Last week I participated to the workshop “La Ciudad Híbrida” organized in Sevilla by José Luis de Vicente. The first 2 days, we used different theoretical lenses and practical references to explore the many different aspects of the hybrid city. Juan Freire engaged us with proposals for a participatory urbanism with the design of open processes and bottom-up solutions (see De la ciudad híbrida al urbanismo P2P: democracia 2.0, gestión local participativa y crowdsourcing). José Luis de Vicente stepped back and led us through the history influenced by urban theorist, architects and artist that have paved the way to the hybrid city of the 21st century, the dynamic city (see Una historia de la ciudad de software: arquitecturas dinamicas y sistemas digitales urbanos). An argumentation completed by Juan Martín Prada who covered the rich field of location media with a philosophic spin (co-existance men-thinks, men-animals, men-deads, the urbanization of the real-time city (networked city) vs. desurbanization of the real-space; the “Here” being replaced by the permanant “Now”.

Before Juan Martin, I played the role of “data cowboy” with a 90min talk (in Spanish) that looked at the contemporary hybrid city through the lenses of my research work augmented by some offline observations. In this intervention entitled “People as sensors; people as actors” (slides with annotations, video), I look at the integration of ubiquitous technologies (and soft infrastructures) and how they afford us new flexibility in conducting our daily activities with simultaneously providing the means to study our activities in time and space.

The other part of the workshop was dedicated to more hands-on activities in which groups had to define, sketch and prototype a citizen-led system or process that take advantage of open/public urban data. With a majority young architects, the focus was first based on “infrastructure”, “mobility”, “space”, but then rapidly also evolved around social issues and even political touching the Critical Cartography approach and critique. There was a lot to learn from the languages employed by participants with different practices (architects, social scientist, biologist, artist).

Finally, Sevilla provided an excellent context to ponder the hybrid city of the present. In addition to its rich history of mixed cultures, architectures and art, engineering work and south-european clichés, the city offers the vestiges of the techno-utopian Expo ‘92. The crumbling infrastructure at the Cartuja Island is source of fascinating sightseeing with an Ariane V on the loose and a monorail in advanced decomposition among other things. The theme for the Expo was “The Age of Discovery”. mmhmm.

Sevilla, a true hybrid city….

…with its real urban furnitures

Thanks José Luis for the invitation!

Writing the conclusion of my dissertation, there is one implication of my research work that I still have not completely gotten my brain around. I will try to layout my thoughts here. I believe that one contribution of my work has been to reveal the new aspects of time with our relation to space through ubiquitous technologies. For instance, I have studied the co-evolution of a community of early adopters with their navigation system, the timely capture of travelers experiences, the potentials of spatio-temporal data shadows such as measuring the evolution of the attractiveness of the space. Each study shows that our relation with geoinformation (and by extension space) has been altered from our interactions with mobile and wireless technologies. The information is accessible and generated ubiquitously, augmenting our roles of sensors and actors of the space. This presence of what Adam Greenfield would refer to, in a more articulate manner, as the Big Now creates an utilitarian fascination to the real-time or the predictability as instantiated in my case study on “Detecting air travel in real time” from a mobile phone implicit interaction wireless networks (in submission). This fascination overshadows the end of our ephemeral relation with space potentially leading to a new version of the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine and the presence of the hard/soft infrastructure design that does not take it into account.

I call it the end of timelessness. The end of the ephemeral, or what Adam Greenfield would describe as the Long Here, is mainly exposed in my work on Tracing the Visitor’s Eye and related. The observations of the presence of the hard infrastructures that deny the Long Here took place around the NYC Waterfalls study and the novel opportunity to define of indicators of the evolution of attractiveness of the space. Similarly, the ubiquitous technologies of the present, fail to accommodate for the Long Here, the change in the city and the implication on the social practices. Wearing qualitative lenses with a taxi drivers in Barcelona, I could observe co-evolutive ballet with their navigation system and extract the implications of the soft infrastructure on the knowledge of the city.

The embedment of urban informatics into the urban fabrics makes the integration of the Long Here in integral part of the design of hard and soft infrastructures. I would argue that this kind of case studies sets stage to the end of the timelessness considerations of individuals interactions with urban infrastructures. A satellite navigation system does not perform the same service the first six months in the practices of a inexperienced taxi drivers compared to a user with 20 year of knowledge of the city. Moreover, they do not, over time, request the same granularity of geoinformation nor do they assess the quality of the information with the same experience of the technology and knowledge of the city. A different kind of “long here” evolution of the presence and practices of that can be analyzed through their interactions with soft infrastructures to assess the quality of the spatial settings. This longitudinal understanding of the evolution of the interaction can then be applied to the design of the urban informatics. For instance, we made sure that our mobile phone algorithm to detect air travel was not perfect, as our system takes advantage of false detections to keep the survey participants with a certain level of involvement.

