Welcome

Urbika has many different persons visiting the website. Some persons are only interested in new developments, as others are interested in general architecture in a city. I think it is interesting to add all kinds of projects, which gives someone a clear overview of old and new developments in a city.

Thanks Maarten and you are most welcome. I have one question, I see that people are adding heritage buildings as well (buildings that were built centuries ago) - I think that it is a great idea to add all the city buildings so that Urbika can be used as a one-stop data base. The interface is very user friendly and I use it all the time now .... what do you think ?

Great you like Urbika Sydney and thanks for your introduction! Nice to see all the developments going on in Auckland.

Kia Ora

Hi all, my name is Sydney. I am an Interior Designer who has been living in Auckland - New Zealand, for the past 5 years (originally from Cape Town - South Africa). I have been fortunate enough to watch how this city has changed dramatically within the past 5 years and I look forward to even bigger changes as the city of sails prepares to host the Rugby World Cup 2011.

This is a great website, I especially like the fact that it is easy to use and one can build a database for each development. Long live Urbika

Hi Yoav! Very nice that we can welcome someone on Urbika that lives somewhere else than in Europe, your help is very much appreciated!

welcome Yoav! Urbika is still very new, but spread the word so we can all enjoy architecture projects in each others countries!

Hi!
my name is Yoav, i'm 23 and live in Tel-Aviv, Israel.
i'm also active in skyscrapercity.com.

nice to meet you all!

Hi, i'm Miek, i actually live in Schiedam but my job is in Rotterdam and almost all of my friends live there so it feels very much as my hometown, (to be honest i'm allways cheating a bit by saying that i live in Rotterdam when i register somewhere because Schiedam has a rather bad reputation grin)

In the year 2000 i made my first trip to southeast asia, when i was shopping in the taxfree area on Schiphol i saw a great promotion offer for a nikon coolpix cam and with a great trip ahead i decided on the last moment it was the perfect time to buy my first digital camera and i can say now, 10 years later, that i'm still so happy that i made that choice.

I know it sounds odd but it really changed my life and now i finally (sorry !) come to the point why i'm telling all this, well, before that time i wasn't a bit interested in architecture, i just didn't noticed it, but through the lens of a camera i got an other view on things and at last began to see that Rotterdam has lots of wonderful architecture, so now you know why i'm here. ;-)

Hi Ronald, welcome to Urbika! Don't know about the castle of Vianden. Could you add the project here...
http://www.urbika.com/cities/view/215-vianden

Hi, I'm Ronald, 25 years old. I'm living in the Netherlands too.
I'm also active on skyscrapercity.com.
Most intrest of my is the rebuilding the castle of Vianden, Luxembourg.

very interesting. We will do our best to stay editor-friendly!

Actually, editor-friendly is a better word for what i am thinking about! :P

That the editors who is doing all this effort researching all these buildings, renderings, pictures and information can access whatever they would like to, easily, to do what they want to do. I know it might be hard to trust all people, and there will be people adding wrong information and so on if editing will be that easy.

On Emporis they made some very strict rules, where you as an editor had to get your building approved by moderators (and there is just a few moderators on Emporis) before the building came online. You also had to provide good sources for heights, status, links to trustable sources (not to ssc, wiki or sources like that). Emporis is a bit unique that way, since they actually try to sell this kind of information, so they really had no choice making it strict. But it made it really hard for me to like it, when it took me a long time to get my buildings approved and online...

By editor-friendly i also mean that we're able to share our information in many different ways (such's as google maps application), links to many different sites, and other creative ways of sharing information.

Or something like that! I hope you get the point, i usually suck explaining my self in these matters!

@Christian. What does user-friendly mean to you? Do you think Urbika is now user-friendly enough? And what was to strict at Emporis?

I'm Christian (uhm... twentyt...seventeen years old ) living in Norway. Long experience with Skyscrapercity (username: Þróndeimr), SSP diagrams, and Emporis before that. Just joined urbika after Maarten linked me there through a ssc thread.

If i am to stick around here i need things to be very user-friendly. I stopped editing Emporis because things was very strict there. I hope urbika could be a crossover emporis+wiki+ssc. I was one of those who started with the google maps application last year, and hope this site will manage to take it a step ahead.

Nice idea Chris. As an addition I would like to know what members expect from Urbika / want with Urbika.

I'm Maarten, (much older than Chris ), currently living in the Netherlands and one of the founders of this new website. As I used urban development forums (like Skyscrapercity) much I was often annoyed by the fact that it was difficult to see where city developments were taking place. When I saw other people creating maps with Google Maps I thought it was very helpful to get a better overview, but I missed easy switching between cities / countries and a uniform format for projects. Thats how I came up with the idea of Urbika.

I am not a professional in city development but I have much experience with internet developments and online communities. As a hobby I am extremely interested in city developments and living environments in other cities / countries and how architects are designing the world we live in.

I hope everyone enjoys Urbika and is willing to share all great developments in the big and small cities we live in!

I'm Chris, 18 years old and interested in following urban developments and discovering cities. That's why I think Urbika has great potential.