Clearly, we’re not the only ones who think this is the coolest thing to hit our iPhones since Shazam. Coverage from the Times to BLDGBLOG has affirmed that these guys are onto something. As Cheng and Snyder discussed in last week’s feature:

iPhones and mobile devices are undoubtedly transforming the way we navigate the city. Apps like Google Maps and Urbanspoon put an unprecedented amount of information about the city at one’s fingertips. Most of these programs, however, are purely functional in purpose: they seek to clarify the city, to demystify and make it more legible. In contrast, we are interested in how mobile media can deepen and intensify urban experience, perhaps even introducing new pleasures and mysteries of the metropolitan condition.

Cheng and Snyder have built a new app that uses GPS technology to explore “how mobile media can deepen and intensify urban experience, perhaps even introducing new pleasures and mysteries of the metropolitan condition.” The app is called “Museum of the Phantom City,” and it turns the iPhone into an “architectural dousing rod.” As you wander the streets of New York, it shows a city that could have been — 50 architecture sites that never got built.

WNYC’s Soterios Johnson took the iPhone tour with Irene Cheng. They started off at Bryant Park, the site of a proposed airport. Take a listen to the tour:

Cheng and Snyder developed the app with the help of the Van Alen Institute — the beta version of the app is available for free on iTunes, and you can see the whole tour on their website.

On Saturday afternoon, come join us and WNYC’s culture department as Cheng and Snyder take us on a mid-town tour of some of the sites. If you don’t have an iPhone, we’ll pair you with someone who does. RSVP to culture@wnyc.org.

Urban Omnibus and WNYC Meet-up
Museum of the Phantom City
Saturday, October 31
2:00-4:00 p.m.
Meet at the Bryant Park Fountain (6th Avenue side)
Drinks and conversation to follow
RSVP to culture@wnyc.org or on Facebook

Remember when Jesse Shapins and Brian House showed us how citizens of all stripes could magically morph into “critical media artists,” using a handy little experiential dictionary as a point of departure? Well now Jesse has teamed up with Kara Oehler, Ann Heppermann and James Burns and the team has focused their collaborative documentary efforts on that most ubiquitous of place names – one often evoked by moose-hunting culture warriors and erstwhile vice-presidential candidates – Main Street. This just in: the Main Streets of America are as various as the country itself. In fact, the central places in our cities and town might be as good a place as any to showcase our country’s baffling internal diversity. Check out the new website they just launched and then read on below as they announce, in their own words, a bunch of fantastic media corollaries.

NPR Weekend Edition Series
As part of the project, we’re producing a series on NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday. Our first story was about Chattanooga, TN, where part of Main Street is a prostitution strip. Our second story explored San Luis, AZ, where Main Street is a border crossing. This Saturday, tune in to Weekend Edition, where we’ll raft under Main Street in Lewistown, MT. (Check out NPR.org to see when you can hear the show on your local member station.)

Mapping Main Street Songs
We’ve also commissioned four musicians to create original songs based on actual Main Streets. Listen to songs by:

A Collaborative Documentary Media Project
Mapping Main Street is an experiment in the new genre of collaborative documentary media. Anyone can contribute to this project. The only requirement is that all photos and videos must be taken on a street named Main. You can explore this interactive documentary on our website www.mappingmainstreet.org. Already, hundreds of people have contributed photos and videos from more than 400 Main Streets in all 50 states. The site is organized around geographical and thematic routes. We think some of the most interesting are:

Upcoming
This is just the first phase of the project. Now, we’re currently working with WNYC’s Radio Rookies Short Wave on a workshop to produce radio stories and take photos on Main Street in Flushing, Queens. And this winter, we’ll be journeying along the Main Streets of the Puget Sound region to produce stories and interactive features for KUOW’s Program Venture Fund, along with special experimental pieces for PRX’s Remix Radio Sirius stream.

Mapping Main Street is produced through the generous funding of MQ2, an initiative of AIR, the Association of Independents in Radio, Inc. with support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The project is also supported with funds from the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. The website was designed by the Mapping Main Street team and Local Projects.

