Virtual Tokyo – Towards an Open Source Urbanism

How is Tokyo reconciling the gulf between the development of its urban space and activities in its virtual space?

An interesting article to help us think about integrating the virtual and real better

Wear Blue on June 8th

I plan to wear blue on June 8th. Finally the United Nations has proclaimed World Oceans Day as an official yearly celebration of our world ocean. Earth Day has been wonderful to participate in over the years but the focus has been less on the Ocean than the Earth (as in terra firma). The Ocean deserves its own day. Every time I spin the virtual globe in our Watershed-to-Ocean Initiative, I see mostly water.

It will be great if we all wear blue on June 8th like we wear green on March 17th. Check out the Wear Blue Tell Two campaign if you are interested.

Encompassing the Virtual Watershed

As we get bombarded with news of tragic global warming and climate change in general, it becomes more and more irresponsible to discuss the man-made world without considering the natural. So, I am sold on the idea that any virtual city had better be clearly modeled on the virtual watershed. The EPA provides a Surf Your Watershed application and the USGS provides some lovely GIS Watershed Layers in a KML format (nice for Google Earth presentation). The next step is to generate a complete 3-D model and place our cities within the watershed so we can better appreciate how much we affect the natural world with our building.

Kudos to Erica Naone

Erica's on-line article, entitled '3-D Design for the Masses', is the kind of article I think captures the promise of virtual city building by the masses. She reviews Dryad as the killer interface for mass participation and suggests the interface can only help companies like Everyscape catch on. I only wish I had responded to her e-mail message sooner to add a few quotes of encouragement to you all!

Getting the Word Out

Not too many readers have been engaging me on the concept of virtual cities as a community-builder and eco-friendly resource-saver. Let's see how many of you come to engage through my Technorati Profile.

Supposedly Technorati is the way to go, no? Sure sounds right. Thoughts?

That's What I am Talking About

There is no doubt that we have over-reacted to the filth of industrialization that plagued our cities early in the industrial age. The information age has let us stay in suburbia and remain connected through fiber optic cables and a strong information infrastructure that means we don't have to be downtown to know what is going on. But, is our lifestyle sustainable? Should we not feel the shame of abusing the rest of the planet for our spacious sense of freedom? Take a look at James Howard Kunstler's video, The tragedy of suburbia, and think it through. James' language gets a little risque at times, but I share his anger at what we've done. As a result, I find great comic relief in his presentation.

Virtual cities can let us experience the difference between a suburban emphasis on life in America versus an urban emphasis. Let's walk about in the virtual and see which life we prefer more. Sure James includes some slides on how to retrofit our suburban wastelands into places we'd like to spend time in, but the transition is not as obvious as it could be with a virtual city platform, eh?

Virtual Sculpture Within our Virtual Cities

Outdoor art is accessible to so many. Our virtual cities can push that accessibility out beyond the community through virtual representation of our urban works of sculpture. Seattle's new Olympic Sculpture Park is a source of great debate in the Pacific Northwest. And yet, it provides an opportunity for a community to come together in one of the most beautiful natural settings intermixed with an urban environment anywhere on Earth. How do we capture the design to inspire others to support urban art?