Fascinating new blog explores the changing face of the modern city
As the more savvy brands cotton onto the self-evident truth that there’s no substitute for interesting, engaging content, no gimmick that skips the need to actually make things people want to read or watch, car manufacturer smart has gone one better.
Its new blog Smart Urban Stage not only features a range of interesting projects (from slides installed in railway stations to Moscow’s new cultural hub) but the site also sets up really fascinating discussions about the future of the city. This willingness to explore big ideas in such a straightforward way is quite a daring move in terms of the Twitter-generation’s perceived lack of attention span, but it works really well, not least because of the interesting names they have got involved.
Anthropologist Amber Case discussing how to make people interact with each other in public spaces with the irrepressible Improv Everywhere exemplifies this commitment to creating genuinely thought-provoking content, and there’s plenty more across media, culture, architecture, design and science to get your teeth into. Urban planning rarely looked so good.
The slides at the railway station in Utrecht
The Moscow cultural hub Flacon
A new scheme designed to cut down supermarket packaging
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Rob Alderson is a freelance writer, editor and strategist. He was previously editor-in-chief of It’s Nice That and WePresent, and editor of Design Week. He publishes the newsletter Undo, which tries to make sense of how AI is changing design work, the design process and the design industry.
