Next Wednesday (March 10, 2010), will take place a seminar on Mapping Contemporary Cities at Laboral in Gijón, Spain. The event will gather practitioners active in hard urban realities, soft urban infrastructures and information visualization. Beyond cross-disciplinary pollination, the aim will be to develop innovative work in understanding, representing, mapping, communicating metropolitan areas that gather all the indicators of a city without featuring a dense urban fabric. It is particularly the case of the polycentric urban area in Central Asturias, Spain formed by three mid-size cities acting as one metropolis with its specific patterns of mobility, high car use, increase of express bus and train lines, dense information networks, and new attraction points as shopping centers or industrial land. Being able to channel the strategies of several urban entities into one metropolis is a major challenge for politicians, decisions-makers, infrastructure owner and service providers.

I was inspired by a talk of Antoine Picon (Towards a City of Events: Digital Media and Urbanity) and the extensive work of Fermín Rodríguez Gutiérrez on Ciudad Astur to setup and frame the event:

Mapping Contemporary Cities (en español):

Urban mapping is a mean to lead us to explore further what is happening today in the urban realm. In the Renaissance, many maps were about presenting the portrait of the city, its physiognomy, like a person, and its main monuments. Later, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, maps were more and more often about urban geometry. In the nineteenth century, maps conveyed notions about new dimensions of the city like its networks (e.g. sewer maps, state of traffic). Nowadays, with the complexity of cities and their invisible soft infrastructures, even their centers have become hard to understand using the traditional means of cartography.

Simultaneously, digital media is changing the city as we experience it but also as we understand it. Tools and crawlers can now absorb new vast amount of data and represent it again through maps. While these tools help engineers, planners, geographers, decision makers, civil servants, inhabitants capture the city at a glance, they also make us aware of the limitation and imperfection of the transformation of the information. Does the digital bring us cities that are move visible and cognitively understandable? Can it help reveal cities such as Ciudad Astur with no visible urban homogeneity but strong invisible indicators of a metropolitan area?

To explore these questions, this seminar gathers practitioners active in the hard urban reality, digital cities and information visualization.

An effort of mapping “invisible cities”, here the work of CeCodet on Ciudad Astur in the book “El área metropolitana de Asturias. Ciudad Astur: el nacimiento de una estrella urbana en Europa“.

Thanks to LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial for generously supporting this event.

Earlier last year, the FING, as part the the Villes 2.0 program, conducted a set of interviews on the development research in social and human sciences that study the relation between the information/communication technologies and the urban environment. Thierry Marcou and Sylvain Allemand asked french-speaking researchers in the domains of social sciences, urbansim, geography and information sciences (including myself) to reflect on the digital evolutions cities face; such as access and use of urban services, the approaches strategies and methods to understand the evolution and innovate with new urban services. The initial observation of their report entitled “La recherche urbaine à l’heure de la Ville 2.0“, highlight the necessity to consider the relation between ICTs and the urban environment beyond the infrastructures (e.g. politic to guarantee optimal coverage of a territory in high-speed Internet) and start to think about the implication in the urban context. In fact, these current strategies that aim at bringing infrastructure into the age of network culture still remain far from the goal of urban planning to arrange harmoniously people and activities in a territory (see Victory Gardens, or the Impact of the Financial Crisis on Architecture for some provoking thoughts).

A few concepts thoughts extracted from the report particularly caught my interest. Particularly the interview of geographer Jacques Levy who downplays the role of technologies to empower citizens:

“La ville n’est pas seulement gérée par les systèmes d’ingénierie, mais aussi par les habitants qui se rendent capables de maîtriser et de faire évoluer cet immense environnement qu’est une ville. Ils sont donc tous techniciens, en gérant des informations multiples sur les lieux ou en construisant des stratégies de mobilité”. Des citadins, rappelle Jacques Lévy, qui n’ont pas attendu l’internet pour devenir des acteurs, et par exemple, au travers de la civilité, « reconstruire la ville à chaque instant dans l’espace public ».

