Category: questions

The Quantified Community and the Neighborhood Labs

While the initial statement of Kontokostas might sound apelling, when he claims to use “the actual  potential of big data and analytics to positively shape future cities in a way that is sensitive to social and political realities, and reflective of the needs and desires of people who actually lives in the cities”; in further developments it’s clear the contradiction beteween big data and recording the actual live in the city. Kontokostas sees the problem as a technical one, as if by creating a more granular model of measurement we would have a more direct and precise reflection of every day live, and as if there were no bias in the measurement by itself. It’s also visible how his model of participation doesn’t really take in account the citizens in an active way. In this context, which could be other possible ways to measure everyday life? which would be a model of participation by which citizens can enpower themselves and have a more active role in the shaping of the city?

Intrumental City

As Mattern states critically, the model of the Quatified City has as a result that “Smart citizenship […] is thus equated with monitoring and managing one’s relation to the urban environment […] rather than with ‘exercising the rights and responsabilities’ or ‘advancing democratics engagements through dialogue and debate'”. As this model comes from an academy-industry-government complex, as Mattern calls it, based on the  conceptual models of ‘Urban triumphalism’, ‘Sustainable Urbanism’, and ‘Technoscientific Urbanism’; how can we crete different models of urbanism, which takes critically the other models, and in which this academy-industry-government complex, can be transformed to an a citinzens-academy-government-industry complex (in that order)?

The Quantified Community and Neighborhood Labs – Kontokosta

– The QC approach seems to be an initiative that starts from the ground up, with input from citizens (both actively and passively), as opposed to a planner’s creation of a Smart City.  How likely is it that residents will be willing to share and divulge details of their lives enough for fruitful data collection on a community scale?  While “signals emanating from mobile communication devices and other personal electronics” (p. 6) seem to be the most effective means of collecting passive data, an “opt-in approach” is certainly needed if the motivations behind QC’s are truly for the community.

– Is there already an example of a QC that has successfully evolved and contributed to a greater urban space? It seems as though collection of data over a long period of time, evaluation of data, comparisons with nearby QC’s and finally interconnectivity on a large scale would require a huge amount of sustained interest and long term vision.

Instrumental City: The View from Hudson Yards – Mattern

– “This is Hudson Yards, the largest private real-estate development in United States history and the test ground for the world’s most ambitious experiment in “smart city” urbanism.” (p. 1) It is interesting that after every proposal for this site that fell through, the Hudson Yards project is what succeeded and is moving forward. In New York City, nothing in real estate is done without considerable planning and study. Is this, then, an indicator of what the biggest of cities values?

– Is an “out-of-sight, out-of-mind” (p. 5) approach really the best idea when it comes to environmental/ecological concerns in a “smart” setting? I like the author’s idea of something like a chute for a peek into trash collection systems, because I feel that without it, the idea that the built environment does everything for you is harmful for a sense of responsibility in regards to the natural environment.

The Quantified Community and Neighborhood Labs

“As QC sensor and computing infrastructure are integrated into more neighborhoods,…” (p11-p12)

The QC is more like a test bed to gather data and also manage data for the residents or permanent neighbors, but how to apply to visitors or temporary individuals who integrate into this”city”? If there are a quantity of temporary individual, will they interfere the system or not?

• What is “ Isolated building or system mean(p4)”? Does QC have a scale of zone/ space? Does QC is also an isolated system?

Instrumental City

“… and now intend to use their new weapon — data — to revolutionize the old urban regime.” (p17-p18)

• To say, data would be a new weapon in the revolution of an urban regime. But when data become to a new weapon.Could we just use these data from QC to apply to the rest of this city and others?

Instrumental City: The View from Hudson Yards, circa 2019

– Since read so many cases about intelligent cities, is there any standard about what is intelligent cities ? can we regard the energy conservation as part of the intelligent city ?

