ABOUT THE PROJECT:

A place can be completely unimpressive for the rest of the world, while for someone it is the most “special place” on earth. By “special place” we mean a place that has become a very important meaning to a person through a very personal experience. Here are two good examples we got from Oslo and Warsaw.

We invite you to show us your “special place” and tell us why it is so special to you and how one can get there. Our aim is to publish a very personal online-map full of people’s “special places” from different cities.

TASK:

a.) Send us at least 2 – 10 photographs of your special place.
(If you have more photographs and more places – fine!)

b.) Answer following questions:
1. Name of place

2. Where is it exactly

3. How do you get there

4. Why is it so special for you

We look forward to receiving your contribution. In case you have any questions please don’t hesitate to write me an e-mail to info@worldidentitylab.net

Warm regards, the World Identity Lab-Team

If you already are a mighty World Identity Lab contributor you know how to submit your work. If not, please follow the instructions at “how to contribute“ in the main menue at your left hand side.

In big cities all over the world cars are often used as transportation. It is also a normal sight to see five-seat cars with only one person in it. This is not good for the environment, but that’s not the only disadvantage, the traffic lines in the cities in the mornings and afternoons can sometimes be brutal!

In New York City the Department of Transportation (DOT) arranged something called Summer Streets. With this project they celebrated the valuable public spaces of NYC, namely the streets. Three Saturdays during the summer people could use almost twelve kilometres of the streets for biking, playing, walking and much more. This was an initiative to encourage the people of NYC to use other means of transportation. The project was very popular, this year more then 250.000 people attended the Summer Streets.

The summer streets took place in the mornings from 7:00am to 1:00pm for people to enjoy the summer mornings, to go for a bike or walking tour and for people to open their eyes to outdoor exercise. The route went all the way from Brooklyn Bridge to Central Park.

This free of charge event was designed for people in all age ranges and ability levels. DOT has already started the planning of next years Summer Streets. Maybe this kind of project can be something for your city as well?

SUORCE:
NYC Government

When I think of transportation it normally includes getting myself from one place to another. But of course it can be more then that. If you are one of these creative people, it can be that your work is travelling around, without you…

Well, let me explain this a bit better. It’s called the Sketchbook Project, and it’s a “globe-trotting” mobile library. The books are handmade of people from all over the world, in fact more then 130 countries. The books contain everything from short stories, patterns, doodles and more. The founders Steve Peterman and Shane Zucker says this about the project: “The Sketchbook Project is a worldwide creative experience. Together, thousands of regular people from around the world will form a travelling library of handmade books.”

The Sketchbook Project explained in 96 seconds from Art House Co-op on Vimeo.

With more then 19.000 contributions this year the library visited Los Angeles, London, Toronto and many cities more. It was a tremendous success, and this success promise a good start of next year. The plans of the Sketchbook travel 2013 are already formed. And lots of sketchbooks will travel the world and spread their wings. A lot of stops are already scheduled, some of them are Atlanta, Austin and Chicago. To contribute with your creative skills, for 25 dollars you can register on the homepage, then you will receive information and a blank sketchbook that you can make the way you want. When you send it back, it will travel the world and show its beauty to everyone willing to watch.

“We created the travelling aspect because we found that so many of our participants were from other parts of the country and we thought that it was important for us to be able to reach them and not stay stationary. We hope to make the project more mobile so we can travel to even more places,” says Eli Dvorkin, project manager.

Some of the beauty of this project is that the sketchbook is attached to its creator. The sketchbook is marked with a barcode that makes it possible for the participants to follow their books location and checkout history. After sometime on the road, the sketchbook finds its new home in the Brooklyn Art Library together with more then 22.000 other sketchbooks, a number that will continue to grow.

SOURCES:
Art House co-op
The Daily Good

Many cities all over the world have experienced a tremendous growth in “bicycle-inhabitants” within the recent years. Bikes are environmental friendly, good for the health, you don’t need to fit into a schedule, in other words they fit into today’s trends. But, what happens to all of these bicycles when you go on and by a new one and don’t sell the old one, or what happens to it when you forgot where you parked it and just go on buying a new?

