Urban Dynamics

Taiwan's Urban Dynamics.

Michael Lin, MIT Media Laboratory + MIT Architecture
Chaochi Chang, MIT Media Laboratory
Tom Yeh, MIT CSAIL
Jurgen Scheible, Nokia Champion, Finland

Urban environments are often likened to living organisms: the streets as arteries, traffic as blood, signals as neurological transmissions, consumptive moments as metabolism, etc.  But within this organicist metaphor, what is that “heart” that pumps the city's blood? What are those processes, moments, and places that “drive”a city's “flow”? If the city is a cell or organism, what causes its growth or stoppage? How can we create a platform that enables the information exchange on a micro level (stolen pothol covers) and macro level (urban processes and flows)?

Group participants will observe the urban encironment and identify its dynamic attributes (movement, linkage, force, frequency) in terms of quantifiable facts or qualitative data (emotion).  Equipped with familiar interfaces, participants will arrive at perhaps unexpected outcomes and questions such as, “Why does vanilla flavored ice cream cause the failure of Pontiac's car?”
http://www.cmtc100.com.tw/new/newscontant.asp?Index=202