“The idea is that by harvesting the incredible amount of data “exhaust” that every one of us generates as we traverse a city, planners can optimize services in the city to make them more efficient, cleaner and cheaper. But there is a fear that such top-down programs may threaten the very vitality that attracts people to cities in the first place … According to Carlo Ratti of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology SENSEable City Lab, cities occupy just 2% of the world’s surface, but house 50% of the population, consume 70% of the world’s energy and are responsible for 80% of the world’s carbon. PlanIT is a €10 billion, four-year project to build a new smart city in Portugal to house some 225,000 people. With sensors built into every building it presents itself as an urban utopia where smart buildings can sense our presence and anticipate our needs.”

‘Smart City’ Planning Needs the Right Balance - Tech Europe - WSJ

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New video: Robin Chase "Building the city of the future" | Lift conference, what can the future do for you?

Cities were once constructed by the efforts of individuals, until the grand plans of master architects, and then city planning departments took over, making sense of the “chaos.” The city of the future will be both globally connected and highly local and customized — once again shaped primarily by the individuals living within it. This new power will include sustainable local economies and be thanks to the miracle of the Internet combined with fast, easy access it to through ubiquitous mobile devices and sensors throughout our environment. We are seeing the rise of people, empowered.

URBAN - Robin Chase from videosfing on Vimeo.

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Seeing Cities as the Environmental Solution, Not The Problem | Sustainable Cities Collective For a long time, America’s environmental community celebrated wilderness and the rural landscape while disdaining cities and towns.  Thoreau’s Walden Pond and John Muir’s Yosemite Valley were seen as the ideal, while cities were seen as sources of dirt and pollution, something to get away from.  If environmentalists were involved with cities at all, it was likely to be in efforts to oppose development, with the effect of making our built environment more spread out, and less urban. We’ve come a long way since then, if still not far enough.  We were and remain right to uphold nature, wildlife and the rural landscape as places critical to celebrate and preserve.  But what we realize now, many of us anyway, is that cities and towns – the communities where for millennia people have aggregated in search of more efficient commerce and sharing of resources and social networks – are really the environmental solution, not the problem:  the best way to save wilderness that are more, not less, urban and do not encroach on places of significant natural value.  As my friend who works long and hard for a wildlife advocacy organization puts it, to save wildlife habitat we need people to stay in “people habitat.” is through strong, compact, beautiful communities

Seeing Cities as the Environmental Solution, Not The Problem | Sustainable Cities Collective

For a long time, America’s environmental community celebrated wilderness and the rural landscape while disdaining cities and towns.  Thoreau’s Walden Pond and John Muir’s Yosemite Valley were seen as the ideal, while cities were seen as sources of dirt and pollution, something to get away from.  If environmentalists were involved with cities at all, it was likely to be in efforts to oppose development, with the effect of making our built environment more spread out, and less urban.

We’ve come a long way since then, if still not far enough.  We were and remain right to uphold nature, wildlife and the rural landscape as places critical to celebrate and preserve.  But what we realize now, many of us anyway, is that cities and towns – the communities where for millennia people have aggregated in search of more efficient commerce and sharing of resources and social networks – are really the environmental solution, not the problem:  the best way to save wilderness that are more, not less, Arles, Provence, France (c2011 FK Benfield)urban and do not encroach on places of significant natural value.  As my friend who works long and hard for a wildlife advocacy organization puts it, to save wildlife habitat we need people to stay in “people habitat.” is through strong, compact, beautiful communities

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Moving Dallas Forward | URBAN RE:VISION The Central Dallas Community Development Corporation announced the winner of Re:Vision’s international design competition: “Forwarding Dallas”. A collaboration between Portuguese-based architectural firms Atelier Data and Moov.  

Moving Dallas Forward | URBAN RE:VISION

The Central Dallas Community Development Corporation announced the winner of Re:Vision’s international design competition: “Forwarding Dallas”. A collaboration between Portuguese-based architectural firms Atelier Data and Moov.  

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