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Location: Schwyzerhöhe, Morschach, Switzerland Photographer: Dani Fuchs Event: Energy

Location: Toulouse, France Photographer: Gilles Vidal Event: Community

We have close ties with Geographic Information Science group over at Birbeck College, they are a great group and have just put a call out for a new lecturer:

School of Social Sciences, History and Philosophy

Department of Geography, Environment & Development Studies

Lecturer A in Geographic Information Science (GIS) Ref: 10275

Full time position, 3 years fixed term contract in the first instance

The Department of Geography is seeking to appoint a Lecturer in Geographic Information Science. We are looking for well-qualified candidates who have experience with GIS and competence in spatial statistics. An interest in programming is also desirable.

You should have a good first degree and a PhD in a relevant area, or be close to completion. Evidence of published research or exceptional potential is essential to this role. Teaching experience at degree level is also desirable.

Salary range: £33,501 rising to £38,376 per annum, inclusive of London Allowance.

This job is full time and fixed term for three years. The salary quoted above is inclusive of London allowance. The initial salary award will be dependent on the skills and experience of the successful applicant. The appointment may be subject to a probationary period of up to three years. Birkbeck also provides a generous final salary pension scheme, 31 days paid leave, flexible working arrangements and other great benefits.

The closing date for completed applications is Tuesday 22 July 2009.

Interviews are due to be held in the week commencing 3 August 2009.

Click here to apply for this post (Search using Ref No. 10275)

Birkbeck is an equal opportunities employer and encourages applications from all candidates irrespective of gender, ethnicity, age, disability, religious belief and sexual preference.

Location: Lambeth, London, England, UK Photographer: John Wilson Event: Color

Location: Chrudim, Czech Republic Photographer: Martin Hrdli?ka Event: Best of 2005

Urban cycle studies are the science of everyday life, they focus on the daily routine of the city with its habits and rhythms as they occur in most citizens' lifes. It is the power of the normal that brings stability and the routine that ensures security with the cycles dynamic flow and continuation that keeps the city ticking. This is from urbantick.blogspot.com who are looking into the life of the city.

As part of the research they are compiling a list of ways to visualise GPS data, complete with software links. Below is one such example, using GPS to create urban art:

GPS Art from gallo1 on Vimeo.

Head over to http://www.urbantick.blogspot.com/ for more examples and thoughts on using GPS to look at cycles in the city.

For his spring quarter 3rd year design studio Josh Ayer was asked asked to design a long span high speed rail station. His concept, designed with SketchUp, was the form of dolphins being that the site was right on the bay of San Diego. We don't know what grade the work archived but we really liked the movie:



Of note the renders were produced using Kerkythea, a standalone renderer, using physically accurate materials and lights, allowing for high quality output - its is also free so well worth checking out.

The future direction of towns and cities is often a controversial subject tackled traditionally by local councils, interest groups and developers via pubic meetings and exhibitions. The use of blogs, Flickr groups, tweets and forums by architectural centres and councils is limited to say the least which is why it'll be interesting to keep and eye on the developments at Arc in Hull in Northern England.

Arc is a CABE funded architecture centre that promotes excellence in the built environment by running professional and public learning programmes, exhibitions, debates etc and they have just started a blog looking at the future of Hull.

Hull is undergoing a major architectural facelift, but sometimes it looks like the developers are having an identity crisis; does Hull try to compete with other towns by creating a sprawl of high tech steel and glass buildings at the risk of turning the town into a generic contemporary city? This has started a debate about what is Hull-ness?

In a city that has an unfairly negative stereotype as the grimmest of grim northern towns Arc want to identify the unique social, cultural and architectural character that should be reflected in all new developments. The blog is at an early stage but there are plans to take the project to the local community and schools.

With the addition perhaps of a Flickr group for residents to take photos of the parts of Hull they like/don't like and use of other digital tools this could be the start of an interesting debate on the future of a historic town.

http://www.hullness.blogspot.com/ is worth keeping an eye on...

Image thanks to Jez.Atkinson on Flickr

Location: Watkins Glen International Raceway, Watkins Glen, New York, USA Photographer: Ralph Greene Event: Community

BASELWORLD 2009, the world's biggest and most essential event for the watch and jewelry industry, is being held from March 26 to April 2. 2009 in Basel, Switzerland. You wouldn't think it would be the place where you would fine one of the finest urban and architectural visualisations but take a look at the clip below:


Developed by WOW the movie was created to to enhance Citizen's booth at the week long event. The theme of the movie is infinite possibilities for the Eco- Drive, Citizen's new model in its range. WOW combined images and meanings of constant change and energy in Tokyo with the infinite possibilities of Eco- Drive allowing them to express how the energy of Tokyo dynamically circulates.

Music by Masato Hatanaka
http://www.hatanakamasato.net/

Thanks go to Roy of sfcomplex.org for dropping us a email on this one...

Perhaps the ultimate test of an architectural render is if it looks real or not. The ability to light, texture and create scenes that approach reality is an art in itself and in the movie below some of the renders come close to that 'is it real' point.


The movie was created by Alfredo Navarrete, aka enoch30 on YouTube.

Location: Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada Photographer: Jean Berthélémé Event: Best of 2005

The latest in our timelapse movies thread features Tokyo and Yokohama in Japan. Japan is one of the best places for timelapses in the world due to its vibrant nature and pace of the city that compliments timelapse photography:

Tokyo & Yokohama - A High Speed Journey from Andreas Doppelmayr on Vimeo.

Andreas Doppelmayr only had two nights to film the sequences, despite the tight schedule the result is a fascinating glimpse into the city in a manner that only timelapses can achieve.

See http://andreasdoppelmayr.squarespace.com/ for more examples.

We seriously love this one, not only is it a great track and based mainly around Camden - our bit of London Town - but it also features some neat animation, stop motion and camera tracking work. Luke Jackson's video for Goodbye London, written and directed by Murray John:



Goodbye London is taken from Luke's new album ...And Then Some

Stream:
Myspace http://www.myspace.com/luke_jackson

Download:
Bandcamp http://lukejackson.bandcamp.com/
itunes: http://tinyurl.com/lukeitunes

Samparkour is a short by Wiland Pinsdorf that reveals the city of São Paulo (Brazil) under the unique view of Parkour. Where people see obstacles, Zico Corrêa visualize new possibilities. Parkour (sometimes also abbreviated to PK) or l'art du déplacement (the art of movement) is both a discipline with the aim of moving from one point to another as smoothly, efficiently and quickly as possible using principally the abilities of the human body, but is also built on a philosophical premise, perhaps more similar to martial arts than to a sport such as gymnastics.

SAMPARKOUR from Wiland Pinsdorf on Vimeo.

The clip was shot in HD with 35mm lens adapter and while not strictly digital it provides a great view of the city and thus we thought well worthy of a post.

A lectureship open to urban geographers, designers and planners is available in APL at Newcastle University in the UK the Global Urban Research Unit (GURU) http://www.ncl.ac.uk/guru.

Ref B239A (SAPL)
Faculty/Services Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences
Department School of Architecture, Planning & Landscape
Newcastle University, UK

Salary: £31,513 - £43,622 (with potential progression to £49,096)

Closing Date: 22 July 2009

The School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape http://www.apl.ncl.ac.uk is seeking to appoint a suitable qualified person from an academic background to be part of the academic team delivering the accredited planning programmes, related research and relevant consultancy.

The School welcomes all suitable applications but particularly from those with experience in one or more of the following: urban regeneration, spatial planning practice and theory, quantitative techniques/GIS.

Candidates wishing to discuss this post may contact:

John Pendlebury, Head of School on 0191 222 6810or by email: j.r.pendlebury@ncl.ac.uk
or Tim Townshend, Director of Planning and Urban Design, on 0191 222 7814 or by email: t.g.townshend@ncl.ac.uk

Full details are available from the Newacstle University job vacancy site:
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/vacancies/

Its quite a tempting job to be honest- talking of jobs, the closing date for the 7 positions working in CASA, 3 of which are directly with us here at digital urban, is Tuesday July 7th...

Location: Warsaw, Poland Photographer: Krzysztof Wojciechowski Event: Best of 2006

Location: Zhukovsky, Russia Photographer: Vladimir Popov Event: Beginnings

The porting of Augmented Reality to mobile devices has notable implications for data distribution and navigation in the city. Georg Klein, a post-doctoral research assistant in the Active Vision Group of the Oxford University Engineering Department, has posted his results developing 3D Augmented Reality (AR) on the iPhone. The clip details an adaptation of the parallel tracking and mapping system to an iPhone:




Georg notes that it still needs a lot of work - the camera's narrow field-of-view is problematic - but they can already make and track small maps. Of note is the use of the iPhone 3G rather than the 3GS with the built in compass see
http://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~gk for full details and past projects.

Thanks go to Greg Downing for the link, anyone interested in panoramas and 3d modelling techniques should take a look at his work via http://www.gregdowning.com/

See also Augmented Reality for Android: GIS in the City and Location Based Augmented Reality for Android: Enkin

Location: Parque de Las Madres, Mérida, Venezuela Photographer: Gerardo A. Sanchez Event: Sustenance