[...] cities don’t exist just because people have had to be nearby to communicate; cities exist because people like to be near other people, and it is this fact, rather than the mere tradiing of information, that creates social capital.
Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody
Medialab-Prado has issued a call for collaborators in the projects selected for Visualizar08: Database Cities, directed by José Luis de Vicente. The following is loosely quoted from the call:
The role of the collaborator is crucial in the Medialab-Prado workshops’ statement and development process, as the workshops are constituted as a horizontal collaborative work environment, knowledge interchange and theoretical-practical training among teachers, authors and collaborators.
You are invited to discuss the projects in the forums, and of course I will be glad to comment on Density Happens with anyone interested in collaborating. Preferred collaborators would fit one of the two following profiles:
Collaborator profile 1:
Collaborator profile 2:
Any question you have, please ask away, either here or at the Medialab-Prado Forum.
And please bear with me if I am still a bit vague: I am reading the relevant papers as fast as I can download them.
Peggy Noonan laughs at John Stewart's quip
You know what New York City is? A bunch of small cities, stacked together in one building!
John Stewart, The Daily Show, 2008-10-1
The list of projects selected for Visualizar08 has just been published, and I have also received an email telling me Density Happens has been selected. Thus I will be at the Medialab-Prado workspace in Madrid from November 3rd through the 19th. Thanks to the selection committee for their support and encouragement, and congratulations to the rest of the participants.
Madrid-Melbourne and one effect of urban density: it's night in Madrid, and there's people about; it's day in Melbourne, but there's not a soul in the street.
I have already filled in the characteristics of the Density Happens project at the Medialab-Prado forums, including the profile of preferred collaborators. As I have decided to focus the work of Density Happens on cartogram projection, I have gone for a very technical profile. Hopefully some of the would-be collaborators have a background in Computer Science with reasonable maths skills. If you fit the bill, and can be in Madrid during the first half of November, here’s where to apply for collaboration in Density Happens as a Visualizar08 project.
South Yarra, in the heart of Melbourne
I have found (similarly split in districts) demographic data for Madrid from 2001. The problem is Madrid, as all of Spain, has grown hugely in the past ten to five years. These data are woefully outdated now. And datasets through time would really help me too.
Though dangerously close to the deadline, I have managed to hand in my proposal for Visualizar08 at the last possible moment (hint: my euphemism for having a deadline has become “moving to Hawaii”). It is called Density Happens, and the idea behind it is to employ urban density as the X axis for visualising all kind of measurements related to urban quality of living.
Density exhibit at the 2007 Venice Biennale. Photo by Ben Cerveny
Other projects have focused on density before, but I hope this one is the first that examines how everything else, from abortion rate to sales of icecream, from pollution to food prices, from teenage drunkenness to subjective measurements of happiness, can be related to urban density and its immediate effects.
Madrid and Melbourne surround the world, and streams of data bathe it. If you were to push a pin through each of them on a desktop globe, it would turn with the merest of wobbles. I am lucky enough to have a base in each of these two cities, so my current joke is that “I have the world surrounded”. Bloody hah, I know, but hence the name.
It is also the case that Madrid and Melbourne are at the extremes of the spectrum of livable cities. There are bigger and denser cities, and also smaller and sparser ones. But Mexico City - Minneapolis or Moscow-Milwakee do not roll of the tongue as well, and, above all, do not surround the planet (although Mexico City is on a race with Tokyo to do it on its own).
So Madrid and Melbourne are here as a synechdoche for the two endpoints in my favourite segment of city livability. They define a line along which we can study all cities, reading into urban life through the datastreams each city produces. Think of madrid-melbourne.org as “information aesthetics meets City of Sound“. Or something.