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Excellent article by John Geraci on how/why "the long tail" analogy has to come alive in cities, and what it would mean.
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Most cities right now are models of closed, rigid systems, systems that rely on a few, top-performing agents to get civic tasks done and keep quality of life high for residents. Most of these agents are departments of the city itself, though some are outsourced. Either way, cities rely on one agent per issue, no more. (...)
...imagine instead a city that has totally open, unrestricted access to data (say, San Francisco or DC in 2011). What does it look like? It has all of the familiar city-run departments providing all of the services and assistance they've always provided - that's not going away. Then it also has public services offered by the mega companies, the Google Traffic, IBM's Smarter Cities, and so forth. Those are huge added value to these open cities - they're used by a large percentage of residents and make life in those cities better. But THEN, it also has an insane long tail of services set up and run by anyone with an interest in doing so, just by hooking into city data, distributing it in a new way, improving on it, mashing it up, giving it back to the city, etc. These services each individually get used by a small minority of people, but collectively they get used by more than any other single source in the city.
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It's interesting to think about the differences between Canada and the US here. In the US, all government data is owned by the people - governments can't keep it back. But in Canada, all government data is owned by the Crown. That means, Canadians have to first get someone in authority to grant them access to it and they have to get permission to use it. #fail #deadendfeudalism

radar.oreilly.com/...w-long-is-your-citys-tail.html - Preview

john_geraci cities data open_source democracy long_tail o'reilly

An amazing presentation by Hans Rosling about world health & economic data, his site (gapminder.org), the "bottom billion," and ...well, blowing cliches about health and wealth out of the water. Also see Rosling's 10 answers to 10 questions video: http://www.gapminder.org/videos/ted-and-reddits-10-questions-to-hans-rosling/

www.ted.com/...hans_rosling_at_state.html - Preview

ted_conference data video statistics hans_rosling demographics gapminder

31-page PDF (still to read), "The Entrepreneurial Advantage of World Cities," subtitled "Evidence from Global Entrepreneurship Monitor Data."

From the abstract:
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Recent discussions in the Economic Geography literature increasingly focus on creative cities and the importance of creativity for achieving economic growth. Considering the increased attention on urban areas it is not surprising that the regional dimension of entrepreneurship is a subject of great interest. We set out a framework encompassing the individual process between entrepreneurial perceptions and entrepreneurial activity and demonstrate how the urban environment can have an impact on this process.
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Wired Magazine article by Alexis Madrigal on "wired" homes, including http://twitter.com/andy_house, by IBM "master inventor" Andry Stanford-Clark who "rigged up his home to twitter its energy use." See The House That Twitters Its Energy Use by Katie Fehrenbacher (http://earth2tech.com/2008/04/30/the-house-that-twitters-its-energy-use/).

Compare to Wired Mag's recent "Peak Water" article, which pointed out that many London households aren't even on water meters, making consumption monitoring impossible.

In addition, consider too the New Scientist article, "City road networks grow like biological systems" (4/23/08).

All this relates to infrastructure -- and to how we're just beginning to understand it from new angles. (See also Doc Searls' continuing investigation of infrastructure in Linux Journal.)

blog.wired.com/...online-homes-br.html - Preview

twitter infrastructure data architecture housing consumption energy wired_magazine

Intriguing summing up by Regine from We Make Money Not Art of Eric Rodenbeck's presentation at etech08, "Information Visualization is a Medium." I especially liked this, on the Crime Spotting app:

"...interactive map of crimes in Oakland was developed with the idea of offering a tool for understanding crime in cities.

"You can get a precise overview of what is happening in your neighbourhood (or the one where you plan to rent a house) over time, you can select the crimes you want to see and if you like that sort of thrill, crime alerts can be delivered to you in almost real time via RSS or email.

"Crimespotting helps people explore public information, draw connections, see pattern emerge and find new possibilities for questioning.

The website says: We believe that civic data should be exposed to the public in a more open way. With these maps, we hope to inspire local governments to use this data visualization model for the public release of many different kinds of data: tree plantings, new schools, applications for liquor licenses, and any other information that matters to people who live in neighborhoods."

Yes, data should be "exposed to the public in a more open way."

www.we-make-money-not-art.com/...h08-information-visualizat.php - Preview

apps data data_visualization eric_rodenbeck etech08 gis mapping_apps o'reilly regine wmmna