This notion of civility particularly important not to reduce the use of Internet technologies for radical ways to manage the urban (e.g. emerging urbanism), but also how they can contribute to the renewal of current models. For instant Levy discusses the necessity of decision makers to, from now on, deal with the “micro-arbitration” of citizens.

Sailors navigating the Barcelona subway system. They have not waited the Internet to become technicians, managing multiple spatial information and developing their mobility strategies.

My interview was conducted in early 2009, freshly out of my stay at MIT SENSEable City Lab. It highlights some of the contributions I try to make in the domain of research in urban informatics. Some of my thoughts have evolved since, but the core reminds intact. This is a good opportunity to recap what I believe are my main contributions:

Research contributions
Information/Communication/Location technologies, rather than have not dissolved the city; space is still predominant with altered experience (see CatchBob!) and appropriation with practices, ecosystem of artifacts and cultures as driving factors of co-evolution (see Taxi drivers) .

Implicit engagement, with citizens acting as sensors (see Tracing the Visitor’s eye) generating data as sources of new types of urban indicators (see NYC Waterfalls) to evaluate urban strategies.

Research approaches
The necessity of hybrid researchers: “Autrement dit à ces chercheurs et lieux de recherche et d’étude qu’on pourra qualifier d’« hybrides », au sens où ils procèdent à partir de recherche action, sur la base de partenariats public/privé, en développant des méthodologies entre recherche fondamentale et appliquée, voire entre sciences et arts.” […] “Ce serait un chercheur qui ne craint pas de côtoyer les différents mondes (académique, élus, entreprise…) ni de pratiquer les langages des différents parties prenantes“. (see on hybrid forums and the kind of research I am).

Communication beyond a certain community as an integral part of the research process: “Au-delà d’une ouverture sur les autres disciplines et pratiques professionnelles, le chercheur idéal se préoccupe aussi de la manière dont il communique le fruit de son travail auprès des gens ordinaires. Communiquer au-delà de la communauté scientifique devrait faire partie intégrante de la démarche du chercheur en technologies urbaines“. (see Below the Tip of the Urban Data Iceberg and for instance Les Audiences dans la Ville and L’MIT di Boston Digitalizza la Vita Dei Turista a Firenze).

Human as a focal point at the intersection of technologies and urban spaces: “Aussi curieux que cela puisse être, le contexte urbain est encore peu concerné par les pratiques de co-conception que l’on observe dans le secteur de l’informatique et du numérique. Pour ma part, je ne conçois pas d’imaginer des dispositifs sans analyse de ses usages et usagers Ces intersections de pratiques permettent de définir un nouvelle approche qui prend en compte l’Homme dans l’intégration des technologies dans l’espace urbain“. (see post-occupancy evaluations).

Feed from provocation for instance through design fiction and artist works: “Oui, tout à fait. Les artistes en particulier jouent un rôle majeur, en amont des recherches académiques.“

Feed from urban scouting (see sliding friction)

Research methods
Mixed research and use of probes: “A objet d’études original, moyens spécifiques : nous allons jusqu’à concevoir nous-mêmes des outils particuliers, comme ces « mouchards » placés dans les téléphones pour collecter des données quantitatives qui supportent les observations sur le terrain“. (see CatchBob! and Flight detection)

Rapid prototyping to create potent provocative ideas and feed larger investigation: “Au sens du mot anglais « hack», qui veut dire « détourner », sous entendu pour trouver des portes auxquelles on ne pense pas, en n’hésitant pas à tester des solutions” (see Velib / Bicing).

Visualization as a starting point, not an end: “Bricoler, cela peut consister, par exemple, à mettre des données sur des cartes et noter des comportements émergents, pour établir des corrélations ou dégager une dynamique spatiotemporelle qui aide à une première compréhension des données. Elle ne parlera pas forcément au commun des mortels, mais au moins permettra-t-elle de nourrir l’imaginaire du chercheur, d’amorcer une discussion au sein de son équipe. Les réactions que cela suscite sont souvent instructives“. (see the World’s Eyes)

Why do I blog this: Gathering thoughts for upcoming essays and talks.

