Category: Uncategorized

W6. Urban Data Infrastructures – pinelopi

on Kitchin, Lauriault and McArdle, “Smart cities and the politics of urban data,” Smart Urbanism: Utopian Vision or False Dawn pp. 16-33

This chapter underlines the urgency to revisit existing smart-city technologies. The most constructive start in this process seems to be the exposure of the data assemblage (pp22) that produces them as opposed to its usual concealment or disregarding (pp30). The process of this revelation would be inevitably political itself – especially if It would not be enough to merely present the dispositif to all stakeholders, but to allow them to understand and actively engage with it too. What would the means of such a process be? How can we keep it from inheriting the same weaknesses that indicator, benchmarking and dashboard initiatives demonstrate?

Being the final visual output of city-sensing, dashboards are responsible for the illusion that a city is a collection of absolute facts to be observed. However, it is the conception of data as a solid, stand-alone series of facts that creates this oversimplified approach to city management in the first place, as it decontextualizes the city from the complex relations that constitute it (pp27). Should the next generation of the smart-city toolbox emphasize on making those relations between facts more apparent to citizens and city managers as a means to prove their contingent nature?
Also, how would a spatial interface with the ability to render these relations tangible look like?

on Gabrys, “Digital Infrastructures of Withness: Constructing a Speculative City,” Program Earth, pp.241-266

Within the digital infrastructures of smart cities, various types of participation arise, some of which produce modalities of withness. As opposed to the usual approach to participatory urbanism that attends to the ways through which individuals and communities are empowered  to get involved, withness identifies the human and more-than-human parts that together constitute “a wider infrastructural network of participatory and transindividuating politics and action” (pp243). Is this shift telling of a more post-human approach to urbanism? Would there be enough room for human agency in the cybernetic vision of the city as an “automated urban organism” (pp253)? Also, when Gabrys considers digital infrastructure as Automatism, she refers to Easterling’s quote saying “designing infrastructure is designing action” to suggest that infrastructures and actions coincide and co-emerge (pp257). Are they co-designed as well though? Isn’t the city-as-platform scenario, mostly promoted and implemented by corporations such as Microsoft and IBM, a profoundly top-down one?

Gabrys identifies a paradox in the evolution of abstract technology, where the process of its concretization is apparently one of high indeterminacy (pp254). Is this margin of indeterminacy a fertile ground for all three modalities of withness – measurement, automatism, contingency- or only for the latter?

DIY and Participatory Urbanism

“ladder of participation,” a figure taken from a classic 1969 urban participation text written by Sherry Arnstein.44 This ladder- based figure of citizen participation moves from the lowly depths of manipulation and therapy to the more enlightened stages of “citizen power,” which includes partnership delegated power, and citizen control.

What could be some other possible models for participation, considering the complexity and skills required for participation in smart cities? What are the parameters that will ensure the success of one model over the other?

Guattari, together with his electronic card, is participating in the sensor based city, but if he does not have access he can become idiotic through the same technologies that would ordinarily make him a smart and participating citizen. What Deleuze describes through Guattari is an example of an interrupted or broken program of participation,  where the object- script that would facilitate participation can become a locus of control, differently articulated politics, or a machine society that unfolds in distinctly computational ways.

Are there any identifiable patterns in the scenarios of an interrupted program of participation. Can these elements be addressed and solved? Or these are inevitable?

 

DIY and Participatory Urbanism – Germania Garzon

Tinkering Toward Utopia – Anthony Townsend

The reading seems to suggest that an artificial design like a suburb or maybe a ‘smart city’ results in failure because it lacks the opportunity for spontaneity or natural organic occurrences.  But at the same time ‘DIYcity was a completely designed artificial organization that promoted interaction and participation, and was a success.

– How can we ensure that the direction we are moving in, creating smart cities from scratch and telling people to inhabit them and participate, is successful in the long run?

– Could smart cities have the potential to “live out a natural cycle” like Foursquare  or DIYcity?

– Could we find a way to integrate the idea of the smart city with the idea of a ‘natural city’ like Alexander describes?

 

Engaging the Idiot in Participatory Digital Urbanism – Jennifer Gabrys

“If technologies are put to the test in these contexts, then participation becomes articulated through actual registers of engagement rather than as hypothetical platforms and gestures toward the common good. Idiots and idiotic encounters might even proliferate in these encounters and activate new approaches to the project of participation in the digital and sensor-based city.”

– What percentage of potential inhabitants of a smart city could be expected to act ‘idiotic’?

– Do all citizens have a tendency to act this way at some point or another?

– Are ‘idiotic’ citizens essential to the spontaneity of a “natural city” or rather a successful smart city?

