Uploaded on 2015-05-12 by jcZhu

[1]: https://edxuploads.s3.amazonaws.com/14314352719414596.jpg The photo shows the traffic of mid-ring elevated road (Handan Road, west end) at 9 P.M. Shanghai, China. The visible information we can get is a) tall buildings are mainly office buildings, no lights on and the there are neighbourhoods in the black areas just behind the tall buildings away from the road. b) light population is not under control. c) noise population causing devaluation in value of real estate property. The invisible information extracted from the visible one could be the health and living condition of the people near the main roads. Public health is a systematic issue, one can not solve it without public consent and actions, but the governing body has its precedency, and the implicit policy like Pareto improvements causes troubles for small groups, in this case, neighbourhoods near the main roads. From my personal observations, there are many places without proper protections and people live in misery, in those neighbourhood, people start to leave and houses are changing hands frequently. The unity and community spirit are waning. The knowledge we can draw from this issue is that urban planning should incorporate some proper warning and risk reduction, with the fast distribution of information and awareness of the living condition, e.g. PM2.5, citizen will have much computation power and much to say about the surrounding environment. This comes with design challenges and opportunities for change.