A tale of two cities told by two bloggers with the help of some attractive graphics. They say their blog is “a friendly visual match between those two cities, as seen by a Parisian-based-and-lover on New York : details, cliches and contradictions”. Need to know more? Then this way, please.
Eric Fischer maps US cities by colour-coding them according to US census data. In the image below – one pixel represents 25 people – orange is hispanic, red is white; blue is black and green is asian. First thing you notice is how polarised it all is. Uptown Manhattan sticks out like a pair of sore fingers: almost exclusively caucasian on both sides of Central Park. But see how this contrasts starkly with the cluster around Chinatown (green circle at the bottom of the island), or the long, blue plume of Harlem, itself separated by the hispanic enclave of Spanish Harlem, represented on the map as an oblong of orange.
Schmit has charted many US cities: the map of Detroit is even more revealing. The full Flickr set here. You wonder how a similar map of London might compare. Would it show the sprinkle of hundreds and thousands that we often associate with the old Smoke? The London Profiler is the closest I could find but as a web-based app it’s a little clunky to provide a definative answer.
Two of my favourite things: beautiful bookshops and Bjork. Shame I couldn’t catch them both together on Friday when the Icelandic chanteuse previewed her latest work at the Housing Works Bookstore Cafe in New York. Thankfully the New York Times has a review, while YouTube is showing the inevitable handheld video. Bjork was accompanying the Dirty Projectors, a Brooklyn-based ensemble led by Dave Longstreth. Naturally I wish I was there.
What about this for a New York skyline? It’s actually a composite of several images taken from thousands of that have been digitised and then arranged on the Google Earth application. Accourding to its blog Google has completed nearly every building in Manhattan Island for Google Earth. What’s more Google says it plans to extend the service across the world.
Just come across Sightseeing in Liberty City an excellent photoset on Flickr that compares views from Grand Theft Auto’s simulated city with real New York. If you can’t immediately tell the difference – and it’s getting increasingly difficult – the real city is the one on the right. Here you can compare for yourself the opposing Manhattan Bridges; Empire State Building and the now infamous shot of the Statue of Liberty replete with styrofoam cup. Only Central Park disappoints.
Back in 2000, Eggers helped form a non-profit organisation helping local kids develop literacy skills. 826 Valencia in San Francisco is no ordinary after-school drop-in centre, mind. It was actually a space in the front of McSweeny’s, the literary magazine started by Eggers. What he helped coordinate was a network of volunteers, mostly writers, who could offer local kids one-on-one tutoring. It has had a massive impact in the neighbourhood and has served as an exemplar for a network of similar projects.
This being David Eggers, there is a very colourful side story to the project. To get through local planning laws, the centre had to behave as is it was a retail space. The writers decided to nominally create a pirate-supply stores (planks-by-the-yard, peg legs, hooks and bottles fit for messages etc…), this was meant to be a joke. But it has subsequently helped 826 Valencia to turn a profit. A similar project in Brooklyn masquerades as the Superhero Supply Company, one in LA “sells” gear for time travellers. This month the movement (see more here) crosses the Atlantic with the opening of Fighting Words, with the help of Booker winning author Roddy Doyle.
Why does this matter? Well apart from improving child literacy, Eggers sounds this note of optimism in the middle of the speech: “A bunch of happy families in a neighborhood is a happy community. A bunch of happy communities tied together is a happy city and a happy world, right?”
The image above was runner-up in this year’s Wikimedia Commons Picture of the year competition. Taken by Paulo Barcellos Jr, a professional Brazilian photographer working in Toronto. Barcellos used High Dynamic Range (HDR) imaging to take the shot, in a kind of digital sleight-of-hand that allows you to take a range of exposures, lending the picture a hyper-real quality. What’s nice about the prize is that, although Barcellos is a pro-photographer, the image belongs to us all through its “creative commons” licence. And it offers evidence that such licences are providing work that is every bit of good as that locked under copyright.
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