In April this year the project “Transportation Nation” by the New York radio stations WNYC tried to find an answer to these questions. What they did was to ask their listeners and readers to take pictures of abandoned bikes that they saw on their way through town. The response to this task was huge, and “Transportation Nation” received more then 500 submissions. “Once we got in hundreds and hundreds of photos of these abandoned bikes we started to notice there was a rhythmic beauty in how they were all so similar but they were all so unique in the peculiar but familiar form of decay. And we have a performance space here that supports art events. The director suggested we make an art exhibit because some of the photographs do rise to the level of art.” says Alex Goldmark of Transportation Nation. The abandoned bike project has now become an art exhibit at The Green Space in Manhattan, the exhibit lasts from August 1 through September 4. If you don’t have the possibility to go and have a look at the exhibition, well don’t worry. You can also view exhibition online.

Even if these bikes in this case is used as art, this project started because the people from Transportation Nation saw the problem with them. The big response on the questions is probably also because it makes people upset to see all the prime parking that is taken because of this abandoned bikes. They also take a lot of space from the sidewalk, they are simply in the way of others, left to take up public property where others really could have good use of the space.

But it is easier said than done to remove these bikes. If you see a bike in New York that you want to get removed you have to go through at least four steps. First you have to call 311 and describe the bike, then they set you over to someone else where you make a claim. Later the bike has to be inspected, and then if it is deemed abandoned the Department of Sanitation of New York can remove it. But the restrictions to get a bike removed are so strict than very few of the claimed bikes get removed.

SOURCES:
Transportation Nation
The Green Space
GOOD

For more then a hundred years ago people were expecting flying cars before the new millennium. As we know by now, this didn’t happen at all. And it doesn’t really feel like we are getting closer either…, does it? In cartoons it is easy to see that the dream of flying cars is as big today as it has been before. We also know that it is possible to build this type of cars, NASA shows us how it could be done in this video:

The first flying car was developed by Glenn Curtiss. To be fair it wasn’t really a flying car because it couldn’t fly, it was only jumping. But at least it made people think of the flying car as something that really could happen. He named his “flying-car” Three-wing Curtiss Autoplane. Later, in 1926 the “sky flivver” was displayed by Henry Ford. This project wasn’t either successful because of an accident that killed the pilot. The first flying car that actually deserves the name (because it could fly) was built by Waldo Waterman and had wind under its wings on March 21, 1937. He named it Arrowbile, the wingspan of the car was 11 meters, it could fly at 180 km/h and drive at 90 km/h. Have a look at the picture below:

Have you ever been invited to a dinner, a wedding or perhaps a party that you had to “skip” because it was to far away? Well, I guess most of us have experienced this. Could the flying car (if it existed) make our live easier in the sense that we wouldn’t need to say no to so many things? And think of all the time that would be saved when you fly in a straight line from A to B instead of standing in a line and even follow all the twist and turns of the road.

Yes I know, I make it sound unproblematic don’t I? Of course we would need a totally new set of rules. And it would also be quite scary if something went wrong with the vehicle far above the ground. Maybe is it impossible, or maybe all of the questions above are just problems waiting to be solved?

Can you think of a better way of getting from A to B then with a flying car? Or maybe you have a suggestion to how a flying car could look like or even work? If you do, please send us a mail with your explanation and some pictures or even drawings. We are eager to see it!

Source:
Wikipedia

The two industrial design students Ethan Frier and Jonathan Ota at Carnegie Mellon University saw the potential to come up with a new system that could degrease accidents happening by night-time cycling – this was the start of the Aura project. In the Aura project Frier and Ota used LED lights that change colour based on the speed of your ride. You of course don’t have to do anything, it is a dynamo fastened on the front wheel of your bike that regulate the light and the colour.

