Open Street Map, London

Data submitted to OpenStreetMap of people walking, driving and cycling around London. So the thicker the lines, the more people travelled them.
Open Street Map
and to buy a print

A place to hang out

from Ray Oldenburg's web site
Third Place:
Oldenburg identifies third places, or "great good places," as the public places on neutral ground where people can gather and interact. In contrast to first places (home) and second places (work), third places allow people to put aside their concerns and simply enjoy the company and conversation around them. Third places “host the regular, voluntary, informal, and happily anticipated gatherings of individuals beyond the realms of home and work.” Oldenburg suggests that beer gardens, main streets, pubs, cafés, coffeehouses, post offices, and other third places are the heart of a community's social vitality and the foundation of a functioning democracy. They promote social equality by leveling the status of guests, provide a setting for grassroots politics, create habits of public association, and offer psychological support to individuals and communities.
Quote:
“Most needed are those ‘third places’ which lend a public balance to the increased privatization of home life. Third places are nothing more than informal public gathering places. The phrase ‘third places’ derives from considering our homes to be the ‘first’ places in our lives, and our work places the ‘second.’

Thoughts on 'geo' tagging

Technologies such as GPS, WIFI, RFID and Bluetooth running on a whole range of handheld wireless devices are enabling new contextual action and communication, or to put it more literally they are 'sensing place'.

The critical feature of these new practices is that they are binding a whole range of communication technologies back into a spatial and physically located setting. Recent projects (such as Plazes, Yellow Arrow etc.) have made possible, through the virtual tagging of locational information, the sharing of serendipitous discovery of meaning in often everyday locations. Formerly concealed or unexpectedly everyday sites of interest in a location are revealed or highlighted. Through the availability of this type of information directly in the setting the individual becomes transformed from outsider or stranger, to an insider who is no longer remote. In turn they then participate in a cycle, where they themselves layer the given place with their own experience, which is by its very nature grounded in a wholly different perspective of personal experience and memory.

The individuals 'sense of place', which although initiated at an individual level, perpetuates through the opportunity offered through the technology to instantly share and network the experience with an unknown number of familiar strangers. In actively participating in the exchange of information the individual is encouraged to recognise and acknowledge a highly personal and more immediate experience of place, one not based in its mass identity or preconceptions, and consequently there is the likelihood that this experience will endure. Placemaking, rather than being understood at a superficial or casual level of mass identification is instead redefined at often unexpected scales and in extraordinary locations.

Yellow Arrow

My first yellow arrow ( Yellow Arrow website) placed on the facade of the Palast der Republik, Schlossplatz, Berlin. The building was the home of the old East German government, and stands decaying in the heart of Berlin.
Currently hosting an exhibition entitled Fraktale which is worth a visit, even if just for the chance to see at first hand the stripped back concrete interior of the building.

Finding your way in Seoul

"This way to..." signs In the West, we're used to a "grid" style city layout, with street numbers assigned to buildings in geographical order (such as odd numbers on left, even numbers on right, in ascending order as you travel north). We expect to see street signs on every corner, with building numbers clearly marked.

Seoul is not laid out in this fashion at all! Except for major arteries, street signs are pretty much absent, as are building numbers. Furthermore, these numbers are not assigned in any particular sequence. For example, on one street, the numbers are 523, 549, 512, 484, and 461 on the left side; with 359, 398, 413, and 389 on the right.

How do you find an address in Seoul, then? For most major landmarks, you just give the name and someone at the hotel can tell you how to get there. Taxi drivers, of course, know all the major landmarks and tourist sites. For the more obscure addresses:

* If you've never been to a place before, you phone and get directions, or have someone who speaks Korean get the directions.
* Once you've been there, pick up a business card, many of which have maps on them.
* Finally, if you read Korean and are seriously interested in finding your way on your own, go to a major bookstore such as the Kyo-bo book center and buy a map book which shows street names and numbers. These books, which cost about 12,000 won, show traffic information (one-way streets, parking areas, etc) as well. They are definitely not for the casual tourist who does not read Korean!
from http://langintro.com/seoul/findway2.htm