Networked Urbanism

design thinking initiatives for a better urban life

Design critics: Belinda Tato and Jose Luis Vallejo, principals of Ecosistema Urbano
MPYS_ConceptualOrganization

A graphic representation of the structure and terminology of the MYPS application.

When using MYPS, the authographer (author + cartographer) links each PS they upload to a “Journey”, which will be compiled into a map with the geotagged messages  and sent to the listed recipients.  The preferences for each journey are set up by the authographer when the journey is initiated, including the contact information for the recipients and the intended length of the journey.  The lifelong journey cannot be closed until the entire account is deactivated; the planned journeys have established dates when they will close, and the unplanned journeys can be closed manually at any time. Your companions are the journeys fellow authographers have sent to you.

Deactivation and recipient contact information are controlled and updated, respectively, through periodic emails.  An e-prompt will ask you once every 3 months to update your contact information, your recipients’ contact information, and to confirm your continued use.  If the authographer does not respond to 3 successive prompts, the entire account will automatically deactivate.  This can be disabled, temporarily, if the authographer does not plan on having e-mail or internet access for an extended period of time.

Each PS can be a note, a photo, a video, a recording, a sketch or a placeholder, which will allow you to revisit the PS and add a message later off-site, or simply remain as a “place” on the map.

 

UI_Organization

An outline of the user interface organization (using FreeMind software).


 


Today’s highly connected world has enabled new forms of communication that have heretofore been impossible. Platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Quora allow us to connect with our friends, followers, or people of shared interest, essentially without regard for their physical location. These new forms of interaction are invaluable in their ability to target a very specific audience in ways that are difficult or impossible without current technologies. But while these technologies have largely erased spatial barriers, its potential for facilitating proximal interactions has been left largely unexplored.

What if there was a platform where we could easily share photos and have discussions with fellow event-goers with whom we share our current location? What if this platform could let us talk to our neighbors about community news, ask about a lost pet, or put an item up for sale? What if this platform could allow a new tenant to ask existing residents about move-in advice?

Despite the tremendous value in locally-targeted communication, there is as yet no dominant platform through which to do so. Services that connect you with your residential neighborhood do not allow you to engage with people outside of its boundaries. Services that let people to post in predefined public places do not reflect the users’ sense of place. Services that allow people to post geolocated messages via their physical location do not capitalize on the inherent advantages of the digital medium to transcend spatial restrictions.

For these reasons we decided to develop our own solution:

Hear Here is a location-based discussion board that allows people to connect with each other through the commonality of place. It allows users to engage in threaded discussions that are linked to locations around them. Nearby discussion threads are displayed based on the user’s physical location. Users can also view discussions in other places by moving their virtual selves to that location. These discussions are persistent—they can be viewed and continued by future users even after the original participants have left. Hear Here is designed to foster both local community and provide an avenue for transient populations to engage with locals and with each other.

Hear Here is entirely user generated. Its users create both the content and the geometry of the places to which these topics are tagged. These places can range in scale from a single building up to a city district. A place can be as well-defined as a building or as nebulous and transient such as an impromptu street festival. And because these places not defined by top-down categorizations, Hear Here can provide insights into how people truly conceive of place.

Hear Here can be understood as a conciliation of the digital layer with the physical world. Discussions, conversations, and thoughts are mapped to a virtual representation of real space. Hear Here is still cyberspace—you are free to move your virtual location wherever you want—but it straddles the digital/physical divide in a way that marries the qualities of both kinds of space. It liberates real world users from physical restrictions by allowing them to engage with others at any place and any time, yet it still retains the real world spatiality that is valuable for targeting users. This spatial duality is still a novel and under-explored conception, but we are excited to see how people utilize it in ways we cannot yet imagine.

www.hearhere.cc


SoundTrek activates space psychically and emotionally by framing and sharing user experience of space in real time and along several experiential axes. SoundTrek is a socio-spatial music sharing mobile application that curates user generated playlists to play back to other users only under specific conditions. Songs are geo-coded and pinned to coordinates along with time, season, weather conditions and user information enabling users to discover, often by surprise, music tied to the spaces they use.

Space + experience = place

In this equation, the built environment plus the experience of that environment equals “place”. In 2006, the Project for Public Space asked people how they define “placemaking, “ and by far the most frequent and compelling answers included; connection, memorability, shared stories and experience, humanity and the purposeful creation of character and meaning in public spaces. While “place” and “placemaking” often refer to the physical activation of the built environment through design and alteration promoting, usability, the question remains that perhaps there are more subtle techniques that lend themselves to achieving the goals laid out above.

What it takes to “know” a space? What experience of the space leads us to feel connected, to remember, to share, and to feel a space has character and meaning? How did we learn about the spaces we know? What was the lesson and who gave it?

