Urban informatics
Posted: January 10th, 2008 | 7 Comments »Adam has an interesting query/blogpost about “what do you feel are the most significant contemporary developments in urban informatics? The most resonant projects, the most powerful interventions, the scariest precedents?“. That’s quite an important question that I try to ask myself for a while. Since I have not definite answer, I tried to pick up some examples I find relevant to get a messy list of “urban computing” projects:
- Location-based services: be they single-user (navigational devices such as personal GPS navigator) and ones who can have a social layer (see DASH for instance) but also mobile social software
- Urban screens and interactive billboards (see more about this here)…. that can display representations which allow to make explicit invisible or implicit phenomena: blogging pigeon, Real Time Rome (among other Senseable City projects), AIR, undersound or Tripwire, etc.)
- open mapping projects (like open street map) and other geospatial web applications (see Jo Walsh’s stuff, especially here piece about MUDlondon) a la place-based annotations (Urban tapestries among lots of others).
- Geographical Information Systems (./ although there would be a lot to say about this)
- pervasive games (no list about this here but you know what I am talking about)
- Identification systems such as these RFID cards you now have in most occidental cities in subways.
- Defensive Space can also be supported by technologies: not only CCTV, Vsee for example the mosquito sounds to avoid teenagers loitering
- Lazarus/zombie devices
- infrastructures can also count: think about wiring, server farms or gigantic telecom hotels.
But of course, it’s a bit awkward to limit oneself to purely urban/contextualized projects: a cell phone, web mash-ups, Twitter or whistles might well count too.
This is really non-exhaustive and raw list, there are multiple points of entries that can be used to go beyond this: technologies (RFID, GPS…), the number of users (single-user, multi-users), the role (navigation, entertainment), the nature of content (delivered by an institution, user-generated, sensor-captured), the context of the project (product, services, art piece), etc. Well, that’s a starting point for now.
Then, the next question that I particularly interested in is not the projects but the activity of people in contemporary cities (as you may have noticed in this blog): people putting stickers on the streets, fake grass, crocheted stuff on signs, fake heart stickers on traffic lights, etc.
My first thought when i read Adam’s question was to think “infrastructures also count” – I guess it’s natural for us to think of end-user experiences in terms of the discourse, but of course the fact is that there are lots of people doing lots of research and making lots of money already from b2b applications of ‘urban informatics’ in government, planning, construction, civil engineering etc.
There’s no question that this is true, particularly in the GIS space.
Just as I slowly began to appreciate how very many “ubiquitous computings” there are in the writing of Everyware, I’m now really beginning to understand that there are at least four different levels at which the term “digital urban” is understood (and to a perhaps surprising degree, these are really four discrete and non-communicating communities):
- The representationalists. GIS specialists, map geeks, infovis folks, virtual-world enthusiasts, and others primarily interested in data-based modeling.
- The architects: Primarily concerned with production, the new morphologies afforded by digital tools, in the context of discrete structures (and occasionally, infrastructures). There’s historically been little overlap in personnel or activity between this group and the previous; Google’s acquisition and integration of SketchUp began to change this.
- The phenomenologists: This is where I’m most comfortable, and what I’m most comfortable speaking about. Stuff at the UX level. Augmented reality, the content of building-scale displays, mobile/wearable/gestural interfaces – basically everything that isn’t purely data-driven.
- “The industry”: People who stand to make money off any of this, or for whom the prospect has some practical utility, but have no other interest in it per se. Advertisers, marketers, real estate brokers. I’d include public services here: police, fire, ambulance, and other GIS clients.
I’m not at all sure that’s the right (or even a useful) taxonomy, but it’s the one that’s beginning to take shape as I think about this stuff more rigorously. Does any of that make sense?
I think there’s also a fifth layer: the one who rule space or those who want to change policies (association, street corner lobbies, public institutions, think tanks, etc). These people are more concerned by change (social change) and the use of tech to go beyond current practices.
Eep. Just so, just so.
[...] [CONTINUED] [...]
Oh, and how could I forget the municipal WiFi folks? That’s a whole ‘nother “digital urban,” albeit of no particular interest to me except in that it presages the idea of a veil of infrastructure.
[...] Nova, one of our pannelists, has a very interesting overview of suggestions that I recommend [...]