City Traces

Abstract

A mobile app and GIS mapping platform for the Victorian State of Design Festival 2011. Developed in partnership with University of Wollongong and the Creative Industries Innovation Centre, aimed to promote crowd-sourcing of better knowledge of urban environmental transport patterns. “In an age of satellite navigation and Google Maps, we now have the opportunity to show that our cities are as much about everyday events and social life as they are about buildings and streets. By showing these social movements, new maps can be used by urban planners and designers to better understand the workings of cities as social spaces of movement and interaction… New data visualisations can reveal those design aspects of the city that shape our lives: site accessibility, transport links, our favoured places or haunts, our action spaces. But it can also show the mundane or annoying: being stuck in traffic lights or waiting for a tram.