Process

Finding the entry point for this project was no easy task. With the equation above as a template, various ideas were developed from interviews with community activists in Jamaica Plain and East Boston, and videographers in New York City. These included:  Pop-up playgroups based on real-time population data delivered from neighborhood playgrounds, the field and playtime allocation for pick-up soccer games in the city, a project on segregation and public space, and a video mapping project based on MyBlockNYC.org.

The project finally landed on Boston’s tour guides, specifically Boston Duck Tours and Cambridge Historical Tours in Harvard Square. Interviews with two of the tour guides who work for these businesses were instrumental in furthering and honing the idea that resulted in SoundTrek. Often tour guides are professional actors who may or may not live in the area. Their job is to entertain. While they pride themselves on their research and local knowledge, they are often directed to recommend certain places and businesses in the city. They share historical and trivial anecdotes about the actual built environment and but their lessons lack the experiential element of the space, thus depriving it of “place.” Adding the element of experience to the lesson of space led to interviews and videos of local people who shared their “favorite places in Boston.” Locals can teach us about both space and their personal experience in the space, but does their experience resonate with us?

Needle Drop

The ‘needle drop’ is a term used in movies when popular music is laid on a scene in place of traditional score. Nobody knows this better than Quentin Tarantino. Tarantino explains his attention to detail when it comes to music in film in an interview with Arts District. “To me, my soundtracks work as two different things. They work as a little shadow version of the movie itself. If you like the movie and you want to carry it around with you and not have to watch the story all the time but still get the feel and sense of it, they allow you to do that.” Music can be used as shorthand to quickly illustrate a state of mind, an emotion or an experience, it is intimate and connecting. When watching a movie, one knows exactly what to feel at any moment via the scene and soundtrack. SoundTrek would allow users, much like a film director, to frame their real-time, physical scene by “dropping” the perfect audio track to capture the moment and then share that moment with an audience of other users. With one song users could share the idea that “this is me in this space at this moment” thus transforming a space into a place and achieving some of the goals of the Project for Public Spaces; connection, memorability, shared stories and experience, humanity and the purposeful creation of character and meaning in public spaces.

Mapping/Data

The final review of SoundTrek, the idea and rough design, raised interesting questions about data collection and analysis. Presumably one could take the emotional temperature of a city or even a part of the city using the songs and playlists as data points. Over time, cities could be compared to each other and a better data metric for “happiness” could be established. Another interesting piece could be data collected over time in a single city and how the music sharing related to changing demographics and ethnography.

Final thoughts

SoundTrek is an idea and application that works best in an urban setting because living in the city increases the odds of serendipitous encounters. SoundTrek is the record of a personal moment, though ephemeral, that can lead the user to new discoveries, experiences or feelings. Its expression as a mobile app does not hinder the rhythm and movement of the user through the built environment. SoundTrek is calculated urban serendipity, a romantic, sentimental concept perhaps, but one that provides emotional, intimate, spatial connection in otherwise routine and anonymous urbanity.


SoundTrek is a socio-spatial music sharing mobile app that takes you on an augmented sensory journey through urban space. SoundTrek runs in the background on your phone, IPod or other GPS enabled device. When in “drop mode”, much like a film director, users can frame their real-time, physical scene by “dropping” the perfect audio track to capture the moment. When users in “listen mode” get close to a geocoded marker, SoundTrek turns down their music and turns up an audio file that has been “left” there for them to find, delivering user-generated content that is temporal, seasonal, environmental and site specific. SoundTrek is a new way for people to share their city and their urban experiences in a way that is subtle, intimate, and personal. It is effective, effortless place-making that provides the opportunity for those who use the space to share their experience of the space with other users.


Hear Here! is a platform that allows you to engage in virtual discussions with people within your vicinity. You can target an audience based on their location (be it your neighbors, concert goers, park patrons, building occupants, etc.) and engage in a rich exchange of information (ie. discussions, photo sharing, classifieds, comments, announcements, etc.). Hear Here aims to strengthen community by facilitating communication amongst other locals.


THINK BIG

How can I promote knowledge of space that is specific to actually being in the space? For the most part, we’re introduced to different spaces by someone who already has that knowledge. Originally I was trying to find a way to enable access and knowledge of space via social networking, apps, etc. through locally generated user content. However as the project has progressed, I’ve zeroed in the idea of “Boston” and its “spaces” as taught/shown by professional tour guides. Where do they get their information? Are their tours edited in any way by the corporate tour operators? Are they even from Boston? What do they think is missing from the tour? What if they had to give a tour to an audience of locals? Is authenticity of the experience/showing/teaching of Boston irrelevant?

Where is this going? I’m preoccupied with 2 questions: 1. Are visitors to Boston who do NOT desire the “knowledge of urban spaces” achieved by actually being there learning anything that is authentic or ideosyncratic about Boston specifically? Can you learn a city from the back of a duck boat? 2. The mirror to this would be; are visitors to Boston who use services like airbnb or yelp perhaps to have a more “authentic” experience of a city missing out as well? Regular local friends or tour guides aren’t going to take visitors to the “usual” spaces, but aren’t these spaces part of an “authentic” Boston experience too? Can you learn a city by ignoring its major, popular attractions?