The evolution of the people practices, interactions and frictions with the urban space can be compiled very informally as Nicolas and I compiled in Sliding Friction and related. This kind of approach helps highlighting the reality, its complex dynamics, its subtleties, and its situational particularities. My research work suggests the combinations of more formal data collection and analysis approaches. They took the form of quantitative (reality mining), qualitative (ethno-inspired), mixed research methods to a more active, utility-driven mode with design science research.

New use of Bowling Green, the oldest public park in New York City

Now these approaches strongly contrast with the practice of architecture and urban design that almost utterly ignore this notion of time. For instance, from my understanding, there exist limited methods to capture and evaluate the user experience and the use of the built space. That makes me wonder wether since Stewart Brand’s How Buildings Learn (video of the BBC TV series inspired by the book) any progress has been made to integrate the complexifying intertwinement of hard infrastructures, soft infrastructures and individual/social practices into their design practices. 15 years ago, Frank Duffy explained that “architects have been slow to join the evaluation bandwagon, It’s got somewhat trapped in the academic field, I am afraid“. When considering the hybrid space with real-time elements, asynchronous communications and its logging capabilities of soft infrastrcture, it seems that the human/social elements with their evolution and adaptability find little consideration when in competition with aesthetic.

A bench to relax or work or both? between an ATM and a defibrillator at the cramped part of Logan airport

In consequence, as Steward Brand explains, “More often than not, the pull to conduct evaluations has come from client organizations, not from the architects themselves” also suggesting to collect feedback from facility manager to grasp the dimensions of time and use into building. In contrast, in the digital world, there is a greater tradition of analysing breadcrums to improve the design of web sites. Of course, nowadays, who and where are the facility managers in hybrid spaces?

The lack of consideration of the human in current practices of the designer of the hard infrastructures is particularly striking with the traditional aseptic graphics and medium to communicate them. But the competences to learn from the evolution of the infrastructure do not only require interpretative methods for human and social dynamics, but also for technological/intrastructural counterparts. For instance, 4 years ago, the analysis the players space-time trails in our pervasive game CatchBob! with a custom made “replay tool” necessitated technical knowledge to extract the technological issues of the ubiquitious infrastructures and its evolution. I would not expect this to be otherwise nowadays. This to exemplify that the ability to understand and properly bend the hard infrastructure will naturally come from cross-disciplinary teams that consider time in their practice. For instance, software engineering has been evolving in its practice to check the quality assurance throughout the life of a software (see Software that makes software better). The techniques aim at preventing from the software to break without running it (statistic analysis tools) and also detect when it breaks (dynamic analysis tools).

Consequence of unproper blackbox testing… Maybe an error caused by a 64 bit floating point number relating to the outdoor temperature respect to the wind conditions converted to a 16 bit signed integer

Relation to my thesis: Extract some contribution of my PhD thesis (the end of timelessness) to consider their implications on the evaluation of the evolution of the relation between the hard, the soft and the human in hybrid environments. From my experience, a mix of methods are necessary to grasp a world of fast-moving technology. This methods go beyond the current limited approaches of practitioners of the built space, to the exception of Post-occupency evaluations that introduce the dimensions of time and use into building. On the other hand, the practices of practitioners of the soft and digital world are evolving to take time and evolution into consideration. Of course that should lead to an improvement in: reliability, life-cycle behavior, environmental impact and user acceptance.

My research work sets the stage for tools and techniques to reveal evolution or repetitions, with observations and measures of expectation, initial frustration and delight, adjustment, and long-term adaptivity. I examply some elements in my taxi drivers study, the application of metrics as in new york and the collection of evidences “sliding frictions”.

A couple of weeks ago at the Association of American Geographers meeting in Las Vegas, Elizabeth Currid (USC) and Sarah Williams (Columbia University) presented their paper The Geography of Buzz: Art, Culture and the Social Milieu (full aper). As described in Mapping the Cultural Buzz: How Cool Is That?, their work takes snapshots from more than 6,000 events from the data mining of 300,000 photos from Getty Images to categorize them according to event type, controlled for overly celebrity-driven occasions and geo-tagged at the street level. They exploited these photos as proxy for ‘buzz-worthy’ social contexts. As a result, they were able to quantify and understand, visually and spatially, how this creative cultural scene really worked. Based on these evidences, they can argue that those not conventionally involved in city development (paparazzi, marketers, media) have unintentionally played a significant role in the establishment of buzz and desirability hubs within a city.

