CityScope Project is a powerful tool created by MIT’s MediaLab that uses augmented reality to quickly and simply model the effects of large-scale urban-planning decisions, allowing urban planning to be more accessible to everyone. The technology employs TIM, a tangible-interactive rapid prototyping environment for matrices of data. TIM uses an array of optically tagged LEGO bricks on the tabletop with overhead projectors that beam color-coded metrics onto each brick: a combination of computer vision and 3D projection mapping.

Overview from MIT’s MediaLab: “We develop simulation systems to predict and quantify the potential impact of disruptive interventions within new and existing cities. We place a special emphasis on augmented reality decision support systems (ARDSS) that facilitate non-expert stakeholder collaboration within complex urban environments. Such systems blend hardware, software, human interface design, cloud computation, and variants of so-called big data. “CityScope” is an open source platform for shared, interactive computation.”

This technology works at follows: every LEGO piece has a special chip that communicates with the overhead projectors, which beams metrics affected by each decision onto the new configuration. So, chips of each brick are assigned a user-determined variable such as “150-unit residential building,” “2-ha park” or “4-lane road”; and other variables such as walkability, access to jobs, housing or open space can easily be estimated in the following way: once assembled on the tabletop, the objects are able to represent an existing neighborhood, city or region, and users are able to pick up and insert, move or remove individual components while this changes to the city are visually revealed in real-time by changing color-codes projected onto the pieces. For example, if you placed a “150-unit residential building” piece onto a previously empty plot of land, the color of the street in front of the new building would change to indicate a quantifiable increase in traffic density. Thus, users from any background can configure the table collaboratively.

Perhaps, the most important value of this technology as a tool of management and governance is the ability to offer information about specific locations: building legislation, transportation systems, walkability, access to jobs, etc. The CityScope method is well suited to model the physical effects of zoning and building regulations, and it can be considered as a repository for hyper-local concerns, public meetings regarding zoning or building projects, allowing planners to easily communicate with their constituency in a more clear and accurate manner.

In conclusion, the beauty and perhaps the most important feature of CityScope rests in its ease of understanding and simplicity of use, being a great example of a technology that adapts to the actions of people instead of the other way around. In other words, allowing urban issues to be more accessible for everyone and providing a much higher level of transparency and accountability than we are used to today.

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La entrada Open Urban Planning: CityScope | An interactive LEGO City | MIT’s MediaLab se publicó primero en More Than Green.

“To help families and children-parents to confront the enemies of child health such as obesity, sedentary lifestyle or the virus”, the Spanish Agency of Pediatrics (AEP) has created “The super-healthy troops”. A series of comics, videos and multimedia material awareness to children about how to stay healthy.

Super-healthy Troop is a set of children fighting in the stories against “Mr. Armchair (sedentarism), that traps children from television screens and video games, Mr. Glotonetix (obesity) that steals breakfast, or against the virus army commanded by Mr. and Ms. Measles Mumps. “

The strategy is given by the same acronym (in Spanish) of the agency that promotes this action, AEP: Food, Exercise and Prevention.

The development of the “super powers” are given for education in these matters to children and, incidentally, to the parents. The one hand basic recommendations are given in terms of food in order to maintain a balanced diet, also give basic information provided to encourage physical activity, and finally encourage children to maintain good personal hygiene and follow the vaccination schedule .

(via trucosdemamas.com)

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La entrada Super-healthy troop | Superheroes to encourage children’s health se publicó primero en More Than Green.

In recent years, more and more initiatives try to counter the role of the car in urban streets with projects like PARK(ing) Day, World Car-Free Day in Riga or Neighborhood in Motion. These bottom-up projects show how the removal of cars affects the urban space and the mindsets and lifestyles of the residents.