FING has been leading an active investigation in France, acting both as a think-tank and make-tank in the domain of digital cities. I am not aware of any initiatives at that scale in other countries. Chapeau! They investigate and consult beyond academia, relying on other observer of the digitization of urban, more of the hybrid researchers type. Indeed they are often as very capable to capture, treat the issues and communicate on the domain. For instance, marine biologist and entrepreneur Juan Freire offers a unique sensitivity translating the experience in his domain to the context of the city (see Urbanismo emergente, pro-común y tecnología).

Mirablau at the bottom of Tibidabo offers a spectacular view over Barcelona. At sunset, the lights are soften to contemplate the change of colors of the city.

Why do I blog this: Working on a text on data cities and visualization. I communicate my work with visualization to play with this fascination of the macro views on city dynamics. Most cities offer their observation decks, being it natural or man made. They complement the citizens mundane micro observations of atomic level city dynamics (e.g. planes, road traffic, construction sites, …)

Yesterday, I delivered my last formal talk of the year at the Lift @ home session on “Urban informatics / Les nouveaux paysages numériques“, organized by Nicolas Nova in the Lift Conference premises in Geneva. This event was part of the urban informatics workshop series Nicolas and have been running. I played the role of the utilitarian to engage the audience on the potentials benefits of exploiting the logs of digital activities in our contemporary cities. My established spiel was enhanced with some insights from a recent study of crowd dynamics at the Puerta del Angel/Rambla area in Barcelona. As usual, the slides of “L’analyse urbaine à partir des activités numériques” are online for your downloading pleasure.

It was a pleasure to finally tag team with Boris Beaude from EPFL who brought his geographer’s reading of the notion of digital spaces and the maps they entail (read “Internet, un lieu du Monde” in the book L’invention du Monde, and see his courses at SciencePo Enjeux politiques de la géographie and Théorie de l’espace at EPFL). His insights help raise the kind of reflexive awareness need to reduce the effect of map designers’ personality/background on what is finally produced (see his recent paper Crime Mapping, ou le réductionnisme bien intentionné). He delivered a compelling argument on the reductionism of crime maps visualizations, highlighting the classic misleading error of calculating the density of a phenomena from the density of residents. Furthermore, these representation rely on citizen’s declarations, while it is well known that the most dangerous areas of a city are where there is a fear to report crimes. Among other issues, this calls the attention on the lack of critical thinking on “what does this information informs us on?” and who is responsible for the mishandling and misrepresentation of the data?

Boris Beaude at the improvised cabaret in the Lift Conference premises

The third speaker, Pascal Wattiaux discussed the role of technologies in the production of the olympic games. Each of the project run for at least 10 years, with each candidacy strongly embedded into the city planning, compressing 30 of development into roughly 7 years with no escape and a constant acceleration and organizational ramp-up (growing from 350 to 150.000 people in a few years). The games experience goes from the preparation of the games, through the production of the games, and the legacy of the games. It must be in sync with the expectation of the various stakeholders (public, athletes, workforce, sponsors, municipal, regional and state governments, etc).

In that unique context, technologies constantly offer opportunities in both revenue opportunities and cost savings. However, with the constant evolutions of technologies, it is hard to build “best practices”, therefore organizers report on “best experiences”.

Nowadays there are opportunities in the analysis of the spatial dynamics of the organization, could improve the spectators management (the stadium need to be full, it is a question of image), reduce the staff of volunteers, or organize the emergency operations with specific language competences.