Density of “fashion” events in New York
Relation to my thesis: After Anthony Townsend’s Augmenting Public Space and Authoring Public Art: The Role of Locative Media, the geography of buzz provides another instantiation of the value of digital footprints to describe the city. However, this use of photos as proxy of human time-space activity raises issues in not to confound behaviors with endorsement. It is one of the limitation of my work on the NYC Waterfalls. Nevertheless, Currid and Williams work certainly strengthen the value of my work on Tracing the Visitor’s Eye, with quotes that could come from straight out of this blog:

“We’re going to see more research that’s using these types of finer-grained data sets, what I call data shadows, the traces that we leave behind as we go through the city,” she said. “They’re going to be important in uncovering what makes cities so dynamic.”

They also provide another argument for the discussion of the contributions of my research work in the context of human-space relationship:

“People talk about the end of place and how everything is really digital. In fact, buzz is created in places, and this data tells us how this happens.”

Finally, an excellent reference in their bibliography that coins data shadows:

Zook, Matthew, Martin Dodge, Yuko Aoyama, Anthony Townsend, “New Digital Geographies: Information, Communication, and Place”, In Geography and Technology, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2004

Data mining artist Andrea Vaccari gave a thorough interview to ZDNet on his current investigation at MIT SENSEable City Lab also providing context of the lab’s current endeavors. He starts of by argumenting on the necessity to produce quality visualizations responding to the skeptics that call it “info-porn“. I found myself defending the necessity of the urban demos produced at SENSEable to attract attention, stimulate the dialogue and stretch the imagination. Yet, this is only the tip of the iceberg of the work produced in Cambridge that strongly relies on the experience and data generated during the demos to produce scientific content. The opacity of the research review process and publication venues, does not often allow to get a glimpse of the research outcomes. So Andrea goes at it and gets specific on the type of contributions we can expect form the analysis of city-scale data. He takes example of the project in the context of the New York City Waterfalls we collaborated on to describe how the analysis of urban dynamics can become evidences of the evolution of the attractiveness of the most popular areas of a city. Other of his works aim at identifying unexpected events and assist public authorities and first responders.

Andrea recently presented the lab’s work at Etech (slides) where is seems that the buzz was on the fusion of sensor data with social data traffic that “to improve life“. Beside this honorable goal, I am dubious that this is purely reachable with data mining, machine learning to networks analysis and statistics. But maybe the current conclusion of my dissertation plays a bad influence on me.

Relation to my thesis: Andrea describes very well the lab its approach and projects I had the chance to share back in my SENSEable days. The open question that he leaves at the end of his interview are up my alley. Currently writing the conclusion of my dissertation, I take advantage to draw the implications of my work and discuss “human side of urban data” and what it means in context of urbanism; discarding a pure data-driven urbanism and sketching something I would call human-based urbanism, an approach mixing quantitative and qualitative data analysis.

To complete my PhD dissertation that will be based on a series of papers, I am writing a journal version of my study presented at last year’s AAG: The co-evolution of taxi drivers and their in-car navigation systems. Besides improving the details that describe the research method, I need to rephrase the elements of co-evolution I aimed at capturing, re-categorize the findings and work on a discussion section that compares the findings with related works and link them to implications consideration for design. A revamp I dissect below.

Motivations
The extensive distribution of satellite navigation systems represents the first massive adoption of location-aware system by the public. However, the market success also translates into documented poor integration of the technology into the practice of driving (e.g. distractions that create accidents, frustrations due to the uneven quality of the geoinformation). From this observation, we hypothesize that users of satellite navigation systems overcome these types of problems by both adapting to their systems and adapting their systems to their needs. First we wanted to report on evidences of this co-evolution (theorized in Orlikowski, 1992a; O’Day, Bobrow, Shirley, 1996, Ackerman, 2000) and then describe the detected implications (e.g. (de-)skilling factors on the knowledge of the city and social relationships, modification of the wayfinding practice, new relations to the environment). An ethnographical approach provides an appropriate analytic angle to examine user practices in context and situated activities (need stronger arguments here!). We argue that our observations and interpretations can be valuable to designers of next generation location-aware systems particularly to understand how a) users create over time unanticipated use to better fit their need, if the system is capable of only partial satisfaction; b) a location-aware system effects the interaction of the user with their environment (social, physical, informational); c) the implication of the adoption of location-aware system on potential for future design. An example in Hutchins cognition in the wild is the slow evolution of navigational tools. For example, the Mercator projection for maps simplifies navigation calculations, and its creation was an act of tool adoption and co-evolution.

Phases of co-evolution
We analyzed this co-evolution for three different phases

1. Acquisition: why and how this new technology gets integrated into other artifacts and how, over time, it impacts the use of these artifacts;
2. Expectation gap: how the reasons to acquire are matched in practices and where are the expectation gaps;
3. Evolution of the appropriation: despite the gaps, how does the practices evolves in relation a) to the awareness and reactions to the limitations and imperfections of the system; b) to driver’s knowledge of the environment; c) to the access to geoinformation both from the system and other artifacts.