– In the case of bloombergianism, the intelligence mainly reflects in solving problems. So in this situation, can we consider that the engineers play more important role than architects?

The Quantified Community and Neighborhood Labs: A Framework for Computational Urban Planning and Civic Technology Innovation

– If our city can collect all the data for this city, does every citizen have the authority to see these data?

1 Instrument city 

New York’s gradual, lot-by-lot evolution; the danger is that it can produce a jumble, that kind of jumble is cause of the previous New York infrastructure or the testing bed system self-chaos?

Could this jumble also happens in other project or even take places at any other new city?

Hudson yard is an example of the data science interdisciplinary practice this practice requires collaboration among every smart citizens participate. Do we have the right to revoke our participate?

2 The Quantified Community and Neighborhood Labs: A Framework for Computational Urban Science and Civic Technology Innovation

The data is the catalyze of urban development, the data analytics, and feedback on urban life will guide the city developer to district adjustment, base on the data could this lead to district polarization and finalization?

• Instrumental City – Shannon Mattern

Although it is clear in Doctoroff’s persistence and background that the development is another mean of profit and expansion. Regardless of his intentions, the implementation of such infrastructure will allow us to connect, interact and communicate in unprecedented ways. E.g as computers became more powerful as a result of competition in the tech market, the existence of recent “powerhouse” platforms allowed startups like Oculus (an entertainment tech company) to pioneer Virtual Reality experiences unprecedented in their realism and detail. It seems unrealistic and naïve to expect corporations to invest such time, effort and resources for some sort of noble non monetary gain with no intentions of capitalizing on their efforts.

“In this universe, citizens relate to their city by consuming and administering its systems, and by serving as sources of measurable behavioral data.” How does this change our perception of the city as it’s people? Does it? Does it not in fact reinforce it? Ultimately, CUSP claims their endeavors to be noble and in the genuine pursuit of boosting the general public’s quality of life – But can they be trusted?

How is the smart city rendered from the perspective of someone (as unlikely as it may be) that is not smart device-connected? How does that effect (if at all) their sense of the immediate, physical context? Do you gather they will be more connected to their environment as a result of continuously processing a “high resolution, low pace information” i.e, as McCullough puts it, being exposed strictly to a “restorative environment” or do you gather smart technology will become imbedded to such extents that to be smart-disconnected is to be isolated from your city?

Built environments and technical systems are presumed to inform human behavior, and data about that behavior is fed back into the environment to alter future human behavior. If general information is fed back to us effectively augmenting our decision making and soon shaping our habits does a smart city effectively threaten to give rise to an engineered society? “The data we generate, based on determinist assumptions and imperfect methodologies, could end up shaping populations and building worlds in their own image” Has this risk been recognized &/or being addressed?

Could the form of citizen participation simply change and not quite as dramatically cease to exist? Although the underlying infrastructure is hidden and thus not perceived or processed by the population isn’t the overlaid cyber space theoretically infinitely traversable? Could our infatuation with the hidden infrastructure be due to our human predisposition to attempt to deal or perceive new technologies in old (comfortable) ways (Mcluhan)?

If you were to create a smart city, how would you do it differently? Expose the underlying infrastructure and designate countless above ground square footage to it’s accommodation so that citizens can feel comfortable and “accustomed” to the interworks of the city? Expend billions of dollars of your and your investors’ capital in development of such infrastructure with no intention of making a monetary return on your effort(s) (perhaps more importantly, your eager investors)? Every extension is preceded by an amputation, and we’ve been through the mill a few times – with the extension of our objectivity, sensory and aggregation through the smart city could it simply be that the amputation is knowing “less” about the infrastructure that makes it work? and could we not educate ourselves? Become smarter citizens to keep up with our smart city? Would you rather wait for smart citizens to save the environment & boost the efficiency of our built context? Think they could do it without harvesting big data or even on a scale of an entire city? If they could, why haven’t they yet?

• A Framework for Computational Urban Planning – Kontokosta