Geospatial analysis and living urban geometry

This essay outlines how to incorporate morphological rules within the exigencies of our technological age. We propose using the current evolution of GIS (Geographical Information Systems) technologies beyond their original representational domain, towards predictive and dynamic spatial models that help in constructing the new discipline of "urban seeding". We condemn the high-rise tower block as an unsuitable typology for a living city, and propose to re-establish human-scale urban fabric that resembles the traditional city. Pedestrian presence, density, and movement all reveal that open space between modernist buildings is not urban at all, but neither is the open space found in today's sprawling suburbs. True urban space contains and encourages pedestrian interactions, and has to be designed and built according to specific rules. The opposition between traditional self-organized versus modernist planned cities challenges the very core of the urban planning discipline. Planning has to be re-framed from being a tool creating a fixed future to become a visionary adaptive tool of dynamic states in evolution

The information architecture of cities

Cities can be viewed as information architecture systems. Here, 'architecture' is used in the sense of computer architecture - it refers not to the design of buildings, but to how the components of a complex system interact. Information exchange includes the movement of people and goods, personal contact and interactions, telecommunications, as well as visual input from the environment. Information networks provide a basis for understanding living cities and for diagnosing urban problems. This paper argues that a city works less like an electronic computer, and more like the human brain. As a functionally complex system, it heuristically defines its own functionality by changing connections so as to optimize how components interact. An effective city will be one with a system architecture that can respond to changing conditions. This analysis shifts the focus of understanding cities from their physical structure to the flow of information

Pattern-Based Cross Media Social Network Analysis for Technology Enhanced Learning in Europe

It is extremely challenging to get an overview of the current state-of-the-art in technology enhanced learning in Europe. Rapid technological and pedagogical innovations, constantly changing markets, a vivid number of small and medium enterprises, complex policy processes, ongoing political and societal debates on the pros and cons of technology enhanced leaning, combined with many languages and different cultures, make it almost impossible for people to be informed. We want to introduce the media base and the measure tools for pattern-based cross media social network analysis, created by the PROLEARN network of excellence in professional learning. The main goal of this endeavour is the reduction of complexity for actors in digital social networks by applying ideas from social software and already successful methods for complexity reduction, such as information visualization, social network analysis and pattern languages