Approach, method and participants
So the market success of makes relevant phenomenon to study how people integrate pervasive geoinformation into their practices in the context of their work. What was even more appealing was to perform a systematic study of one type of early adopters, the taxi drivers in Barcelona (available in a large number of the 10,400 licensed cars), who have massively adopted the technology the last few years. This context is precisely relevant to the research on location-based systems because it provides evidences, outsides of the laboratories of their impact and implications, we believe necessary to feed the design process. The study of in-car navigation systems are typically interested in usability issues with an experimental angle. Rather than focusing on the device, we are interested on the practice with mobile and location-aware devices (see Understanding mobility contexts), on the losses and opportunities, and considering a full-circle perspective (Chrisman, 2005)

In our ethnographically-inspired study, we collected empirical evidences from 12 taxi drivers (11 males, 1 female) with a working experience from 2 to 20 years. In a first phase, we conducted semi-structered interviews at the Barcelona airport parking lot dedicated to taxis. This site provided a good setting to get in touch with taxi drivers, because they often must wait there for more than 30 minutes. During this period, they fill the time discussing, playing (e.g. chess, scrabble, golf), cleaning their care, taking a refreshment and eating. The navigation system had been purchased and used by the informants for a least 6 months. Interviews alone did not suffice, as the informants necessarily selective in what they describe or think is important to discuss. Therefore, they complement additional situational insights from observation of driver work settings (e.g. artifacts used) and behavior (e.g. engagement with geoinformation) while driving. Acting is customers, we requested rides from and to a railway station, a major hotel and an address on one of the many very narrow streets of the Gracia neighborhood. Each informant participated in one session, lasting approximately in from 45 minutes to 1 hour, divided in half with situational insights then complementary semi-structured interviews in the other half.

Despite the small sample of taxi drivers, we were able to collect rich data consisting of photos of work settings (to record the eco-system of artifacts), videos of taxi rides (to capture key moments of access to geoinformation) and written field notes from the semi-structured interviews (analyzed and compacted after each session). In our analysis consisted in a careful reading of the different materials and highlighting parts that were related to the phases of the co-evolution we wanted to focus on. We organized the relevant parts into common themes, and coded the documents using the emerging themes. The sessions were conducted in Spanish and we provide the closest translation for this paper. We summarize the findings extracted from these themes in the following section.

After a red light, in proximity to destination, a taxi driver is about to close his “Guia” after checking the location of a street number. The navigation system is in passive mode.

Findings

Addition to an existing ecosystem of artifacts
The navigation system completes an arrangement of artifacts proving layers of geoinformation to support the job. With our observations, we were able to categorize detected the real-time information sources with the sat-nav system, dispatched radio, electronic booking system, mobile phone and radio. Another category of artifacts provide more static information of the city; the newspapers to keep the knowledge of events and activities in the city up to day, scribbled list of “unofficial” points of interests requested by customers such as the strip clubs, and above all the street directory and map of Barcelona “Guia Urbana de Barcelona” generally kept at reach on the passenger seat, above the dashboard or the interior storage compartment. (Need a table to describe the artifact, its purpose, context of use and the evolution of this ecosystem.

Serenity over efficiency
In the past, taxi drivers face moments of uncertainty when a customers take them to a village or unfamiliar areas of Barcelona, such as the multiple suburban business areas that emerged from the ground in the recent years. Nowadays, there is a consensus that a satellite navigations system is an unbeatable tool when it come to reaching a specific destination in a village and leaving it and it is a strong reason for purchase. But it is not really to be more productive and hence earn more, rather than feeling more serene in appropriately doing their job. A tool not to make more money, nor to improve the efficacy, but to tranquilize, ”I can go everywhere and relax” said informant X and “the fear of getting lost with a customer I felt in my stomach now disappeared” (informant Y). Other drivers mentioned that it does not only tranquilize them but also their customers ”they know I cannot cheat them with it”, “it reassures them that I go to the proper destination”. This feeling of relying on a “companion” for critical situations reveals particularly when informants referrer to it as a “he” (and their car as a “she”). That does not prevent them in keeping it most of the time in the glove compartment and retrieving it only the times it is necessary.

The phases of wayfinding
The wayfinding practice takes place in 2 main phases. For the “to go” phase in which the driver takes the proper direction and the “to arrive” phase in which the precise drop off location (the number of the street, a monument, a corner) necessitate different geoinformation at a different granularity. […] For a ride to a rather unknown destination, drivers seem to accesses the geoinformation as in a “funnel”. First, there is a tendency to quickly retrieve in the paper-based street directory the area of the destination point. If the paper map does not provide enough information such as reference points to precisely arrive at the area, the drivers we observed engage with the navigation system. No detailed information are requested at that moment of the ride. It is only when approaching the destination area, that the exact address in the navigation system is entered. Informant X explained that he engages with the system at that moment to avoid the often misleading information on the path to take. Indeed, a taxi driver applies several paths depending on the time of the day and circumstances (e.g. traffic, weather conditions, preference of passenger).

