2006 was a landmark year that made for a wow statement: for the first time, over half the world’s population live in cities. That number is projected to increase to 2/3 by 2050. Inspired by this fact, 19.20.21 is taking the bull by the horns with a five-year study of 19 cities in the world (with 20 million people in the 21st century). The Flash website is a clean and bold narrative of this upcoming project that will gather and compare data on big city issues like transportation, health, crime, education, culture and art, and growth patterns.
This is super cool. Best practices are shared between cities all the time, but they’re usually presented as isolated fragments or stuffed away in dry reports. It would be very awesome to compare notes on all issues and see just how the world’s cities line up against each other - and in handsome fashion (the Center for Architecture’s current Berlin-New York Dialogues exhibit begins to do this between two cities).
This reminds me of Herbert Bayer’s wondrous information design for the 1953 book World Geographic Atlas: A Composite of Man’s Environment (click the image and zoom in to marvel at those hot pages). It’s the ultimate data porn and I hope 19.20.21 will carry that proud torch forward. I’m already enticed by the site’s presentation of the largest cities through time, and after some Googling found out this project is spearheaded by Richard Saul Wurman, a graphic designer/architect who created TED and coined the term “information architect.” He’s my new hero.
