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“From realtime city to asynchronicity” abstract for workshop “Time Travelers: Temporality and Mapping”, University of Oxford, 27-28 May 2014

Last week I was in Oxford for the workshop “Time Travelers: Temporality and Mapping”. The workshop was organized by the research team of the ERC-funded project “Charting the Digital: digital mapping practices as new media cultures” (Sybille Lammes, Nanna Verhoeff, Clancy Wilmott, Sam Hind, Alex Gekker, and Chris Perkins) based at the University of Warwick (in collaboration with Utrecht University and the University of Manchester) and Jesus College at the University of Oxford. Thanks to the organizers for a great event with many inspiring people and talks! ==== abstract: From realtime city to asynchronicity Michiel de Lange Mapping events in […] Read More

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Playing for the Future: event April 17 2014 about play, games and urban (re)developments

Last year, The Mobile City partnered in the project “Rezone Playful Interventions” about the use of playful design strategies to repurpose vacant spaces. In this project three teams composed of an architect and a game studio collaborated and created a temporary playful urban intervention for a near-vacant factory at the edge of the city center of Den Bosch. The three teams were: Maurer United x Marieke Verbiesen, DUS Architects x Monobanda, ZUS Architects x Fourcelabs. The DUS Architects x Monobanda intervention has also been part of our recent project “Made By Us“. These interventions could be played during a public festival and aimed to engage visitors and stakeholders with the […] Read More

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Report workshop day1 “Made By Us: using smart technologies to repurpose industrial heritage”

[this post also appears on The Mobile City] As part of the overarching project Made By Us, The New Institute and The Mobile City in collaboration with CMoDA organize a two-day workshop during the Beijing Design Week. In this workshop participants from various professional and national backgrounds address the reuse of former industrial plants through digital media technologies. The site we work with is Shougang Capital Steel Factory in west Beijing, which was abandoned to improve the city’s air quality (read more about the factory’s history). This factory, abandoned is currently being repurposed into a creative industry park and housing […] Read More

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Opening Rezone Playful Interventions 13 sept 2013 16:16 Den Bosch

Tomorrow is the opening of Rezone Playful Interventions in the almost abandoned factory De Heus in Den Bosch. I have been involved in this project, and will be there of course! See announcement (in Dutch) below. Everyone is welcome! Link to the program booklet >> (pdf 1,6 MB).   Toonaangevende Nederlandse architecten en game-studio’s werken samen aan tijdelijke invulling fabriek in ‘s-Hertogenbosch. Rezone Playful Interventions, is een project van Bosch Architectuur Initiatief , Digitale Werkplaats en The Mobile City. Opening: 13 september 16:16 De Heus, ‘s-Hertogenbosch Op 13 september om 16:16 uur gaat de eerste culturele activiteit in fabriek De Heus […] Read More

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“Made By Us”: new program about industrial heritage and smart & social cities, Beijing/NL/Shenzhen

We are happy to announce Made By Us, a new project The Mobile City is partnering in with The New Institute. Made By Us is a six-month research-by-design program investigating creative reuses of former industrial plants. The challenge is to help design smart media interventions that will engage stakeholders in postindustrial heritage planning for abandoned factories. The New Institute, the Netherlands’ new national institute for the creative industry, has invited Dutch research group The Mobile City to help develop an ongoing dialogue around the concept of smart cities between Chinese and Dutch architects, media makers and designers. We will launch the Made by Us project during the Beijing Design Week in partnership […] Read More

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Playing against vacancy: architects and game developers create games for urban change

[this post also appears on The Mobile City blog] About the project How can temporary playful interventions be used to engage people with the issue of vacancy? The Mobile City is a partner in the new project Rezone Playful Interventions. In this project three teams, each composed of an architect and a game designer, collaborate to create a temporary playful urban intervention for the soon to be vacant factory De Heus Koudijs at the edge of the city center of Den Bosch. The aim is to involve visitors and stakeholders through play with both the particular location and the general […] Read More

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Presentation Hybrid City II conference “The smart city you love to hate”