DIY and Participatory Urbanism

In Townsend’s reading, he described the city should be tree like and it should have more connection within branches. The urban sprawl during postwar period is the “tree” which lacks communication between braches. But I think city is more like nest: there are different start points and connection in multiple directions. Anyhow the connection is essential for a successful city. He mentioned the Foursquare as the tool to link people in the city. It simply connects people digitally through the platform of “check-in” meanwhile people share their opinions. What if the digital platform somehow determines our destination? Will city become generalized. For example, traveling. Base on Foursquare’s review, we may end up at most “popular” part of city. Will there be space for surprises or we just going to be “organized” to the “best” place. Then it come to the question: do we want to be connected in both big and small scale”

Undeniable, the DIY city is the free form of city which we can design a prefect city. But it is physical limited, only for tech elites. Functionally, it is unlimited. Not talking about whether the DIY city can from a city in reality. The idea of group of people gather together creating their own vision of settlement is like having a city. Does the freedom of DIY city benefit the process of making city? Just like at the end of reading, Townsend talked about the bugs in the grass roots. How to evolve the smart city organically? The word organically is the key. It is the fundamental different between concept of DIY city and concept of really city. Because there are limits for physical development of city, so the city starts from organic shape.

Do idiots have to participate in digital urbanism? Do we all have to be smart? May be having some idiots is not bed at all. Smart city with digital sensors is new and trendy. It need to be promoted but it does not mean to replace the old fashion. Start with computer. 2o years ago, it was so new, knowing it is smart. But today it just part of our life, knowing it is like eating and sleeping. Smart city could use the same way. The app FIXMYSTREET is great tool to communicate within community. But do we know our neibroghood expect the question/problem that he/she/it post? Smart city is based on the digital. Do we want to push the digital sense far? Or having some physical aspect is be supplement for it.

DIY and Participatory Urbanism– zhicheng zhang

1. In Townsend’s book, he introduces a bottom to top way to form the smart city. by using the example of “Foursquare”, he shows how personal location data reshape the city. A top to the bottom structure has stricter control, the bottom to top structure gives more freedom to the citizen. these two approaches seem to be a conflict to each other, thus, in the development of the smart city, should we have to choose one of the approaches, or is there a way can mix these two together?

2. In Tonwnsend’s reading, it mentions that by using the search keyword data and the IP address, google is able to analysis the trend of the disease’s spread. Is the search keyword recognized as a part of our privacy? or since we type the keyword into google, and use it to search, we give up this part of privacy?

3. Since a bottom to top system setups, data is easy to access for everyone which allows the citizen to take apart in the city building, however, it also allows crime to use it. Should the government take the responsibility to manage the usage of the data， or let the citizen do it with spontaneity?

W7. DIY and Participatory Urbanism – pinelopi

on Townsend, “Tinkering Toward Utopia,” Smart Cities (115-141)

– As experiences become a reward or bonus for their users, many apps of the emerging Social Web are interpreting the city as a platform of entertainment, full of challenges to be unlocked (pp147). It appears that this approach inevitably leads to their initial spontaneity giving way to a kind of ‘programmed serendipity’ (pp152). For instance, Foursquare took a not-so-subtle commercial direction when it mined its databases to deliver personalized recommendations, while the DIYcity project reached a financial dead-end (pp158). How can grassroot smart initiatives survive without monetizing their users’ habits at the expense of their ideals?

– If buildings are simply the ‘support system’ of urbanity (pp160), urban sociability, its fundamental substance, is a rather volatile one. Could the crossing of the Social Web movement with grassroot smart-city initiatives materialize it by producing direct impact on the urban fabric? How could such ephemeral tangible effects be hacked to extend their life-span and address enduring urban problems?

– As hacking is typically done for the sake of control of infrastructures for personal gain (pp.166), how can it be put in the service of social change? To what extend is the ecosystem of software developers (and architects as well) distantiated from real social problems and how could this be reversed?

on Gabrys, “Engaging the Idiot in Participatory Digital Urbanism,” Program Earth (207-240)

– (Please allow me to refer to the etymology of the word ‘idiot’, as an extension to the background provided by Gabrys (p209-210) to demonstrate the divergence between the classical and the smart approach of the citizen a couple of thousand years later).
In ancient Athens, participating in the commons was not just another property of citizenship – it was a duty. The word “idiot” derives from the Greek “ιδιώτης” (:idiothes), a derogatory term that characterized the apolitical members of society, those that neglected their civic responsibilities of participating and voting. Such behavior resulted in the removal of their civil rights and them being send to exile.  In his Politics, Aristotle defined the idiot as the opposite of the citizen, stating that citizenship is first and foremost a matter of education and culture.
On the other hand, participatory urbanism sees the citizen from a completely different perspective. The idiot could be a precious agent within the smart city, bearer of potential for more flexible, open-ended, yet passive interactions (pp215) fueled by passive participatory sensing. In many ways one can argue that the smart city runs on a more inclusive model than the classical one – even Aristotle was concerned about the fact that hardworking members of society, such as the mechanics, were unable to excel in their civic responsibilities and were rendered noncitizens. Does the smart city need to be inhabited by entities that are simultaneously citizens and idiots? And how probable is it that this hybrid will lose its balance, rendering active forms of engagement unlikely to take place?

