I was looking for some trend today, that stuck out to me, as prescient, and found what is quickly emerging is Augmented Reality – with a post on TreeHugger on ‘Build Paris on Paris’ & Other Good Ideas for Growth- while the post doesn’t actually mention Augmented Reality – the context upon the changes  that are cited, strongly  suggests it.

….. New plans for both London and Paris hope to address similar problems by enhancing and linking emerging areas of urban concentration to create “polycentric” cities that minimize transit needs (and thus environmental impact). Anticipating an influx of 800,000 new people between 2001 and 2016, London hopes to contain that growth on already developed land within its existing greenbelt by increasing density around a network of public-transportation hubs, said Richard Rogers, the chairman of the London-based architecture firm Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners.

The site of the London Olympics is just one example of a plan to improve a city through retrofitting and connecting. Artist’s impression via London 2012.

I noted, in my Facebook page ,, wonder if this visualization of the future of London – for the 2010 Olympics – is something that could fit into an “augmented reality” application. That’s one way to both sell the improvements AND – the pitfalls of the growths – and show planners the possible future layered over the current present.

Filing that away, I noticed the New York Times has an article today on Preserve d with Lasers – about a team in Scotland using laser technology to visualize objects in greater detail than ever before – this project is getting a lot of attention in Scotland, by the way, according to the Times article:

A section of Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland, captured in minute detail with laser scanners – NYTimes.com

…. The technology isn’t brand new or unique to Scotland, but the Glasgow team is on its cultural front line.

Earlier this week an article appeared on how the New York Times and others are experimenting with augmented reality.

” …Young and his team of technologists at the Times have been looking into AR to help with such location-based journalism as restaurant reviews (point your phone at the restaurant and get its details and ratings), real estate (see how many apartments are available and what floor they’re on in a given building), and even historical data overlain on weekly architecture articles by Christopher Gray.

One recently revealed app for which it’s easy to imagine multiple journalistic uses lets you point your handheld and get an overlay on the screen that shows how bailout dollars have been spent in your neighborhood. The startup Layar, which produced the app, used Recovery.gov for the data.

And here’s a video clip I found on YouTube that explains what I just wrote about, above: