Ecological Urbanism comes to life…
Posted: 8 April, 2013 Filed under: City, Community, External, Human, Population, Sense, Sight, Travel, Urban, Walk | Tags: books, city, eBook, Ecological Urbanism, exploration, explore, Film, Gareth Doherty, Geography, Harvard, Images, Mohsen Mostafavi, photography, Urban Earth Leave a comment »
The latest edition of Ecological Urbanism is terrible doorstop. The first edition is 655 pages, smells good, weighs 2kg and keeps most of my other books in their place. Despite its strengths, it can’t do video… something the latest version on the book can do. The original hardback book by Mohsen Mostafavi and Gareth Doherty features hundreds of photos that I took while walking across Mexico City, Mumbai and London for Urban Earth, a project in urban exploration that I started in 2008. Out today, the new version splits the book into digestible chapters and includes over 15,000 photographs within the 3 Urban Earth films that I made by taking pictures every 8 steps while crossing these massive cities. You’ll find the films in volume 2, Anticipate, and are accompanied by a short piece of text that Kye Askins and I wrote. I’m delighted to see the films come to life in the book. I hope you enjoy it.
The Ecological Urbanism project has a Facebook page that you can follow here.
a (non)violent walk
Posted: 12 June, 2011 Filed under: City, Community, Human, Organism, Population, Urban, UrbanStory, Walk | Tags: city, crime, Landscape, Map, URBANEARTH, UrbanStory, violence, Walk Leave a comment »
An invitation to join an UrbanStory (non)violent walk.
Compared to many cities in the world Greater London is peaceful and relatively non-violent place. Within the city their is a mixed and complicated picture in which some people feel constantly at threat while others rarely consider their personal safety. It is the stories of violence and not peace that fill the time and space in the media and for this reason our understanding and sense of our safety is distorted (sometimes for better and sometimes for worse).
Maps can reveal the lie of cultural landscapes in the same way that spot heights and contours show the shape of physical land. These maps can be used to explore the peaks, valleys, ridges, cliffs and islands of issues that exist in and influence our lives.
UrbanStory is a new project that I am leading to physically explore, social, economic, political and environmental issues and themes. Using current data and mapping I will plan walks through (non)violent, (un)healthy, (un)creative and other ‘hidden’ landscapes that I hope you will join.
The first walk will focus on the theme of (non)violence. The route will be based on the latest data from the London Ward Atlas and the Metropolitan Police Crime Mapping and websites. With amongst the lowest recorded violent crime recorded it will probably start in one of the sub-wards of Cranham in East London and finish in St James’s Park (outside Buckingham Palace) in St James’s ward which has the highest rate of recorded violence against the person in London.
Taking place on Monday 11th July this 35km walk will take about 7 hours, but this will depend on the needs of the group. We will meet at a train station close to the start of the walk for about 11am.
If you would like to take part in this UrbanStory (non)violent walk please contact me here.