– In the context of ‘write-able cities’, the citizen and the city are to be brought into dialogue (pp.217), far from the initial conception of the smart citizen as a mere data-generating node. Gabrys is examining the forms of motivation and skillset a citizen needs to engage in this open process (pp.220). A question would be, how could an ongoing process like this be structured and sustained in time? Do we need to design a model for a kind of mutual governance?
Also, given the rapid pace that smart technologies change, citizens would probably have to ceaselessly evolve to maintain the integrity of their citizenship intact.  Would this lifelong smart education be citizen-driven or government-driven?

– The relationship of politics and disruption has always been a tense one. Is the inclusion of the idiot, an agent of disruption, a disguised attempt to appropriate deviations from the smart norm by extending the tolerance of participation processes? Criticizing digital platforms of participation, Iveson warns that they are not necessarily fostering political engagements, yet Gabrys seems to regard the idiot as a fruitful voice of doubt for (not against) the good intentions of smart initiatives (pp235). But what impact can a voice make?  Is this to empower new modes of participation, or rather to prevent Sterling’s “dump ghettos” and dump countercurrents of resistance from happening?

Urban Data Infrastructures

Utopian Vision or False Dawn: Chapter 2, Smart Cities and the Politics of Urban Data – Rob Kitchin, Tracey P. Lauriault and Gavin McArdle

 

  • Smart cities create a technological lock-in or corporate path dependency that ties cities to particular technological platforms and vendors over a long period of time, creating monopoly positions. Technology advances rapidly. How long will the technologies last before it has to be changed with a more advanced version? Would governments have to buy these services as if they were shopping at an electronic store? What if a government or state wants to change the company that provides them the technology? Would this be possible?

 

Urban Data Infrastructures

In Gabrys’s reading, she asked: What are the processes that these infrastructures instigate and sustain? How do they at once individuate and join up cities and citizens? What are the capacities of these infrastructures and what modes of inhabitation do they facilitate? She answered these question by the environmental approaches which bring up the idea of withness. However, the environmental quality is not how I image the withness. Could it be a hybrid solution which combine environmental approaches with moving approaches?

 

Considering the digital infrastructures as the physical infrastructure which is eventually going to be have some sort of maintenance. But different form the physical infrastructure such as road, we can partially fix it. The digital infrastructure such as sensors are all connected. How do we maintain the service of the digital infrastructure? If like Gabrys described, digital sensors are embedding into the environment, will be increase the difficulty of maintenance. Or the system could be node to node.

 

“Smart Urbanism” touched the concern about the corporatization of governance. Are there ways to result the conflict between the operation of smart city and the “profit” of smart. So the building process of smart city can equality distribute the benefit. One idea I have in mind is requiring the customized “dashboard”. The London dashboard and Dublin dashboard should not be the same. Each of them should be more specific focus on their own city problem in term of city management. Then this raise another question: who is willing to putting the extra effort?

Urban Data Infrastructures – Germania Garzon

Program Earth: Digital Infrastructures of Withness – Gabrys

– “How are we with the (smart) city, its infrastructure, its other inhabitants, and the many computational devices that would steer us, when emphasis is placed on coordinating ows of movement so that stoppage, disruption, breakage, and jamming are minimized? What is the withness of a ceaselessly owing city, of a city that never stops, that in its automated e ciency continues to process goods, information, and waste in the small hours of the night? Clearly, to discuss digital infrastructures of withness then also requires attending to infrastructure as pro- cess.”

– This concept of ‘with-ness’ between urban engagements and its citizens is interesting to look at currently, how are citizens currently “with” the city they inhabit?

– What are some steps that we as participating citizens of an urban environment could take in the direction of ‘with-ness’ rather than ‘self-ness’ and become a bigger role in process infrastructure?

 

Smart cities and the politics of Urban Date – Kitchen, Lauriault & McArdle

– In the reading, they mention that some municipalities believe in certain politics of indicator, benchmarking and dashboard initiatives like “rational, mechanical, linear and hierarchical” managerial systems that can easily controlled while others believe in more contextual, unpredictable, interdependental systems.

– Are we looking for a middle ground between these different forms of governance?

– What are some ways we see these different forms of governance right now, and how are they affecting citizens and cities?