It’s always worth keeping an eye on UCL’s Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA). Over the years, they’ve published many fascinating studies of the built environment and how we interact with it. Two new initiatives are no exception.

Like many large cities, London has seen phases of rapid growth. The coming of the railways in early Victorian times and the creation of the West End a century or so before are just two examples. A new study at CASA has built a model of city growth using historic data in the hope of better understanding the factors and pressures leading to the evolution of a city.

Dr Kiril Stanilov of initially focussed on a 200 sq km area of West London from Hyde Park out to the M25. He was able to build a detailed model of city growth using the high-accuracy maps produced by Ordnance Survey every 20 years. According to Stanilov, the model accurately predicts the patterns of urban development over at least 130 years. The researcher now seeks funding to extend his model to the whole of greater London.

Meanwhile, Nature Network’s own Andy Hudson-Smith has been busy launching an internet of things. The Tales of Things project encourages people to tag objects with barcodes which, when read via an iPhone app, reveal stories or histories associated with the object. The idea is to build up a world where any physical object has a back story, allowing people to find out who previously owned items bought at a charity shop, who formerly lived or worked in a building and endless other applications. The tagged objects can even tweet whenever they’re interacted with. Andy explains the concept a little better over on the excellent Digital Urban blog.