Mike at Stamen writes about a project proposing the reuse of small remaindered lots for urban renewal. Local Code / Real Estate on Vimeo.

Today, these remnant parcels represent an essential archipelago of opportunity.

Once each site’s urban performance is maximized its design can be engaged & extended for local benefit. Based on existing models of community design, as well as new research in digital democracy, we propose place-based media to shape opinions, engage communities, and even aggregate finances and funding. The final outcome is a network of urban places and virtual space combined.

I dig the digital overlays on paper maps & on video of the sites (near mid-video), and idea of online community engagement with small urban lots. (Yes, my mind is on Loveland lately, why do you ask?)

It’s my new book! 144 whole pages jam-packed with your favorite art. It’s so exciting to finally be done and flip through a copy. You can order one too!

Last week I was working on Loveland inch viz at the Marsh Cafe in the Mission, where they happen to be producing a show called Loveland. Last time I mentioned a 2D-yet-linear progress bar, showing each inchvestor’s share with colors! and squares! Thought I’d share some steps along the way towards real placement on the 9′  Plymouth grid, experiments with placing rectangular plots. A random scattering…

And more clustering tendencies…

The empty swath in the middle is a walkway to provide pedestrian access to all parts of Plymouth, as originally taped down on the studio floor in Detroit. (We don’t want visitors trampling the miniature city…)

Some big news this week: early investors’ square inches will become square feet once we reach 10,000 and colonize the next patch of land. For now play with it on the web over at makeloveland. Keen observers will notice that the whole arrangement reshuffles every few minutes – just to keep things interesting…

Check out these sweet generative typography experiments using Processing / Geomerative over at Caligraft. I always loved doodling serif letterforms myself…

They remind me of John Langdon’s ambigrams, calligraphic creations that have extremely clever rotational or mirror symmetry.

Here’s an interview with him, and a whole magazine (Ambigram) with articles, galleries, and automatic generators.

• Datasf.org collects data sets like the NextMuni bus arrival feed, land use, street sweeping schedule, zoning, terrain elevation & seismic hazards.
• The SFViewer utility showed me I was about to get a parking ticket without leaving the comfort of my easy chair.
• A collection of interesting shapefiles from sfgov.org
• BART feeds for developers

I’ve been finding a lot of good electronica mixes (mostly minimal techno & tech house, summer sounds for a rainy winter week) for my programming soundtrack & thought I’d share some links.

• Random Rab – not techno, but beautiful, smooth, midtempo and genre-defying. Listen to live sets at Synchromystic, Onomotopoeia, and on WNUR.
• Jamie Kidd
• The Glitch Mob – Crush Mode. West coast acid crunk / glitch hop
• Henry Saiz at Transitions
• Cell Abrasion from Phidelity. Minimal.
• Nature One – with sets from Extrawelt, Deadmau5, & more
• Deadmau5 Essential Mix & at Wonderland
• process 172 & 173 (& lots more) at modyfier