Every day there is bike accidents in traffic. If a bike hits a car it doesn’t really matter who it is to blame, the biker is “always” the one ending up hurt. To be visible in traffic is important for the driver of the car to be aware of the biker. If the cyclist has a small headlight or a similar light, it may be hard to remember to put it on, and even when you put it on it doesn’t really have the best effect. The Aura project focuses on safety, do you?

In London James commutes to and from work every day by using an inflatable kayak. And there are others who prefer kayaking too – just watch the videos.

Sources:
YOUTUBE
YOUTUBE

On BBC´s program “60 second idea” IBM´s Jeff Jonas was given one minute to come up with an idea that he believed would change the world. Jonas came up with the idea of “Ration use of car horns”. He meant that car horns create too much noise pollution, people use the horn just to tell others that they are frustrated. Therefore he meant that every driver would only get a few honks a month for free, when the car has registered that you have used the horn more than that you have to pay for it. This way it will be less noise pollution and less irritated people on the roads.

The horns can also be used in a different way, artist Zefrey Throwell has recorded horns of cars all over Los Angeles and made it into a sonic movement for the third piece of his “Entropy Symphony”. Throwell himself has his own preferences to what a great horn sounds like: “The Honda Civic horn is really something quite shill and beautiful” he says.

Sources: www.scpr.org, en.wikipedia.org, www.bbc.com, www.usatoday.com

Pictures:
Sir Mildred Pierce (Flickr)
PeterJBellis (Flickr)

Maybe there is an answer to your problem after all. The two Swedish ladies Anna Haupt and Terese Alstin would not be seen dead with an ugly polystyrene helmet. When they were studying industrial design in Sweden, they decided that this was the perfect opportunity to solve this problem, and make a new type of helmet that didn’t necessarily destroy your hair and ruin your look. They found out that people have a lot of different reasons not to put on the helmet, many also have a strong opinion about it. Most people know that it is important to wear helmet, but they don’t use it anyway, Haupt and Alstin meant that:„ It isn’t the bicyclists who need to change, it’s the product.“ After a lot of research the students found out that the world was waiting for a new type of helmet, the invisible one… Would Hövding be the solution to your problem? Maybe it would make you change your way of transportation?

Source: hovding.com

Why do you use it?
I use public transport because first I don’t have a car, but I don’t care about it, because in such a city as Berlin it is even easier to go with tram or subway.
Second is when you go with a car you can’t see as much as when you go with public transport. For example you can have a good tour just using ring subway, because it doesn’t go underground but across the city.

Which is your favorite means of transport?
But my favorite type of transport is my bicycle. Love it).

Why?
I love to travel with my bicycle because I can stop where ever I want. it’s cheaper, just by a it one time, you can buy a second hand at one of the floh-markets. And bicycle roads are everywhere. You can park your bike near subway station or go with it there, but in that case you need to buy extra ticket for bike.

Which means of transport do you use usually?
I usually use public transportation.

Why do you use it?
I like to look out of the window of overground trains, watching at people on the street. What is even more interesting is looking at people directly around me in trains.

Which is your favorite means of transport?
Depends on the city. Summer in cities where you can ride a bike is great. The huge advantage is having the overall control. But when I am exausted from my day I prefer public transportation-. Then I can relax on my way home.

Why?
I like to chose a way through the city to get food for my eyes. When I can go by bike I get a lot of impressions from the city itself, when I use public transportation I get impressions from the people living there. And there are many different kinds of people around. Some are conservative, some alternative, different cultures and aims. When I observe this stuff I feel creativity coming up in my mind. As I am an author in my freetime I use the public transportation as one of my creativity sources. Even taking the same way every day at similar time – the environment and therefore the impressions are different. That is what I need for my fantasy…

The New York City Subway is the fourth busiest rapid transit rail system in the world. There are 26 subway lines with 468 stations. Not an easy thing to visualize.* In 2010 a major design relaunch tried to improve the maps’ readability. But subway map design has a long history.

