For the next issue of Volume we will be partnering with the International New Town Institute (INTI) to explore new players in urban planning. In addition INTI will be hosting a conference on September 27th in Rotterdam, exploring this topic through four case studies, with invited speakers from around the world.

To celebrate Volume's most recent issue 'Centers Adrift', the featured insert 'New Order' from Katja Novitskova and Rory Hyde, as well as Rory Hyde's new book Future Practice, Volume and Mediamatic will be throwing a very special launch party in Amsterdam. Speakers include: Reinier de Graaf, Wouter Vanstiphout, Sandra Kaji-O'Grady, Arjen Oosterman and Rory Hyde. Three publications, one event. Come one, come all.

Between 4 and 6 November, 2011, Amsterdam's NDSM Wharf will be the stage for the Storytelling Festival. The great stories about this remarkable place and its transformation from a shipping wharf into a creative and sustainable breeding place will have a prominent place in the program of the festival. Friday 4 November we'll dive into the past, present and future of this impressive place in North Amsterdam with a free program full of NDSM stories.

‘Where is the center?’ must be the most commonly asked question when tourists enter a city. The center is where the action is supposed to be, where life is vibrant and interesting, where there’s lots to see, where you simply want to go. It is a matter of gravity and (functional) density that attracts visitors to ‘the center’. This tourist gaze is defining for our understanding of the city, any city.

For decades satellite imagery has provided data for, and insights into, a huge amount of different fields of science such as ecology, geosciences, meteorology, and urban planning. Nowadays the usage of satellite imagery has increased overwhelmingly as consumer applications have found their way to the market – think about Google maps, navigation apps and weather forecasts. Correspondingly governments have found the use of the footage interesting for a broad range of practices, both malicious and positive. Positive applications include infrastructural planning, mapping of urban expansions and ecological surveillance, though more nefarious uses have been featured frequently over the last few months: malicious military practices, observed and recorded by satellites, have been revealed to the public via the media. The fact that satellite imagery is increasingly used when it comes to media coverage and public presentations concerning politics and warfare shows the established importance of satellites for a broad range of purposes.

‘Guilty landscape’ is a notion borrowed from the Dutch painter, sculptor, writer, and musician Armando, who wrote about such landscapes more than once. Living in Amersfoort before, during, and after the Second World War, close to a concentration camp situated in the woods, he was very aware that the innocent forest of his youth had witnessed the horrors of war and the Holocaust.