An altered learning process
In the past, the driver would open the “Guia” and browse the index of streets and points of interest to get access to a map of the area comprised by the destination. The book was one way to learn the city by doing. Another big part of the knowledge drivers acquire come from the customers themselves, as they communicate the tricks and secrets that official books and commercial systems do not disclose. As the experience drivers contain most of the knowledge of the city in memory they rarely return to the Guia. In fact, they prefer using their sat-nav and open the Guia only as fail-over (e.g. when the system does not contain a street number or lacks of information). Even after 20 years of experience, one drivers still perceived reading the Guia as a demanding task. Compare to that, “hitting the screen of his Tom-Tom is a pure pleasure“. Experienced drivers only rely in the system (sometimes keeping it in the glove compartment - or only use it to keep track of their speed) when driving to unfamiliar destinations, which after 20 years only happens rarely. The system is not source of learning but rather a punctual saver.

The integration of the satellite navigation system altered the learning process of the city from three main disruptions: the necessity to assess the quality of the geoinformation, the imputation of some social interactions and the ability to temporarily disengage with the environment:

- Assessing the quality of geoinformation
Taxi drivers with a short job experience express mixed feelings about their experience with their sat-nav ”It is like my mobile phone, sometimes it does not work well”, “it is a potential problem” in terms of quality of services and precision of the information. Their demand of accurate information quickly reached the limits of the systems and the inaccuracy of the system directly impacted the quality of their service. Because they had to deeply rely on it in the beginning, they have learned when not to rely on it. For instance, informant X could name me the places where he experienced the navigation information to be absolutely irrelevant (e.g. get access major squares). But that does not make them learn the city. In consequence, they embrace the use of the “Guia” which is “more accurate and complete” for their job, particularly when it comes to providing a detailed index of streets, points of interest and city-related information.

- New engagement with the environment
As drivers cannot completely rely on their navigation system, they have to form their knowledge of the city to improve quality of their service and relax. One mean translated into leaving their navigation system system on passive mode to learn the street names or identify the present of fixed speed measurements radars as they appear on the screen. Keeping the system on passive mode, also enables the driver to disengage with the environment for a while knowing that the screen will give a proper position. In the past, drivers would count the number of streets to cross before making a turn.

- Social amputation
A major part of about learning about the city comes from the interaction with the customers. It is still a tradition for a taxi driver to ask “how do you want to go there?” and rely on the direction given by the customers to avoid any complains and learn the tricks to navigate. The presence of a navigation system changes this social configuration and reduces the opportunities for this learning process to take place. This technological presence not only affects the social interactions not only inside the car, but also with remote friends and colleagues. Informant X was relieved that he did not have to use his radio to ask colleagues about particular location information and directions (even though many taxi drivers are social animals). Similarly, taxi drivers have now less a tendency to ask for directions to locals (e.g. in remote villages) or other knowledgeable people of the city (e.g. truck drivers at red lights in industrial areas).
Discussion

- De-skilling?
Previous studies on navigation systems have highlighted that introduction of navigation system has shown evidences of de-skilling effect on orientation and navigation (Leshed et al., 2008, Elaluf-Calderwood and Sørensen, 2008, Aporta and Higgs, 2008). For instance “The more the driver relies on the system to locate jobs, the less he or she relies on their in-depth knowledge of where they need to position themselves to maximise income” ( Elaluf-Calderwood and Sørensen, 2008). This is also supported by the perception of the experienced generation of taxi drivers we got to observe and interview. Informant X explained that “the newcomers who use a navigation system do not gain knowledge of the city, because they follow the recommendations and stop to think“. Our analysis of of the less knowledgeable taxi drivers showed somehow has not revealed negative affects on their acquisition of knowledge that support their skills to perform well their job. We notices that they are eager to learn the city and the imperfection of their systems forced them to learn using traditional sources such as the “Guia”. These drivers have a tendency to keep their system passive mode, not only to detach with the orientation process but also to learn the environment in familiar areas such as keeping track of the street names and their sequences.

This need by less experience drivers to access multiple sources of information from an ecosystem of artifacts slightly breaks the myth that sat-nav system changes a “skilled” job unto a unskilled one; in other words anyone with a GPS could do their job. A prove as that the system gets to be used less and less over time, sometimes finishing in the glove compartments or even the trunk. However, the presence of the technology altered the social practices that were at the source of learning the “unofficial” city from the knowledgeable customers. In that sense taxi drivers may slowly change social practice to adapt, but we have no evidences of that. What is clear is that the navigation system does not provide these kind of information.