Last week I was at Donosti-San Sebastian, to give a short presentation of my research at the The First International Conference on the Measurement and Economic Analysis of Regional Tourism. In the session, “New Instruments for Measuring and Modelling Tourism Flows”, I delivered my classic spiel “Analysis of Visitors from their Digital Activities” that covered:

1. the ability to reveal aspects of visitors experience of a city/region from their digital activities
2. the opportunities to evaluate urban strategies

I have added some notes and references to augment my slides.

Prior to my talk, Carlos Arce provided a complete scan on the new instruments and techniques to measure travel behaviors, mentioning the battles in persuading people and organizations to participate to survey and the necessity to “sell better” the value of these kind of analysis (impact, opportunity and efficiency; for special need population or special areas (eco-tourism)).

Following the other presentations, it seems there are not many innovations that can surpass the power of paper+pencil to measure travel behaviors. Back in the Simpliquity days, we inspired from this traditional technique to develop a very simple technological solution for Detecting air travel to survey passengers on a worldwide scale. This approach contrasted with the quest for perfect data some statisticians seem to lose themselves in, some requesting a mandatory Galileo reporting system for each vehicle in function in the EU. I mean, Europe can be more creative than that! Fortunately, some statisticians do not seem well-armed with a consistent argumentation to get what they do not have, considering the barrier they already face (privacy, propriety, silos, data quality, evaluation of their models). I particularly expected to experience more discussions on the transformation of measures and analysis into politics and strategies (and their evaluations).

Last week, Nicolas was also invited in a keynote address to discuss the near future of tourism services based on digital traces.

Señor!

Thanks to CICtourGUNE and particularly to Ibon for the invitation!

It seems our work has inspired others very recently: Explorando otras fuentes de datos: Flickr y el turismo and Redes sociales y turismo: flickr + Canarias.

This blog is now a 6.5 years ‘note to self‘, and will continue so. It contributed to help me frame and polish my thoughts on my research, and will continue so.

Now, A PhD behind me, and Lift lab in front of me, I have paved my next steps, communicating the results of my research and forging new non-academic alliances, to the detriment of contributing blog. Now that my “voice” related to the contributions of my thesis needs a renewal, I am back to a Making/Creating/Building phase (see The Kind of Research I am). I am spending a good share of my time, slightly away from this blog, developing processes and tools to qualify, measure, find utility and extract value from captured urban dynamics. It means moving beyond the fascination around basic capacities to sense or visualize a city in real-time. It means, being humble, working on the ground, understanding clients and partners, their practices and how new tools and techniques can integrate their traditional processes. It means confronting and plotting with bounded disciplines or as Julian Bleecker would say:

“Let things get rather undisciplined and a bit unruly. Disciplines are self-satisfied, with is akin to apathy, which never solved any problems.”

Back to the Making/Creating/Building Phase, contributing on two levels: 1) software/process modeling (making/creating/building); 2) talk planning (polishing a discourse)

As part of a conference-debate on “La Terre Vue du Web” organized by Joaquín Keller and Christel Sorin, I gave a talk entitled “Pratiques des nouveaux espaces numériques” (slides in French) to present and debate on the emerging presence of geoinformation, often issued from the Web (expended definition of the Web that includes web protocols and Web of Things) and their implications on contemporary practices in the city. Based on a previous talk, I highlighted the ability to perform a new type of urbanism, based on evidences, merging traditional survey techniques that observes and counts the visible with now developed web analytics tools that measure activities online. This “evidence-based urbanism” provides new means to evaluate and improve strategies, exemplified by our analysis of the digital activity at the New York City waterfront as indicator of urban attractiveness (see study of the New York City Waterfalls).

New practices: merging techniques and tools to observe and measure the urban and the web, the visible and the invisible.

On the other hand, the digital representation of the physical is imperfect and potentially misleading. For instance, satnav system augment our wayfinding capacities with instantaneous contextual and planning information. Taxi drivers must assess and learn their fluctuating quality that must be assessed, leading to an evolution of their practice, sometimes amputating the capacity to learn directly from customers advices.

