off, but a handfull of exhibits are jumping the gun and starting early. The earliest opened this past Tuesday at the Art Institute of Chicago.

The first of a two-part series (the second will begin near the end of September), the AI's exhibit is entitled "The Capital of the 19th Century: Paris in Maps." It's a small, no-frills collection of maps of the French capital at the height of its prominence (aka "the long nineteenth century") housed in eight glass cases in the museum's Ryerson Library. It's a simple, quiet start to what looks to be a very grand Festival...and that's about all there is to say.

If you go, don't miss the small exhibit on LA-based digital architecture troupe Xefirotarch, which runs through October 28th (all of the dates in this post are, of course, for 2007). Their daring, sinuous, and quite frankly frightening designs are some of the most innovative I've seen in years. Even if you don't like the architecture, you'll marvel at the fact that the models don't collapse.

That's all for now. Remember, keep an eye out for the Where/FoM logo in the future, and make your travel plans now...this is going to be the cartogeek party of the century.


Links:
In Mapmaking, Disputes Over Geography (via The Map Room)

Festival of Maps

The Capital of the 19th Century: Paris in Maps (Art Institute of Chicago)

Xefirotarch