- Information quality, system limitations and co-evolution
The fluctuating quality of the geoinformation as sources of co-evolution of the taxi drivers and their in-car navigation system. An ecosystem of artifacts are set to complement the limitations of information. Indeed, taxi drivers learned not to completely rely on their sat-nav because they do not have the knowledge to assess the quality of the information. Therefore, besides learning to interpret the system and its inaccuracies, they have a tendency to open their “Guia”. Informant X admitted that when a conflict emerges between his sat-nav and his intuition he starts to “improvise” and depending on the circumstances he would either switch it off or ignore it for a while, a pure example of Suchman’s situated action theory (locations and opportunity determine the action): “Idiosyncrasy, improvisation and knowledge are all useful tools when choices between planned and situation acts are complex” (Suchman, 1987)”
- Considerations for design

* Moving beyond technological determinism

* People may use systems in ways unanticipated by the designers (more evidences for the discourse of Ackerman). For instance, one taxi drivers used the speed displayed in the navigation system rather than fixing his broken speedometer.
* System designers should assume that people will try to tailor their use of in-car navigation systems; a system that complements rather than replace an ecosystem of artifacts, sources of the knowledge of the city. It does not replace, because a large part of the knowledge has no informational model or digital sources.
* Support and not reduce social interaction with customers as opportunities to learn: often a taxi ride is an opportunity to engage in social interactions. A navigation system is primarily designed for a specific interaction with the driver without engaging with other people in the car, secluding the customer.

* Highlight the quality of the geoinfomation to help users to match their knowledge to assess the quality of geoinformation. This is particularly importance with the emergence of real-time traffic information. So the design should reveal the quality and timeless of the information (seamful design)

Relation to my thesis: Using this blog to reformulate a paper for journal submission (that should be my last journal paper) in re-aligning the thoughts free from the academic paper writing overheads

In his intervention at Lift09, Dan Hill inspired from Arup’s Total Design to introduce the kind of skillset that would make a team of soft infrastructure architects (software engineers, interaction designers, sociologist, ethnographers, economist, lawyers) to properly bend the physical city. The main challenge to incorporate design informatic systems to greatest advantage without undermining the wonderful things about cities, certainly lies into finding ways to involved disciplinary communities that barely speak the same language and practice with different (contradicting?) objectives. This is certainly the kind of cross-disciplinary pollination Adam Greenfield aims at creating with his upcoming book. In a recent interview Towards a Newer Urbanism: Talking Cities, Networks, and Publics, he digged out a quote I have been looking for a long time from (courtesy of the great Brian Boyer):

“If you want to start talking about some serious cross-disciplinary pollination then you better take both sides of that disciplinary divide seriously. When your ubi- runs into my building with its boring HVAC, mundane load paths, typical finished floors, plain old foundations, etc., the transformative powers of comp are bracketed pretty seriously by the realities of the physical world.”

Dan Hill on the skill sets to develop and maintain soft infrastructures. All waiting for some serious cross-disciplinary pollination. Photo courtesy of Vlad Trifa

On Tuesday, my work was presented in two different venue, in Hamburg at the GeoViz workshop on the Contribution of Geovisualization to the concept of the Digital City (thanks to Ayman Moghnieh for replacing me at the last minute!) and in Barcelona at Globalgeo in a forum on geoinformation and participation for sustainability (slides of the presentation). I stayed in Barcelona to meet some of the founders of the Vespucci Initiative and understand how my work integrates into the current trends and challenges in of geographic information science. Besides the acknowledgment of volunteer-generated information, it is still a very techno-driven field, that starts with technological capabilities of to collect, process and visualize data and after a few years having conference session with the title “So what?”. No doubt that this is one what that innovation happens, but I am always fascinated by the GIS community quest of the details (e.g. the perfect 3d models of a city) without much human perspective on “how good is good enough” and “for whom and what for”. Current concerns are rather on better organize the existing geospatial data (following the EU Inspire Directive), migrate them to Internet-based environments, make them ready for spatial analysis and visualization. In relation to that, spatial data should be considered as a medium, not a message. So far the community has overlooked the maintenance of the medium, for instance in failing in archiving data (e.g. we lack of the digital data from 10 years while we still still have analog data). In addition, there is paradigm shift that drives spatial analysis to show what is happening, not what it is, implying the development of 4d spatial analysis and visualizations systems.

