Author Archives: Martijn de Waal

How kite photography can empower local communities

Written by . Posted on October 19, 2011. No comments.
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The Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science promotes the use of cheap open source tools such as kite photography to empower local communities and raise a sense of ‘ownerhsip’ with important environmental issues.

How to design better cities with urban interventions and computer code?

Written by . Posted on July 3, 2011. Tagged , , , , , , , , . No comments.
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How can we design urban objects that bring about an urban public sphere? And how can we make use of algorithms to make urban design more adaptive to the needs of citizens? These questions were addressed during the first Cognitive Cities Salon in Amsterdam.

Yes, That’s a nice Urban Data Visualization. So what?

Written by . Posted on May 30, 2011. Tagged , , , , , , . 1 Comment.
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Report of City_Play_Data. Expert Meeting on Digital Media and ‘Ownership’ in the city.
How do we design urban media that allow citizens to act? Can we use urban games to include citizens in urban planning? And how do we move beyond ‘gamificiation’ ?

The Urban Culture of Sentient Cities: From an Internet of Things to a Public Sphere of Things

Written by . Posted on April 21, 2011. Tagged , , , , , . 4 Comments.
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Recently I contributed a chapter to the book Sentient City Ubiquitous Computing, Architecture, and the Future of Urban Space edited by Mark Shepard. On May 14 2011 we will also take part in the book launch event in Rotterdam. At certain points in the history

Three approaches of digital media and urban design

Written by . Posted on March 9, 2011. 1 Comment.
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Yesterday Virtueel Platform launched a new book on best practices in the field of e-culture in The Netherlands (download regular pdf / pdf for ipad). The Mobile City was invited to contribute an essay for this book. In this article I described three (sometimes closely related)

Wireless Stories: optimism and doubts about the future of public space

Written by . Posted on February 22, 2011. 1 Comment.
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Last week the Dutch Mediafund and the Design department of the Sandberg Academy organized the conference Wireless Stories: new media in public space. The Mobile City was invited to provide the opening keynote (by Michiel de Lange) as well as a closing statement (yours truly),

Sander Veenhof’s NBeep6 – a free and anonymous 6bit communication channel in Cameroon

Written by . Posted on February 1, 2011. No comments.

Yesterday I visited the Mobile Monday meet-up in Amsterdam, and came across some interesting presentations. I particularly liked the presentation of Dutch artist Sander Veenhof. Over the last few years Veenhof has grown into one of the more interesting practitioners that explore the possibilities of

The Best/Most Read Articles on Urban Culture & Mobile Media @ TheMobileCity.nl

Written by . Posted on August 22, 2010. 2 Comments.



The last few months Michiel and I have spent most of our time on the organization of our The Mobile City Event 2010: ‘Designing the Hybrid City‘ – an expert meeting we organized in the context of the World Expo 2010 in Shanghai together with

Mobile phones, social networks and location data: Recognizing the Nuances of Privacy

Written by . Posted on June 10, 2010. 2 Comments.

This weekend the new issue of OPEN will be launched at the Berlin Biennial. “Privacy” is the main theme, and the focus is “not so much on deploring the loss of privacy but on taking the present situation of ‘post-privacy’ for what it is and

Some notes on the design of pervasive games

Written by . Posted on May 20, 2010. 4 Comments.
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How do you design gaming experiences in the city? What is the role of locative and mobile media in urban games? What is the relation between computer games and the city? Those three questions were addressed at two meetings in Amsterdam a few weeks ago,

Cisco’s Urban Ecomaps and Medialab-Prado’s In the Air: How to move from awareness about environmental problems to action?

Written by . Posted on April 9, 2010. 2 Comments.
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Recently I was a panelist at the Electrosmog Festival in Amsterdam. My session was called Hyper-mobility and the urban condition and featured two interesting projects that made use of digital media to attune our increasing mobility to the sustainable development of our cities: Cisco’s Urban Ecomap

Design Approaches for the 21st Century City

Written by . Posted on March 15, 2010. 6 Comments.
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At The Mobile City, we are currently researching the design processes that shape the cities of the 21st century, and bumped into an interesting paradox (also pointed out by others): The experience of our present day city in every day life is increasingly a hybrid

Augmented Reality: its promises and shortcomings for architects

Written by . Posted on March 9, 2010. Tagged . 3 Comments.
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  Last week our friends & collegues at Vurb and Non-Fiction organized an evening about the opportunities of Augmented Reality for architects. Layer-developer Johannes la Poutre presented some of his recent projects, and Ole Bouman – director of the Netherlands Architecture Institute – was interviewed

Sonic Acts 2010: On the Poetics of Hybrid Space

Written by . Posted on February 26, 2010. No comments.
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I just visited an interesting panel on the Sonic Acts 2010 Conference called The Poetics of Hybrid Space. When over here at The Mobile City we talk about Hybrid Space, we usually refer to the work of Adriana de Souza e Silva who in several

“How can architects relate to digital media?” TMC keynote at the ‘Day of the Young Architect’

Written by . Posted on December 6, 2009. Tagged , , . 4 Comments.
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(download as PDF >>) How can architects relate to digital media? The Mobile City keynote at the ‘Day of the Young Architect’: outcomes and further thoughts written by Michiel de Lange & Martijn de Waal Introducing the main questions What do developments in digital media