1931: The London Underground, Harry Beck
In 1931 Harry Beck, an electrical draughtsman at the London Underground, was the first to produce a diagrammatic map. According to the New York Times this map would “go down in history for its graphical ingenuity”. Beck based the map on the circuit diagrams; the result was an instantly clear and comprehensible chart. This revolutionary design has survived to the present day. Beck also made some drafts of diagrammatic maps for the Paris Métropolitain.

1972: New York Subway, Massimo Vignelli
In 1972 Massimo Vignelli reduced the boroughs of New York to white geometric shapes and eliminated most of the topographic details and the level of visual noise by using gray (not green) to denote Central Park and beige (not blue) to shade New York’s waterways. This new and more comprehensible design was radical and often criticized. In 1979 Vignellis map was replaced by a more traditional topographical version, including the New York City street grid and blue color for the waterways.

2010: New York Subway, The Weekender
The new subway map for New York, introduced in 2010, was said to be a huge improvement but is still struggling to serve two purposes: the aim was to comprehensively represent the streets and to help navigation through the New York underground. There was, however, a great digital improvement: ‘the Weekender’, a little online guide to service interruptions.

Source: Fastcodesign.com, New York Times, Transport for London

“Future city streets will be in four levels,” says Mr. Corbett, architect, in Popular Science Monthly in 1925. “The top level for pedestrians, the next lower level for slow motor traffic, the next for fast motor traffic and the lowest for electric trains. Great blocks of terraced skyscrapers half a mile high will house offices, schools, homes and playgrounds in successive levels, while the roofs will be aircraft landing-fields.”

See the full infographic at Retronaut.

Source: Guardian.co.uk

Why do you use it?
I don’t like waiting for trains. I like the control you have on a bike, you need to get somewhere faster, you pedal harder.

Which is your favorite means of transport?
Biking is by far my favorite way to travel.

Why?
I like to travel by bike because I feel that you get to experience the city you live in in a different way. You can change your route, go down a block you have never been down before, and get off whenever you please. There is nothing better then biking over the Williamsburg Bridge when winter is turning into Spring and the night air is starting to feel warm again.

The “Do Good Bus” inspires community and volunteers to do good deeds accross North America. The bus tour conducts mystery volunteer activites with the good samaritans who sign up ahead in time to take part in the “Do Good Bus” ride. Missions can be anything from feeding the homeless, to organizing a carnival at camps for kids, handing out books to kids from the lower income strata and much more …

Could you imagine organizing something like that in your community?

A speedometer is one of those items you look at thousands of times, without ever really noticing. What matters is the speed, not the meter or its design. Christain Annyas shows the evolution of Chevrolet’s speedometer design from 1941 to 2011 and offers a great analysis of the typefaces and usability concerns.

Source: Christian Annyas

Which is your favorite means of transport?
A bicycle is a wonderful thing, with feet for when it’s not. And those BIGREDBUSES. Get on for fun.

Why?
Eco warrior? No. I just like to be independent.

I get to see more on my bike.

I’m fully aware of left, right, up and down, forward and, to a degree, behind. Take nothing for granted.

In 2010, London launched its first two cycle superhighways. Joe Peach tested CS3 which links Barking in the east to London’s famous Tower Bridge and gives an overview on the pros and cons.

Source: This Big City

Traffic can be a nightmare – especially in big cities. A visual arts student filmed a 3-way intersection in NYC to show why 74 per cent of accidents happen in intersections: pedestrians jaywalking, cyclists running red lights, and motorists plowing through crosswalks.

But there are other places in this world where traffic is even less organized and looks more dangerous but still works – for example in India. Every one who owns a vehicle, whether a two wheeler, 3 wheeler or four wheeler has just learnt to manover the vehicle on the road, not in respect to the rules but in respect to the movement of other vehicles around.

Some European countries have adopted this form of traffic regulation, to minimise fatal accidents within city limits. It’s called “Shared Space”.

Sources: Gawker, blog.ronconcocacola.com, planetsave.com