“In Ghent 16 residential streets were transformed into collectively created spaces. It all started in 2013 with a bunch of enthusiasts who were busy with the Ghent policy concerning the future of mobility. In order to make people feel what a difference it makes when streets are used by people instead of cars, they came up with the idea of ‘Leefstraten’ which translates as Living Streets. Leefstraten is an experiment that enables inhabitants to transform their street into a place they’ve always dreamed of. By removing the cars and finding other places for parking, new space came available that were turned into places with slides, hen houses, petanque courts, pop-up bars and a lot of astroturf and picnic benches.

One of the most interesting elements is that the process is led by the inhabitants themselves. All the locations have a different outcome resulting in a different use or no use at all. The inhabitants all have their own ideas on how to use the street, which makes up a very local decision making process.

The success in Ghent has led to initiatives in different cities across the Netherlands and Belgium, but seems suitable for every city with inhabitants that want to create places for people instead of cars.”

(Via Pop-Up City)

(Photos by Dries Gysels and Jesse Jorg)

La entrada Leefstraten | Living streets made by people se publicó primero en More Than Green.

After a life dedicated to the enhancement of the importance of public space in the city, its analysis and even promotion, Amanda Burden was appointed Commissioner of City Planning in New York. No easy task in a city in constant growth despite its high density and has always grown under commercial interests.

His most important challenges were to approach the population growth of 1 million people by redistributing residential density around the axes of public transport; reconditioning disused spaces by creating urban parks such as the now existing in Brooklin Bay; and the recovery of the old railway abandoned in height reconvertiendolo in a magnificent park instead of demolition: the High Line.

All due regard to the detailed design for the citizen. Away from mercantilist pressures, Amanda Burden argues that “the city has to think long term, penser in the common good”, that “public spaces have power” and that “turn a park into a place where people want to be depends that is not designed as an urban planner, but as a citizen. “

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La entrada TED Talk | The importance of public space: how it make work to cities | Amanda Burden se publicó primero en More Than Green.

An urban project in Basque Country transformed an obsolete tunnel into a pathway for bikes.

This new pathway runs along a tunnel previously occupied by a railway that connected Bilbao and San Sebastián. The new infrastructure was built in 2009 and connects the Amara and Ibaeta neighbourhoods. In the year of its inauguration, some newspapers remarked that it was one of the longest bicycle infrastructures in the world. The bike path has a length of 2km, while the part that goes through the tunnel is 840m long. The project started when the Basque government decided to change the path of the railway and build a subway train. This part of railway thus became obsolete.
runs along a tunnel previously occupied by a railway that connected Bilbao and San Sebastián. The new infrastructure was built in 2009 and connects the Amara and Ibaeta neighbourhoods. In the year of its inauguration, some newspapers remarked that it was one of the longest bicycle infrastructures in the world. The bike path has a length of 2km, while the part that goes through the tunnel is 840m long. The project started when the Basque government decided to change the path of the railway and build a subway train. This part of railway thus became obsolete.

The project for rehabilitating the railway track lasted nine years and concluded in 2009. The project became famous when The Guardian included it in a list of the best bike infrastructures in the world. Norwegian experts have become interested in it and went to Basque country to research on the effects of this infrastructure. The project was aimed at promoting the use of the bike amongst the commuters of the area (students of the university and the workers of the factories nearby).

La entrada Morlans tunnel | The tunnel of a railway that turned into a bike path se publicó primero en More Than Green.

“Once upon a time there was a king, in his castle. He lived in a beautiful world with high mountains, great seas and marvellous animals. He thought he was a good king but he didn’t really care about his kingdom.  He just wanted to be rich and lead a wealthy lifestyle.  To make the things he wanted he built great factories and to travel faster he built roads, railways and airports. This needed a lot of energy so the king drove deeper and deeper for oil and built more and bigger power stations. He thought that things had never been better. But, gradually, his kingdom began to suffer. Large forests were felled, huge areas became like deserts and even the climate itself began to change. He thought that he could control everything but, slowly, the king realised that he must be kind to his beautiful world or it would be damaged forever. He came to understand that he served his kingdom as much as it served him. So, he made energy from the force of the wind. Power of water and even the heat of the sun. He tried to save energy and think of the future, not just the present. And he, and his sons and daughters hoped that this would be enough. So did the kingdom recover and does our story end happily ever after?  No one knows yet because you and I  are still part of it.”(resorce: Youtube)

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(via Youtube)

La entrada Sustainability as a children’s fairy tale se publicó primero en More Than Green.