From 23 to 25 May 2013 the wonderful conference “Hybrid City II: Subtle rEvolutions” took place in Athens, Greece. The conference was very good with many interesting talks and people, well-organized, beautiful venue and great city. Interestingly, several other speakers talked about the role of affect and emotions in our relationship with media technologies and cities. There seems to be something in the air.. Anyway, below the presentation I gave (pdf 775 KB; slightly modified to provide some image credits). The talk is based on my submitted conference paper. The organizers told they want to publish the entire conference proceedings online under a Creative […] Read More

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Hybrid City 2 Conference abstract: The smart city you love to hate: Exploring the role of affect in hybrid urbanism

Next week from 23 ? 25 May I attend the second Hybrid City conference – “subtle rEvolutions” – in Athens, Greece. Hybrid City is an international biennial event dedicated to exploring the emergent character of the city and the potential transformative shift of the urban condition, as a result of ongoing developments in information and communication technologies (ICTs) and of their integration in the urban physical context. After the successful homonymous symposium in 2011, the second edition of Hybrid City has grown into a peer reviewed conference, aiming to promote dialogue and knowledge exchange among experts drawn from academia, as […] Read More

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Rezone the game: playing for urban transformation

[I posted this a few days ago on The Mobile City blog] This is an essay I recently wrote for The Bosch Architecture Initiative (BAI) and Digital Workplace (DW) about Rezone, an applied urban game they developed to address the issue of vacancy in the city of Den Bosch. In the near future we start a collaboration with them in a project about urban gaming and vacant buildings. More about this project soon here on this blog. Dutch version of the article (pdf 95 kb) English version (pdf 90 kb) Rezone the game: playing for urban transformation Introduction How do […] Read More

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Watertorenberaad talk “Engaging citizens with new media” (Dutch), 18 April 2013

Last week on Thursday April 18 I was invited to give a talk at the yearly Watertorenberaad working conference. The Watertorenberaad is an informal Dutch network of real estate developers, housing corporations, municipalities and other city makers. I gave a talk about the potential of new media and digital culture to engage citizens in co-designing their own city, and strengthen a sense of ownership. Other speakers were Sadik Harchoui, who talked about a social bank he is developing, and Frits Langenberg, founder of consumer research office Motivaction. I was quite surprised to find that in the company of high profile […] Read More

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Talk “What lessons can urban designers learn from new media?” (Dutch) Europan, Het Nieuwe Instituut, 12 April 2013

Europan, a European competition of ideas for young spatial designers, invited me (and also Miriam Luizink, director Mesa+ Institute for Nanotechnology) to give a talk at The New Institute in Rotterdam. My talk was about the influence of digital media technologies on urban design. In the presentation I use the structure of a simple business plan to raise questions about potential lessons for spatial professionals from the world of new media. My argument is that in the context of combined crises in finance, expert knowledge and democratic legitimacy, urban designers should rethink several aspects of their professional occupation, including their […] Read More

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Guest lecture “Play or be played? digital media & playful identities” – Honors Program Erasmus University Rotterdam, April 9, 2013

Stef Aupers, Associate Professor at Erasmus University’s Centre for Rotterdam Cultural Sociology, kindly invited me to give a guest lecture for the Erasmus Honours Program “Vicissitudes of the Self“. I talked about the main themes of my dissertation: mobile media, urban identity and play, and also had very interesting and high quality discussions with the bright honors students from various countries and backgrounds. Below my presentation (pdf 1.3 MB; it’s quite a long one since we had 3 hours).

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Presentation “Playfully taking ownership over your media city” (in Dutch)

As announced in the last post, on 6 March 2013 I gave a talk for the urban game project Rezone in Den Bosch about (digital) play and citizen engagement with the media city. The evening was a kick-off for a – hopefully – new project I am participating in. The crowd was a n interesting mix of architects/planners, media and game developers, (semi-)government and the cultural sector. After my talk a lively discussion arose about the potential of play and games for citizen engagement. Below the presentation that I gave that evening (in Dutch, pdf 1.2 MB).

