URBANmedias

Silent parks. Designing for disabilities. Human-powered data. Garbage anthropology. World-class sidewalks. Floating favelas. Paint as infrastructure.

These are the keys to the cities of the future, according to the most recent TED conference, City 2.0. Last year, for the first time, the TED Prize went to an idea—the future of the city—and a million dollars was divvied up among ten grantees all over the world.

Last week was the first-ever TED City 2.0 conference, featuring several of those grantees plus many other urban leaders discussing their ideas for the future of the city.

Tony’s Farm is the biggest organic food farm in Shanghai, which produces certified vegetables and fruits. But it's more than just a place for vegetable production. The vision is to integrate the consumer and therefore promote a natural lifestyle.

To link the activities of the working people with the visitors of the farm, playze developed a building complex, which combines the main reception, a lobby, (working also for the future hotel rooms) and a vip area, with the new offices and an existing warehouse, where the fruits and vegetables are being packed. The building provides transparency within the manufacturing process. Thus it supports the vision of integrating the visitor and helps to reinforce the consumer confidence in the products of the farm. At the same time the building design is driven by the concept of sustainability, combined with it's iconic qualities, it communicates and promotes the core concept of the Farm...

With 150,000 or so old print maps to his name, David Rumsey has earned his reputed place among the world's "finest private collectors." He continues to expand his personal trove as well as the digitized sub-collection he makes open to the public online — some 38,000 strong, and growing.

He's created a series of interactive maps that layer old prints onto the Google Earth and Google Maps platforms, and this summer he plans to launch a geo-referencing tool (similar to one recently introduced by the British Library) that lets users get involved in the digital mapping process themselves.

While preparing for this next expansion of his online map empire, Rumsey remains fascinated by "the power of putting these images up and letting them go," he says.

"Maps have a way of speaking to people very straightforward," he says. "You don't have to have a lot of knowledge of map history or history in general. To me they're perfect tools for teaching history to the public."