The move into this Next Generation Digital Earth goes through the embracement of bottom-up spatial data infrastructures. Michael Goodchild made an effort in comparing the differences in quality, trust, timeliness and risks of volunteer generated information vs. authoritative information. He particularly talked about the contrast in the quality of the top-down (authority) data where inaccuracies are guaranteed and the bottom-up (assertion) data that tend to be more accurate in popular places (e.g. similar to Wikipedia). Therefore, authorities information must be verified through a process that can be slow. On the other hand, asserted information are generated in timely manner and people are willing to accept the false positive they generate (an angle that I could have explored in CatchBob). Through several examples (e.g. fire management in Santa Barbara), Goodchild showed the necessity to consider both accurate top-down information mixed with timely volunteer generation information (e.g. such as in Zagat). My work in New York certainly goes into that direction.

Back from Lift09 with my traditional doggie bag (see Lift06, Lift07, Lift08) filled with food for thoughts and unlikely take-aways (all the videos are online).

This year, I got the pleasure to moderate the “Towards a long here” session, a title inspired by Adam Greenfield’s concept of Long Here and Big Now. Carlo Ratti, Dan Hill and Anne Galloway shared their take on the challenges, problems and opportunities of the recombination of urban environments through technological advancements. First, Carlo Ratti gave a punchy rundown (fing’s notes) of the MIT SENSEable City Lab’s projects, with a nice homage to my tracing the visitor’s eyes. Each project provides an evidence that bits and atoms are coming together to reveal invisible urban dynamics (Real-time Rome, NYTE, World’s Eyes, Track Trash) and provide new types of experiences in urban space (WikiCity, Digital Water Pavilion). Without devaluating the importance of engaging visualizations of urban dynamics, Dan Hill (fing’s notes, Dan’s notes) showed evidences of the less happy marriage of soft and hard infrastructures from his frustrating 4-days journey to reach the northern hemisphere. It is when soft infrastructures “attack” (exception handling when rerouting passengers of a malfunctioning 747, lack of information system, smart card at the hotel not working) that we get the feeling of their importance (making me think to the Code/Space concepts). Bottom line: “it may not matter how good the hard infrastructure is, it is the soft infrastructure that affects how you feel“. Therefore, software infrastructures are not only about technology, it is also about software design, service design, interaction design, looking at the wider context of the organization, systems and people, urban design, urban informatics and even business models, the legal and political context, the belief systems and the social and cultural fabric. If we do not understand these aspects, we will make the same mistakes as past visions that relied on the fascination around the hard infrastructures and reducing cities to systems. When stepping back and considering the future with and understanding of why past vision never happened, it becomes clear that people (social, cultural, political such as privatization of properties) drive the evolution of cities, not technology (here I like to talk about co-evolution). Taking that into account, the exploitation of these soft infrastructure might lead to promising “super-powers” (here Matt Jones’ latest talk “The Demon-Haunted World” with the quote “the car changed the development of the city irreversibly in the 20th century. I’d claim that mobiles will do the same in the 21st” comes to mind): a) control of the transit network, not the other way around (e.g. visualization of Velib nodes revealing new movements in cities), b) ability to see the invisible activity, c) post-occupancy evaluation and feedback loops.

Dan Hill and the animated Velib nodes trick…

However the development of these “super-powers” and the improvement of the relationships between hard and soft might not come without a engaging the actors (I see using visualization as one way to stretch the imagination and engage into the action), b) user-centered design (the web industry could teach the architecture world, like the learned from product design and industrial design!), and c) Ove Arup’s “Total design” with an architecture team made of new disciplines such software engineers, interaction designers, sociologist, ethnographers, economists. Anne Galloway (fing’s notes), stepped away from a utilitarian discoursed and perfectly built on Carlo Ratti and Dan Hill’s suggestions, and the expressions of expectations, promises and hopes around these future cities and their informational membrane. If we consider the design of these cities and their positive aims as a gift (gift taken within its complex interaction): it might imply a gift back (uneven expectations), it might not be well interpreted (like any awkward gifts). So if we offer citizen better awareness of the city dynamics and power to influence the city evolution, does not mean they will accept the gift. Indeed, taking the example of citizen-science and people-centric sensing, citizen might just not be interested in the collect of the data, it might increase the divide between the people who are able to participate and the ones who don’t (as discussed in The rise of the sensor citizen).

Some speakers discussed the study of failures (Nicolas Nova) and the acknowledgment of chaos (Fabio Sergio discussed that hope and dreams carried in design only show a perfect world, a world that does not exist, and then had the necessary slide on the Napoli garbare issue) as part of the design process. It was music to my hears after talking about seamful design and mesiness at lift07.

A workshop on the design of hybrid cities of the near future also took place. More on that later…

Once again, the Lift Conference outdid itself, a conference that has the self-confidence to take chances in inviting unlikely but refreshing speakers (Baba Wamé, Frank Beau) mixed with safe bets that always deliver beyond expectation (Matt Webb, Fabio Sergio, Dan Hill, Anne Galloway…) and open stages with a smart sense of provocation like Bill Thompson’s the death of privacy or inspiration with Felix Koch and Fabian Keller on the literacy of cutting. Lift is THE conference of the World-Wide Lab, the best hybrid forum out there. There is still a need to work on the workshops formats to get back to lifto6’s level.