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Talk 6 March 2013 ‘Play & the City’

The initiators of the urban game project Rezone in the city of Den Bosch have invited me to give a talk about play and ownership. Read the announcement below (in Dutch): Lezing – Michiel de Lange 6 maart categorie lezingen-debatreeks archief aanvang 06-03-2013 print locatie “Bovenkamer” van de Bibliotheek, Hinthamerstraat 72, Den Bosch LEZING MICHIEL DE LANGE Ownership en gamification: nieuwe vormen van (burger)participatie in de hedendaagse stad Tijdstip: ?6 maart 2013 vanaf 20.00 uur initiatief: DW en BAI Locatie: “Bovenkamer” van de Bibliotheek, Hinthamerstraat 72 ‘s-Hertogenbosch Toegangsprijs en reservering: <klik hier> Voor meer informatie <Achter de Kan> Rezone, een […] Read More

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Eindhoven Hackable World City: speculating on future investments for the city

A while ago The Mobile City (Martijn and I) was invited by Amsterdam based architecture and planning firm One Architecture to collaborate on a research project about the possible future of urban planning and policy in the Netherlands. The project was commissioned by Deltametropool Network for Metropolitan Development. One of the outcomes of this collaboration is the publication ‘Eindhoven Hackable World City‘ (in Dutch, pdf 2.2 MB) in which we present our ideas about the future of the Eindhoven city region, and the role of technologies therein. For the non-Dutch: Eindhoven is the fifth-largest city in the Netherlands. Together with a number of other […] Read More

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Radio show “Hoe?Zo!” about play, 12 December 2012 20:00 – 21:00 radio5

Next week on 12 December 2012 I’m one of the participants in the radio show Hoe?Zo!, about play, games and culture: Hoe?Zo! legt spel op de snijtafel Waarom spelen we? Hoe belangrijk is spel voor de ontwikkeling van een kind? Worden volwassenen tegenwoordig steeds speelser? Hoe belangrijk is spel voor onze cultuur? Welke invloed hebben games op ons gedrag? En wat doet spelen met je brein? Hoe?Zo! zendt op woensdagavond 12 december van 20.00 tot 21.00 live uit vanuit het anatomische theater van Museum Boerhaave. De opname is te beluisteren op Radio 5. Onder leiding van presentator Jeroen Dirks ontleden vier […] Read More

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Workshop report “How to engage citizens with the help of digital media”, Urbanism Week 2012 TU Delft

Introduction A while back I was invited to give a talk and host a small workshop during the 2012 edition of Urbanism Week. This is a yearly event organized by Polis Platform for Urbanism, the study association for Master’s students in Urbanism in the Faculty of Architecture at Delft University of Technology. This year’s theme was “Second Hand Cities: rethinking practice in times of standstill”. The organizers put together a pretty impressive program filled with interesting speakers. The workshop I gave was called “How to engage citizens with the help of digital media”. Here’s an impression. Program 12:30 ? 12:45 […] Read More

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“Ontwerpen voor de mediastad” talk CAST Tilburg, 25 Sept 2012

A while ago I gave a talk “Designing for the media city” (in Dutch) at a very interesting evening called ‘City, Play, and Digital Media‘. It took place at the cozy Bomenlounge, a flexible working space for creative industry freelancers. The evening was organized by Buro Evelien Pieters and CAST (Centrum for Architecture and Urbanism Tilburg). Other speakers were Kars Alfrink (Hubbub), Ekim Tan (Play the City), and Sacha Stolp (Amsterdam municipality, project Amsterdam Wastelands). Here’s the presentation I gave (in Dutch): CAST made a report of the evening, which includes a video impression made by Tilburg WebTV (in Dutch):

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Some future events…

September 25 2012 Will give a talk at “Stad, Spel en Digitale Media” at CAST in Tilburg. More >> September 26 2012 Will give a talk and host a small workshop at the Urbanism Week 2012 in Delft. More >>   October 4 2012 Will participate in the event “Hands-on Urban Place-making: Cultural Interventions As Planning Tools Green City Dialogue” at the Floriade in Venlo. More >>   October 8 2012 Will give a talk at the City Think Lab evening themed “Playing the City” at Pakhuis De Zwijger in Amsterdam. More >>

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Some past events…

MayParticipated in a round table discussion with policy makers and humanities scholars. More >> June Presented at the event ‘Remediating Urban Space: Exploring Design Responses’ on 6 June 2012 at Plymouth University. More >> Co-organized the Citizen Science conference at Utrecht University on 25 ? 27 June 2012 in collaboration with Waag Society and 7Scenes . More >> JulyDeveloped and gave a six-day workshop at the Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design in Moskow. More >> Gave a talk at the Dutch E-culture Days during the Design Week in Helsinki for Virtueel Platform. More >>