Alex Reid

Vancouver is asking its citizens to vote on over 100 design proposals to replace its Georgia & Dunsmuir Viaducts, and the look of the surrounding neighbourhoods.

The city launched a proposal competition last month to redesign the aging bridges as well as the Eastern Core area. They received 104 submissions, most of which were designed by Metro residents.

You can view the submissions here. Voting ends November 25, 2011.

The winner of each part will be decided on December 1st and while there’s no commitment that the winning idea will result in construction, the City says the purpose of the competition is to encourage and foster the larger dialogue about the future of the city’s transportation plan.

The project in full is being introduced in three parts:

The first part is “Connecting the Core”, which is seeking “big picture” ideas for the future of the city’s Eastern Core.

The second part is “Visualizing the Viaducts” which includes conceptual designs for the land currently occupied by the Georgia and Dunsmuir viaducts and the neighbourhoods surrounding the transit ways and view corridor of the mountains. Some ideas call for the removal of the rail yards while others call for greenway parks.

The third part is what the City calls “The Wildcard”, which called on applicants to focus on one element that would “revolutionize” the way people see the Eastern Core.

When the original viaduct was built in 1915, it was meant to bypass the industrial lands and creek waters that were later drained to make room for the rail yards. There were structural problems however and in the late 1960s, the viaducts were rebuilt with aspirations for a larger freeway network connecting downtown to the Trans Canada Highway but popular opposition rejected this plan.

The current viaducts were constructed in 1972.

I applaud Vancouver for holding an innovative contest to foster dialogue of local residents of the future of its last remaining central ‘dead zone’ and hope more cities take notice.

The Canada Media Fund (CMF) has announced an investment of nearly $17 million in 51 new innovative interactive projects in the first round of its 2011-2012 Experimental Stream.

The CMF offers financial assistance to support projects at various stages of their completion: production, development or marketing.

In production, the CMF is investing $11.6 million in 22 new projects: 11 games, 5 interactive contents, 4 mobile applications, 1 interactive webseries and 1 application software. The average commitment to each project is $525,000. One project is being carried out in Alberta, 4 in British Columbia, 1 in Prince Edward Island, 1 in Nova Scotia, 11 in Ontario and 4 in Quebec.

In development, the CMF is investing $4.3 million in 25 projects. The average amount offered for each project is $171,000. Five will be developed in British Columbia, 1 in Prince Edward Island, 1 in New-Brunswick, 2 in Ontario, 15 in Quebec and 1 in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Finally, in terms of marketing assistance, the CMF is investing $1 million in 4 projects, with an average contribution of $262,000. One project is from British Columbia, 1 is from Ontario and 2 are from Quebec.

Projects were evaluated using the following criteria: innovation, production team, business plan and distribution strategy. Those criteria are detailed in the Evaluation Matrix included in the Experimental Stream’s Guidelines (PDF).

Edmonton is getting their own Hackathon, a codefest where developers, programmers, engineers, designers and even marketers get together for a collaborative technical project.

This isn’t the first for Edmonton or Alberta, as the first hackathon happened in Calgary in 1999, focusing on cryptographic development (according to wikipedia, “part of the reason for holding it in Canada was to avoid legal problems caused by United States regulations on the export of cryptographic software”).

This hackathon – sponsored by Microsoft – will focus on creating an emergency information application that can be used “in cities all over the world. An application that will help families prepare during a disaster. An app that will list emergency muster points, emergency info, alerts during disasters, and what you can do.”

This is Edmonton’s third official hackathon to take place at 9:15am Wednesday, October 20th, and continue until 9:15am Thursday, October 21st. To join this hackathon, click here.

This may be a first; game developers using open government data.

A group of seven technical students from Vancouver’s Center for Digital Media have created a game using Vancouver’s Open Data. Built on Microsoft’s Silverlight development platform, Bing Maps and the City of Vancouver’s Open Data Catalogue, the group of students have developed “TaxiCity” a Web-based driving game that allows the player to take on the role of a taxi driver, pick up passengers and deliver them to various locations around Vancouver.

The realism isn’t so much Grand Theft Auto, more pre-Google Street View, such as block outlines, building shapes, green spaces and the centre medians along main routes. The group also pulled their data from VanPark, a site that used Vancouver open data to help people find and track parking during the Olympics.

Open Government Data expert David Eaves was involved in the project, and he says the project is “pure R&D experiment.”

“It begins to show us some of the really complicated things that could become possible if cities shared their data,” he said. The game “also takes a step closer to being able to create games where you actually race around the City of Vancouver, which could be fun from a game perspective,” Eaves said.

You can play the game here.

I’m happy that Apple announced they are opening an Apple Store in Polo Park in October 2009, not just because I’m a recent Apple convert, but because Apple Stores are attractive.

No word on how this will affect neighbouring Apple retailers (Advance Electronics, Best Buy & Future Shop).