Archive for September, 2008

The Times London has published a list of the globe’s richest streets in the world. Based on property prices, the most expensive street in the world is located in Monaco. On avenue Princess Grace average price run about €12.000 per square feet. Possibly everyone with an address in that street is a millionaire. In second place is Severn Road in Hong Kong, where the average price €7.677 per square feet.

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Delete! was an art project and installation by Christoph Steinbrener and Rainer Dempf in Vienna in 2005. For a period of two weeks, the artists “deleted” all public sign and signals (advertising signs, slogans, pictograms, company names and logos), except those necessary for road safety, and covered them in yellow foils and plastic.

The aim of this project was to spark a public debate about just how much advertising society can take. The artists argued there’s too much advertising in Vienna, where billboards line many streets and where scaffolding — even on historic buildings such as the famed St. Stephen’s Cathedral — often is covered by oversized ads. Steinbrenner said "You can’t see the landscape anymore. It hurts the eyes.”. The artists did not set out to just conceal the ads — they want to create awareness about them.

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In the light of our PerfectCity Charter it is time to start  a new issue. Therefore, a new poll is online focussing on leisure and cultural life. Please vote for the most important facets and aspects of this issue shaping the city of the future. We are interested in the following question: Which factors define the leisure and cultural life for you the most? What do you think is most important about leisure and cultural life in the City of The Future?

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I would like to introduce you my research project called Time=net.work. The latter has got the purpose to extend complex networks theories to transportation systems under a new time-related point of view. Coupled biological and chemical systems, neural networks, social interacting species, the Internet and the World Wide Web are only a few examples of complex networks, i.e. systems composed by a large number of highly interconnected dynamical units. During the last ten years these kinds of systems have been the subject of many studies related to comprehend their common structural properties and their dynamics.

Complex networks are supposed to be very stable and robust structures in case of failures or deliberate attacks on the system. Moreover, due to their well-known properties, they allow to model several real networks in order to find the key elements for a complete and efficient communication activity between nodes.

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According to Reuters, South Korea will spend around US $ 103 billion through 2030 in developing new renewable energy, in an effort to cut its reliance on fossil fuels and reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

As a part of the government’s long-term energy strategy, the plan will come on top of other energy policies and overseas resource development plans. The Ministry of Knowledge Economy said that South Korea will lower the portion of fossil energy to 61 percent by 2030 from the current 83 percent, while bumping up the portion of new renewable energy to 11 percent from 2.4 percent.

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In the light of our PerfectCity Charter a new issue is coming up. This time the focus lies on leisure and the cultural life in a city. Those two direct influences on the wellbeing of the inhabitants of a city cannot be defined as easily as all the former issues we discussed in this charter.

Besides all the private facilities (like cinemas, arenas, fairs, clubs etc.) we want to focus on publicly provided services. Thus we would like to introduce a brief description of our understanding of leisure and cultural life.

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As climate change has become reality it is just a matter of time until we face “big changes”. What happens if global warming causes the central and middle regions of the Earth to become uninhabitable for a long period of time?

Having this question in mind and having read a newspaper column by British chemist and inventor James Lovelock, in which Dr. Lovelock predicted disastrous warming, Danny Bloom teamed up with Deng Cheng-hong and set up a website showing designs for self-sufficient Arctic communities.

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We would like to remind you of our current poll. So if you haven’t voted yet, please take a minute to vote for the most important factors of „Social services“ in the city of the future.

By the next weeks we will introduce the new issue “Leisure and cultural life” to you. We will present a list of relevant factors to you and are looking forward to your ideas and proposals on the integral parts.

 
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We all know university cities or college towns. These are defined as communities or small till medium sized town which are dominated by its university population. The university may be large, or there may be several smaller institutions, or the residential population may be small, but college towns in all cases are so dubbed because the educational institution(s) presence pervades economic and social life. Many local residents may be employed by the university - which may be the largest employer in the community, many businesses cater primarily to the university, and indeed the students population may outnumber the local population outright.

With a university dominating a city, there are several advantages a cities benefits from.

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