The European Commission has launched a programme that promotes the Circular Economy.

As it is stated at their website: “What is a circular economy? Since the industrial revolution, waste has constantly grown. This is because our economies have used a “take-make-consume and dispose” pattern of growth – a linear model which assumes that resources are abundant, available and cheap to dispose of. What we need is a more circular economy. This means re-using, repairing, refurbishing and recycling existing materials and products. What used to be regarded as ‘waste’ can be turned into a resource. The aim is to look beyond waste and to close the loop of the circular economy. All resources need to be managed more efficiently throughout their life cycle. ”

European institutions have become aware of the importance of making our patterns of consumtion more efficient. For this reason, the European Commision has presented a programme that explain the strategy of the Circular Economy and how Europe will implement it.

At their website, they also remark the economic benefits of this large-scale programme and how it can boost employment opportunities in Europe: “Using resources more efficiently will also bring new growth and job opportunities. Better eco-design, waste prevention and reuse can bring net savings for EU businesses of up to EUR 600 billion, while also reducing total annual greenhouse gas emissions. Additional measures to increase resource productivity by 30% by 2030 could boost GDP by nearly 1%, while creating 2 million additional jobs.”

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(via http://ec.europa.eu)

La entrada In late 2015, European Commission will present a circular economy strategy se publicó primero en More Than Green.

An initiative taht has transformed several public spaces in Santiago de Chile. This tactical urbanism intervention is one of the many ways by which South American society reclaims the streets and transforms them into social platforms.

Pavement to Plaza is an activist initiative that has intervened in many public spaces in the world. The movement remarks the idea that a high percentage of the urban space is underutilised because of the fact that, amongst other reasons, the streets in many cities are excessively wide. They also highlight that in some urban areas the “streets and public rights-of-way make up 25% of the city’s land area; more space than all the public parks combined”. In this line, they employ several political and low-cost tools in order to transform roads into parks and streets into plazas. They have also negotiated with autorities in Santiago to implement parklets in the streets and carry out streets extention in many urban areas.

Along with this, their website provides the citizens with manuals to encourage social groups to develop this kind of interventions in an independent way. Amongst these manuals, citizens can learn how to build a parklet. They define themselves as a urban laboratory aimed to experiment with new ways of inhabiting the city.

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(photos via Okuplaza)

La entrada Pavement to Plaza | Chile se publicó primero en More Than Green.

“In this online Earth Day game, you’re Michael and you are walking through the park doing your best to pick up trash and recycle it.”

“Pick up all the garbage in the park and throw it in the correct bin. Turn the grey children back into green by walking into them, but do it quick, because grey children will throw new garbage in the park!” (resorce: Funny Games)

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(via Funny Games)

La entrada ¡Michael, Michael, Go Recycle! | Funny Games se publicó primero en More Than Green.

The Plastic Soup, also known as Garbage Soup, Great Pacific garbage patch or the Pacific Trash Vortex is a completely covered area of marine debris particles located in the center of North Pacific Ocean. It has a size of about 1,400,000 km². That is why it is also called the seventh continent, because it is larger than many countries.

The patch is characterized by exceptionally high relative concentrations of pelagic plastics, chemical sludge and other debris that have been trapped by the currents of the North Pacific Gyre. Approximately 80% of all waste comes from land areas and only 20% is waste from ships, so we can deduce this island is formed mainly by the lack of global awareness in pouring and recycling plastic waste processes.

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(Vía dforceblog)

La entrada Plastic Soup | The great Pacific garbage patch se publicó primero en More Than Green.