The use of maps in relation to cities and our experience of them is both a familiar one and historically extensive. Our engagement with an unknown city is nearly always translated through the map whether illustrating streets, tourist destinations or transportation systems. Indeed, urban experience in an unfamiliar context is typically an exchange between cartographic spaces and the materials of the built environment. Considered in this manner it is evident that urban and cartographic spaces are entwined and continue to exist in a mutual relationship with each other, surviving temporal shifts and developments. With the increasing growth of potential opportunities and creative practice for urban mapping it is important to remember that the critical discourse surrounding public space and notions of privacy and place must continue in order to parallel such developments and frame them in an intelligible manner. One of the most prevalent capacities of the information age is the accessibility and exchange of data, rendering the previously latent visible. This project, developed by Joe Haire, Felicity Hurling, Dicky Lewis and Dan Stock, created an interface for data collation, cellular automation and site designation.
- By utilising the interface of postcode data and Ordnance Survey grid based sub-divisions it is possible to design live applications that offer a multitude of possibilities not simply confined to architecture or urban design.
- In this particular manifestation live data from a number of sources pertaining to lifestyle choices was streamed to a cellular automata model.
- This included crime rates, house prices, leisure facilities and such and their respective incidence in each cell. By using a sliding scale against the assigned 15 parameters prospective householders or developers were offered possibilities as to the best area to live or to start their business.
- The possible application of this software is effectively limitless in terms of the scale at which it is applied, the number of parametric inputs and the needs of any particular user as yet undetermined.
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