Platial News and Neogeography

Platial Will Return Soon

As those of you who have used platial over the past 4 years know, we have never been great at uptime. This current situation is similar, we are working hard to bring things back up but it's taking longer than we would have thought.

Don't despair, the maps will return.

When Locations Act: A Map of Hitchcock's Vertigo

Wade Roush created a map of outdoor filming locations from Hitchcock's Vertigo. It's great specifically for it's revelation that narrative "place" might be different than literal "place". Specifically that Big Basin State Park was and actor playing the role of Muir Woods.

I think Roush actually "gets" this space around neogeography. His recent article encouraging people to make a Platial map actually focuses on the openness and newness of people being able to make their own maps of just about anything.

David Byrne's Perfect City

David Byrne has always been quirky. That's a given, but reading this article about what his ideal city would feel like makes me realize that he's also got a pragmatic side. Don't get me wrong, his vision for an ideal city is an impossible mashup of everything he loves about a bunch of different places, it's a dreamer's city, the vision of an artist, but it's a thoughtful and down to earth distillation of his first hand experiences. He's making a transition, at least in my mind, from quirky art rocker to thoughtful urban evangelist.

The perfect city isn't static. It's evolving and ever changing, and its laws and structure allow that to happen. Neighborhoods change, clubs close and others open, yuppies move in and move out—as long as there is a mix of some sort, then business districts and neighborhoods stay healthy even if they're not what they once were. My perfect city isn't fixed, it doesn't actually exist, and I like it that way.

(Via @BikePortland.)

September 11th

8 years later, it's still a nearly unbelievable fact, and Fynn Sloyan's piece is still clear and simply touching.

It's also not too late to add your story to the "Where I Was" map.

Belgia - simulated suburbs

What is new? The above image comes from the promotional website for Belgia, an idealised 'Belgian-style' community near Moscow, complete with Dutch gables and windmills. We hadn't considered the suburbs of Belgium to represent a suburban domestic idyll, but clearly a Russian developer thinks otherwise. The site is exceptionally heavy on flash (found via The FWA), stuffed full of movies of sunbathing 'desperate housewives' and dense brickwork patterns. As the montage suggests, this is a piece of instant utopia, a place where there are no unexpected architectural juxtapositions, just choices made in an attempt to emulate an ideal, a sense of atmosphere that is, in itself, largely a fiction.

(Via Splendid Urbanism.)

Spinning & Inverted Pyramid

Places are multi-faceted. They can be seen, described, and remembered from many different angles. Communicating this notion was one of the original design challenges for the early platial website. At one point we were experimenting with an animated marker that would spin around, then unfold to show each of the various perspectives.
I just came upon this animation and couldn't help be a little nostalgic for the old designs.

(Via todayandtomorrow .)