Upcoming Conference & Workshop:
Social Cities of Tomorrow
Amsterdam February 14-17 2012
Check out the conference website!
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Martijn de Waal (1972) is a writer, researcher and strategist, working in the field of digital media and (urban) culture. He has worked with and for various clients and organizations such as The Netherlands Architecture Institute, Open Society Foundation, The Architectural League of New York, Lift@Home, Kitchen Budapest, The Mondriaan Foundation and Dutch Public Broadcasting. He is part of the New Media, Public Sphere and Urban Culture research group at the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Groningen, and connected to the department of mediastudies at the University of Amsterdam. In 2009 he was a visiting scholar at MIT's Center for Future Civic Media.
Navigate, walk, burn calories, save the earth
The latest Demos newsletter pointed out a website that combines at least three hot recent trends: the use of digital media to organize and navigate the city, environmental consciousness and the attention for health and obesity issues: Walkit.com is a site that’s lets you plan walking routes between two points in London, Birmingham and Edinburgh, and at the same time informs you how many calories you’ll burn as well as the amount of CO2 that is avoided.
Demos see the site as part of ‘a need for a New Urban Commons: shared tools and resources that can improve our cities and our experience for them.’ The think tank is ‘developing a new project asking who is creating the New Urban commons, how can civic authorities encourage its growth and where is it growing fastest?’