Once again, my hat is off to the organizers!

Fabio Sergio at Lift Conference 2009

I was in Barcelona this week to present an extensive overview of my research work in the domain of people-centric sensing at the weekly 1-hour seminar of the local Yahoo! Research lab.

People-centric sensing in the city of the near future (slides)

Abstract. Technological advances in sensing, computation, storage, and communications is turning people as sensors of their own environment. Indeed, the increasing deployment of wireless and mobile devices produce new types of dynamic urban data that people generate by passively and actively interacting with these ubiquitous technologies. In this talk, I will illustrate through a few examples how the analysis and visualization of these data gives the ability to show previously invisible urban dynamics resulting in opportunities to inform the urban design, planning and management processes. Moreover, the increasing integration of these technologies into the fabrics of our lives could create more responsive cities in which authorities, service providers and citizens can monitor urban processes and react to events in real-time. Finally, I will ponder these opportunities by highlighting the complex socio-technical assemblage that challenges researchers and practitioners in designing the integration of these new dynamic urban information into people’s daily life.

Thanks to Ricardo Baeza-Yates for the invitation

In an era of global competition, every aspect of a city that contributes to its desirability or undesirability is been increasingly regarded as a key factors to maintain and strengthen its attractiveness and by consequence its competitiveness. A city’s attractiveness is determined by a wide range of elements based on their own wealth, security (i.e. The Safe City By Leo van den Berg), history, cultural assets, and excellent landscape, measured with quantitative data such as in Richard Florida’s work and the indexes of Mercer, and the UN’s State of the World’s Cities, Quality of “Business” Life. Character, identity and uniqueness are also crucial ingredients in a city’s attractiveness, which can only be exploited by careful planning at a local level and highlighted in more qualitative surveys such as FT’s Cities of Dreams and Monocle’s top liveable cities.
These indicators inform the urban policies and politics of major urban areas and polycentric metropolis with implications on the management of these places and the practice of urban planning and urban design (see Manuel Castells Talk on the Implications of Networks on Urban Planning). The strategies for enhancing attractiveness include city-centre redevelopment, cultural policy, the role of events, city promotion and infrastructure. They were characterized by the so-called “culture-led” regeneration of the New York City Waterfronts and its 4-months Waterfalls public art exhibit that has been playing a role in enhancing city image and achieving economic deindustrialisation of the piers in Lower Manhattan and West Brooklyn. Similar strategy use the concept of “event city” that has come to signify to policy makers that special events can be used to give a specific character to the city that hosts them. Other examples take the forms of new cultural infrastructure, including galleries, theatres and concert halls, as a tourist attraction and a community platform for culture-related economic activities to expand.

The impact of these strategies is only partially measurable (when not too costly), although it is generally accepted that there is a conspicuous impact of these projects on city image, which is reflected in increases in the number of tourists and the demand for tourism-related services. However, these strategies could play negative roles as cites with large suburbs where centers become centres of consumption, apart from production; they might become less about living rather than becoming a place to visit for shopping and eating out, to take part in social events, to have cultural experiences at movie theatres, concert halls and museums, to meet and communicate with others.

In other words, city centers have been the focal point of citizen’s urban life. Therefore, the lack of monitoring of their attractiveness could be regarded as an immediate threat to the liveliness of their economy. Measures from urban data (e.g. land use, census, traffic data) and statistics (e.g. NYC’s Sustainable Streets Index) traditionally feed the suspicions and are less traditionally augmented with the systematic collection of people’s experience, as suggested by Marek Kozlowski’s PhD thesis Urban Design: Shaping Attractiveness of the Urban Environment with the End-Users that aims at obtaining subjective views of end-users and integrating this information into the urban design process.
My work on urban attractiveness proposes a third, complementary avenue that exploits the logs of people’s explicit and implicit interactions with urban infrastructures as evidences of the evolution of attractiveness of a space. The analysis of the temporal density and spatial distribution of digital footprints could help ensuring the sustainability of a city attractiveness by keeping indicators on the evolution of the experience of the space. They are an opportunity to inform urban designer and policy makers to enhance urban quality through post-occupency evolutions. Finally the development and assessment of strategies to enhance urban attractiveness involves of a wide range of local stakeholders and strong partnership among. The visualization of the evidences extracted form digital footprints can help the discussion that contribute to extend the contextual knowledge and deepens understanding.

An evidence of temporary low attractiveness of a space in relation to other areas?

Relation to my thesis: Further motive and ground my latest research work. Keep on highlighting that “it seems that the interface with technologies and networks is still not taught in land use planning and urban design“.