Mobile Landscapes: Graz in Real Time

The technology for determining the geographic location of cellphones and other hand-held devices is becoming increasingly available. It is opening the way to a wide range of applications, collectively referred to as Location Based Services (LBS), that are primarily aimed at individual users. However, if deployed to retrieve aggregated data in cities, LBS could become a powerful tool for urban cartography. This paper describes preliminary results of the “Mobile Landscapes: Graz in Real Time” project, which was developed as part of the M-City exhibition (Graz Kunsthaus, 1 October 2005 – 8 January 2006, curator Marco De Michelis), in collaboration with the cellphone operator mobilkom austria. Three types of maps of the urban area of Graz, Austria, were developed and shown in real-time on the exhibition premises: cellphone traffic intensity, traffic migration (handovers) and traces of registered users as they move through the city. Beyond their novelty and visual interest, results seem to open the way to a new paradigm in urban planning: that of the real-time city.