At the newly unveiled Web site Shape Vancouver 2050, users are given a digital model of the Vancouver skyline, the ability to extrude buildings upwards, and a visual gauge of the resulting effects on the city’s downtown. As the user drags the digital towers higher and population density increases, meters at the bottom of the screen go up too—energy saved, carbon use curbed, dollars added to the city coffers.
Popularity: 44% [?]
Amos Rapoport, in his book “The Meaning of the Built Environment. A Nonverbal Communication Approach” (1982, Sage publications, California) explains that as one moves into the domain of non fixed-semi fixed and fixed elements, the cultural variability and specificity tends to increase. An important issue is to discover urban and cultural cues that communicate particular meanings. Cultural cues include nonverbal behaviors, from intuitive ones (adaptors), to exact verbal translations with precise meanings known to all (symbolic gestures or emblems). In 1977, Rapoport listed some potential cues, and of course there are even more.
Popularity: 14% [?]
Big-city dwellers suffer their share of daily indignities: crowded streets, exorbitant prices, parades of slack-jawed tourists complaining about crowded streets and exorbitant prices. Not to mention the dirt, crime, dodgy politicians and constant rebuilding projects. These are the tests the mega-urbanite passes with a complacent shrug.
Until somebody messes with the subway map. Then it’s blood in the water.
Popularity: 20% [?]