Urban Systems Collaborative - This Week's Webinar and London Meeting update (re-sending)

[Colin Harrison]

I thought I had sent out the announcement for this week's Webinar on Thursday, however I am embarrassed to have discovered that the mailing server server rejected my post.  So attendance on Prof. Ahearn's talk was not surprisingly poor.  However it was an amazingly interesting proposal to develop a small island off the coast near Port au Prince as a "Singapore of the Caribbean" transhipment port.  I do encourage you to take a look at Prof. Ahearn's presentation.  I have also now fixed the cause for my post bouncing.

Regards, colin

This Week's Webinar

Our Webinar speaker on Friday February 1, 2013 is Sean Ahearn, Professor of Geography and Director of the Center for Advanced Research of Spatial Information (CARSI) at Hunter College – CUNY.  Prof. Ahearn has many prominent roles in the application of spatial analytics in urban planning and he will speak about current work on A Master Plan for Gonave Island in Haiti.  This is "the island that Haiti forgot" and one of the poorest regions in the world.

Prof. Ahearn's presentation is already on the USC Web site.

The USC London Meeting

On the Webinar two weeks ago a group of us had a good initial discussion about a theme for the USC meeting to be held at the Imperial College, London in September 2013.  To a large extent, Smart Cities emerged in recent years as an application of information technology to urban engineering problems and this remains an important motivation for both cost savings and sustainability reasons.  However, many of us can imagine that the infusion of information technology into urban system may open other important possibilities.  My original suggestion was to consider that we are creating a set of digital interfaces between the capabilities of the city - both public and private - and the "users" of the city - its inhabitants - and to ask how that set of interfaces may enable us to apply Design thinking to improve the usability of the city.

I can describe part of our discussion of two weeks ago as applying some of the thinking originally developed for Object Oriented software development to this point of view.  I note in passing that the Object Oriented software movement ca. 1990 was greatly influenced by "A Pattern Language", the 1977 book by Christopher Alexander and others on the use of patterns in architecture and urban design.  This approach would lead us to thinking of "encapsulating" "legacy functions" of cities with information technology and to then expose components of these functions that could be re-combined flexibly by the "users" to customize their experience of the city.  I have spoken about this elsewhere as "external integration".  I think that is where the Open Data movement is heading, if not consciously, and the work of a few global communities such as City Protocol also leads in this direction.  BTW We will be having a Webinar on City Protocol given by Christian Clauss on March 15, 2013.

The group participating in the Webinar two weeks ago concluded by agreeing to hold a monthly call to develop the themes, the programme, and the invited speakers for the London Meeting.  We will hold this mid-month on a Friday when there is no Webinar with the same access coordinates.  The meeting is open to anyone interested in developing the meeting.  I will send an invitation to all those who were on the call two weeks ago and anyone else who expresses interest to me 

Best wishes, colin

[Colin Harrison]

Jurij:  Good thoughts as ever from Jerrod.  Let's discuss how to maintain the Web site content on Tuesday's call.

Regards, colin

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: G. Jerrod Delaine <gjd...@nyu.edu>
Date: Sat, Feb 2, 2013 at 9:47 AM
Subject: Re: Urban Systems Collaborative - This Week's Webinar and London Meeting update (re-sending)
To: Colin Harrison <colingeor...@gmail.com>

Hi Colin,

Switzerland? You must carry multiple passports lol.

I do not know the password of that gmail calendar. I was given access to the calendar by the previous team, frank & co. I do not have owners rights, only rights to edit. You should contact frank to have full access rights to the calendar. 

A few tips for the website:

1. See the list on the webinars on the page you mention but the last one listed is Feb 1st. At least list the dates so people could plan to attend.

2. The fall 2012 meeting is still listed on the home site, maybe you should show it on the homepage to drum up support.

3. On the library page, maybe remove the dates from the list so it doesn't seem dated.

4. Also on the same page, you'll see in the sidebar it lists the December webinar as an upcoming event, maybe you could place the fall 2013 meeting information there instead of having to update it every two weeks.

I'm thoroughly impressed you two have taken on the maintenance of the web presence. 

On Feb 2, 2013, at 6:58 AM, Colin Harrison <colingeor...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Jerrod:  Yes, Jurij maintains this on the USC Website under Webinars (I think).  He has a pretty full programme for the first quarter.  As I learn my way around the various bits, I will start doing more on the Web site.

BTW Do you understand who has edit rights on the USC Calendar?  I guess that "Urban Systems Collaborative Calendar" must be a google userid.  But what's the password?

Best wises from snowy Switzerland.  Regards, colin

On Fri, Feb 1, 2013 at 9:32 PM, G. Jerrod Delaine <gjd...@nyu.edu> wrote:

I was just wondering when was the next presentation. Have you guys been maintaining a schedule anywhere? 

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