Evolving practices: assessing the quality of the geoinformation

The debate covered several aspects around the capacity to manipulate previously inaccessible datasets (see From Shoeboxes to Digital Footprints and Digital Shadows, Citizens to Improve Bicing, …), their ability to represent/disform the truth, the use of “sexy” visualizations as part of a research process (see Below the Tip of the Urban Data Iceberg), and their integration into current practices (see Why Real-Time Data Are Not Used to Improve Urban Systems?)

Thanks to Joaquín Keller and Christel Sorin for the invitation!

This week, I head to Paris for a gig at La Cantine on the theme “La Terre vue du Web“. I will team-up with Denise Pumain to discuss the ways information, communication and location-aware technologies change our relation with the space. This event is part of a conference series on interdisciplinary approaches to the Web.

Later this month, Lift lab will run a workshop in Barcelona “Hands on Barcelona’s Informational Membrane” that aims at exploring the implications and opportunities of the presence of the informational membrane hovering over Barcelona. The list of participants is already utterly promising.

Finally, I will mingle with tourism professionals and experts at the First International Conference on the Measurement and Economic Analysis of Regional Tourism in San Sebastian, presenting new instruments for measuring and modelling tourism flows and other types of innovation in the tourism enterprise. After the 9th International Forum on Tourism Statistics at OECD, I am thrilled to once again participate to a conference sponsored by the UNWTO with practitioners and people who perform studies on the field.

Back on the road again

Why do I blog this: Thriving from the rich diversity of contiguous domains, languages and perspectives.

Today I participated to the My Map is Not Your Map Workshop at Arteleku in hype and laid-back San Sebastian. The workshop gathers an enriching mix of artists, designers, academics, engineers. My 45min talk “New maps and practices of hybrid spaces” aimed at describing the new types of maps of hybrid spaces, their utility and their integration into practices from tourism and urban studies to the wayfinding practice of taxi drivers. Comparing to traditional maps, I stressed the increasing value of the 4th dimension (time) in the dynamic and interactive representation of hybrid spaces now available, taking the occasion to provoke the audience with the notions of “real-time awareness” and “end of the ephemeral”. Indeed, not only these new maps alter our immediate apprehensions of the space we feel, live and work in, they also serve as means to communicate evidences and measurements, critical to evaluate space management strategies and policies. These approaches could alter the practices that relate to physical character of the world and human activities. However, part of the evolution of these new practices, we should consider their implications in forms of trade-offs and amputations.

The audience reacted to the notion of “imperfect mirror to reality” (information granularity, spatial uncertainty, seamful design), I believe capturing quite well the limitations of the kind of work I develop. I like to use these practical aspects, around the notion of oligopticon to balance any rhetoric that portrays the “perfect surveillance system”.

Thanks to José Luis Pajares for the invitation!

In the talk “Considerations on the recorded, quantified, communicated and apprised self” given at the workshop Information Kinetics: Egoviz, I present my experiences in working with the increasing amount of stored (and circulating) information about people, and their local environments. I intended to draw a few considerations to provoke and encourage the participants who have been developing some pretty exciting projects that explored the visualisation of the relationship between the individual and the environment. With a few examples, I highlighted the fact that current visualizations are used to engage the discussions rather than solving issues. Going beyond revealing the invisible is the next step that must include imperfection as an ingredient embedded in the solution. This imperfect mirror to reality challenges the rhetoric that describes the development of information kinetics as element of an emerging panopticon. Instead, I discussed the notion of the oligopticons that are “partially intelligent, temporarily competent and locally complete. The slides with notes are online.

Engaged with the near future of egooviz at Arteleku

Why do I blog this: It is always extremely stimulating to confront my work in an art center. I was particularly surprised by the maturity of the rhetoric participants use to describe their work. Some non-technologists now master Processing and its capabilities. Those are tangible signs of the emergence of groups of data scientists/artists with multidisciplinary practises and overlapping roles. Thanks to Kepa for the inviation!