Category: Urbanism
-
Generating aerial imagery with your iPhone’s LiDAR sensor
This technical guide details how you can create your own aerial imagery and 3D models of streets with the built in iPhone LiDAR sensor and open source tools in the OpenDroneMap package.
-
Sydney CBD is bringing back pedestrian “beg buttons”
TfNSW have recently installed these around the Sydney CBD – a sticker on top of a pedestrian “beg button” explaining the button is redundant before 6am and after 10pm.
-
Creating aerial imagery with a bike helmet camera (GoPro) and OpenDroneMap
This technical guide details how you can create your own orthorectified (aka satellite view/bird mode) imagery, point clouds and 3D models of streets with nothing but a 360 degree camera mounted on bicycle helmet, and the open source photogrammetry software OpenDroneMap.
-
Observations from Australia’s first Micromobility Conference
Over the weekend I attended Australia’s first micromobility conference. The sessions were organised into themes reflecting the challenges Australia faces in transitioning it’s transport network and urban planning – from car and highway dominated streets to a safer, lower emission and more pleasant city permitting cycling, walking and other journeys.
-
Visualising Sydney bus congestion with Marey charts
As a side project I built Sydney Transit Graph – a visualisation of real-time Sydney bus congestion. Each line on the graph (a Marey chart) represents a bus completing its route (percentage) over time.
-
Mapping Sydney Billboards: Every QMS advertising panel in Sydney
Map live at SydneyAdvertisingMap.com. See also: Max Bo’s analysis of how many placed next to Telstra telephones: https://observablehq.com/@mjbo/sydney-qms-panel-public-telephone-pairings If you live in Sydney you will have seen them – the 86 inch advertising screens in the City of Sydney Council. These advertising panels are known as communication pylons in the language of the developer approvals. […]
-
The Drying Green opening – a new Green Square park
On Saturday the 15th of October, Clover Moore (Lord Mayor of the City of Sydney) opened The Drying Green, the new centerpiece park of Green Square. It’s been in construction since March 2018 and includes areas of grass, wetlands which filter stormwater before it enters the wider system, and a barbecue and seating area. It also includes Stream, a solar powered artwork highlighting the sites connection to water.
-
The Best Apps for Bicycle Directions
Even though some cities have dedicated bicycle infrastructure, it’s of no use if you don’t know where it is. While Google Maps is excellent for car navigation (and the dominant market leader), it often has patchy cycle infrastructure coverage and tends to generate cycle routes on busy roads. The best dataset of cycle infrastructure worldwide (and in Sydney) is OpenStreetMap. OpenStreetMap is like Wikipedia but a map; anybody can edit it, and the sheer number of contributors ensures accurate data. Many cyclists (including myself) contribute to this dataset.
-
Construction of the Sydney CBD & South East Light Rail
I undertook a four-year project to document the construction over 6 focus trips at various stages of development, as well as after the opening of the Randwick segment.