Urban life has long been one of pop-up businesses, chance encounters, and intrusive sounds—the gritty aspect of city life. Mobile technology has slowly given us information to connect to these rapid changes in our everyday lives, and them to us—we can literally change our minds about destinations as we walk out the door. Food carts might move around and have irregular times, but today fans can readily follow them in real time. Cities' tactical street painting for play areas and bike lanes can respond to quickly monitored user feedback. Urban dwellers are guided by mobile app directions, business reviews and networked social and ecological data, including the momentary locations of protests, celebrations and even air pollution. As mobile computing and geospatial information becomes more accessible and cities are increasingly impacted by climate change, Fine-Grained Urbanism offers data collection, analysis, and design methods that provide the most detailed spatial and temporal information ever about the constantly-changing urban environment.

Date: November 6, 2024
Time: 5 p.m. - 8 p.m. (MT)
Where: City Building Design Lab, School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, University of Calgary
Address: 616 Macleod Trail SE, Calgary, AB T2G 2M2

Philip Speranza is principle of Speranza Architecture + Urban Design, Associate Professor University of Oregon and Directs the Barcelona Urban Design program IG. His Social Interaction Tool is published in the Journal of Urbanism and on the Journal of Urban Design editorial board. His firm has numerous AIA awards and is named to Forbes top 200 Residential Architects.

Please contact [email protected] with questions.