Yesterday we joined business and tech leaders from around the world (we were a little under-dressed, to say the least) at IBM’s Smarter Cities forum. IBM’s President and CEO Sam Palmisano kicked things off by explaining why cities are a focus area within IBM’s broader Smarter Planet initiative. Sure, the world is smaller and flatter every day, let’s make it smarter too. With four billion cell phones, 30 billion RFID tags and two billion internet users constantly providing and collecting data, what happens when we apply analytics to guide more strategic resource allocation as our digital and physical infrastructures converge? IBM has a few ideas (and software platforms). But so did an extremely high-powered roster of guests including CEOs, CTOs, scholars, governors, senior policymakers, and mayors, leading off with… Mayor Mike.

Bloomberg used the occasion to announce the Connected City Initiative, a “series of technology programs to transform the ways in which New Yorkers can interact with – and expect the delivery of services from – City government.” The first of these programs is the NYC 311 iPhone App, which allows you to submit reports, along with pictures or video, of select conditions around the City to NYC 311 via your iPhone.

Speaking of iPhones, we already let you know that if you want to take the coolest tour of unbuilt urban projects around, you should hop on the Museum of the Phantom City bandwagon. But if you’d prefer to spend your Saturday touring some projects that are not only built but also setting a new green standard, then check out GreenHomeNYC’s Green Buildings Open House, which offers the public a unique glimpse at the inner workings and design details of exemplary green buildings in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Guests will be hosted by the dedicated sustainability practitioners of these buildings, including expert architects, developers, engineers and owners, on a registered one-hour tour of the building. More information, a complete list of 2009 Green Building Open House sites, tour times and RSVP information is available at GreenHomeNYC’s website.

And then, no matter what you spend your afternoon doing, make sure it includes a stopover at the opening of THE DROP NYC: Urban Art Infill. It’s an art festival held in an 8,000 square foot space, with 30 artists involved, including Yoko Ono, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and Paul Miller (aka DJ Spooky). The festival is from 12 noon to 9pm and the exhibit will be open till October 17th. The official opening party will be under the High Line on 25th St. at around 6pm. Food trucks, cheap beer, DJs… it may sound like a regular party, but we promise there are some high-minded art and design implications, check out the full program for more details.

The Roundup keeps you up to date with we’ve featured and other things we think are worth knowing about.

Irene Cheng and Brett Snyder are launching a mobile media project this weekend that allows people to browse proposed, visionary, but unbuilt designs for New York City on your iPhone. (Reason #172 why I love having an iPhone.) Museum of the Phantom City: OtherFutures is a project Cheng and Snyder developed during their Van Alen Institute New York Prize Fellowship, a program which supports advanced research and experimental practice that explores, challenges, and expands conventional definitions of public architecture. You might recall past Omnibus mention of other New York Prize recipients Alexander Levi and Amanda Schachter and their crossing of the Bronx River. This weekend’s event is equally worthy of our attention and attendance.

The press release explains further:

Users can view images and descriptions of speculative projects ranging from Buckminster Fuller’s dome over midtown Manhattan, to Antonio Gaudi’s unbuilt cathedral, to Archigram’s pop-futurist “Walking City,” all while standing on the projects’ intended sites.

Created by Van Alen Institute New York Prize fellows Irene Cheng and Brett Snyder, Museum of the Phantom City: OtherFutures is not only a window into innovative architecture, but a work of unconventional design in itself – a robust, database-driven contribution to the field of mobile media public art and part of the small but emerging genre of iPhone “app art.”

The project launches this Saturday, October 3, at 1:00 p.m. with a self-guided tour and scavenger hunt. Participants met at the Roosevelt Island tram station, and reconvene later in the day for a reception and prizes at the Van Alen Institute.

Individuals interested in participating in the tour and scavenger hunt must email rsvp@vanalen.org by 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday, September 30 to reserve a spot and to receive instructions on downloading the iPhone app. Those who do not have an iPhone will be teamed up with someone who does.

1:00 p.m. – Tour and Scavenger Hunt
Meet at the base of the aerial tram station on Roosevelt Island
4:00 p.m. – Project Reception and Prizes
Convene at Van Alen Institute
30 W. 22nd Street, 6th Floor
New York, NY 10010
(212) 924-7000

Go, appreciate some database-driven mobile media public art, and explore the unbuilt city.