The Legible City is the developing concept of hard and soft infrastructure in a community that marries emerging technologies with the explosion of newly available data. The amount of data humans are generating is growing 50% each year and that opens up an ever-increasing number of possible applications for it.

The idea kinda started with an interactive exhibit designed by Jeffery Shaw, in 1988. Essentially, Shaw created a cycle spinning program that could take you through a conceptual version of Amsterdam, Karisruhe and Manhattan. In the former, a visitor could bicycle through streets lined with buildings represented by huge text blocks. In the Manhattan version, you could choose one of eight or so routes, or story lines. Location data on the handlebars, enhanced with real monologues by Koch, Trump, taxi drivers and other New York icons, helped convey content.

Part of the concept of a Legible City is the inclusion of large-scale (public viewed) projects to convey data using new technologies to reach the masses. Unlike giant billboards, publicity pieces or Cristo-type art, such items function to convey useful data that adds to people’s lives. This has interesting implications for NASA exhibits and begs the question “Could the street become the new trade show floor or museum gallery?”

Some examples that come to mind: sculptures that convey current global ocean or Arctic temperatures; office buildings flashing massive walls of live Earth images from the ISS or the Curiosity rover; or large count-up clocks that report the current distances from Earth of the Voyager (or Orion!) spacecrafts.

Google “Legible City” to find more about Shaw’s exhibit or check out links to “Bristol Legible City” for more about the concept itself.