START SMALL

There are at least 6 major tour operators in the city of Boston with maps and advertisements in major Back Bay hotels; the Marriot, the Westin and the Sheraton. On Sunday I visited the hotels and picked up every map and tour brochure available. (I was actually in the lobby of the Marriot when the Dalai llama arrived – thrilling!) The tours fall into mainly 3 categories; walking, on-off trolley loops where you’re encouraged to hop on and off the trolley and explore on your own, and motorized land-sea vehicle tours. There are other, more specialized tours where bikes or even Segways are used to get around.

I chatted with Deb, the desk representative for Old Towne Trolley tours and told her I was a local. Old Towne Trolley tours is actually a chain that operates in several cities. I asked Deb if she knew how Old Towne had plotted the route for their tour but she didn’t know. Interestingly an email I received back from Boston Duck Tours President and CEO Cindy Brown made the same claim. But I’ve been in contact with the founder of Cambridge Historical tours Daniel Berger-Jones and am trying to arrange and interview to specifically address this question. I’m also hoping he can connect me with more actual tour guides to interview.

I also visited the Boston Convention & Visitors Bureau unannounced & with no appointment but couldn’t get past the front desk. I did collect the names of a few people there who might be helpful with background information about how Boston is “marketed” to visitors.

As it was raining and I’m broke, I did not take a Duck Tour (30$ bucks!) nor did I visit Cheers. Yet.

I’ve established a few good connections and am following up with interviews this week.

GSD-Academic – Judith Grant Long Associate Professor of Urban Planning who studies the planning and effects of tourism on cities. Robert Pietrusko who will hopefully help me represent all this digitally/visually.

Corporate Tour Operators – Cindy Brown, President & CEO of Boston Duck Tours, Debi Jo Michael, Rick Steves’ Europe – Tour Operations & Planning,
Daniel Berger-Jones, Founder Cambridge Historical Tours

Background/Big Picture – Mike Healy, GSD Student and former tourism professional/tour guide, Pam Frechette, Visitor Marketing Manager Boston Convention & Visitors Bureau

I’ve also been down to Duck Tours twice and had some informal chats with tour guides and tour workers.

Next steps will be gathering expert info from my connections, mapping the tour routes and researching alternative stops, sights, spaces and developing my tour guide interview questions.


I thought I was pretty much underway with my project, however after my desk crit last week it was suggested (gently) that I’m still circling, raptor-like. My original thought was to start collecting video of some lesser known space in Boston and work with the New Urban Mechanics and MyBlockNYC on a mapping project that might show more of the city through more eyes. I’ve also reached out to Ed Walker to talk about publicizing and reinvigorating spaces. I thought I might work with the group who approached Chris and Kate about a project on segregation. But I think I went too specific too fast.

THINK BIG: How do I get people in Boston out of their “space & place” comfort zones? How do I get them to different parts of the city without resorting to games & gimmicks?

START SMALL: I’m approaching this question from a new angle. I’ve reached out to a few non-Bostonians and asked them to create a tour of Boston based on anecdotal and web-based knowledge. I think I’m too ingrained in my own Boston experience to actually think like a tourist, or like someone who hasn’t been to Boston before and it’s giving me tunnel vision.

ACT NOW: This weekend, God help me, I’m going to go on at least one of the devised tours. For all my blustering about knowledge of space, there are more than a few spots I haven’t been in Boston for the sole reason that they’re tourist traps. I’ve never been to Cheers. Who knows? Cheers could be the most amazing place on the planet and I’ve been missing out all these years.

I would dearly love and cherish any thoughts on, and suggestions for, research and people who can help. Again, I’m stuck on this “knowledge of space” thing and I’m not sure where it’s going.


Instead of the sticking ideas from the start, in this one week I am bombarded with opportunities (with brief description) to consider:

A.) Ephemeral City (location based app that focuses on nearby and occurring events. Can partner with iLab venture Hottspot http://hottspot.co/ [thanks Stacey] or work with @hyunez’s project to create something substantial together)

B.) OurGoods (work with existing Bartering community to add a layer of physical socializing)

https://ourgoods.org/users/4827/profile

C.) Turf in the Plaza (Ad hoc artificial turf in wide-open plazas to redefine spatial quality. Best to work with New Urban Mechanics.)

D.) PING in the real world. (Projection installation that makes people play Ping in real life.)

http://www.creativeapplications.net/games/ping-augmented-pixel-tutorials-games/

E.) Student p2p support. (Working with HBS startup USAdelante to create Mobile App that bridges students to support each other, as a solution to the overly high ration between students and counselor)

Act Now :

What I must do now is make a choice. I believe I know what the next steps would be for each of the paths.


Think Big:

I want to help Boston support and promote hyper-local knowledge of space to improve racially/ethnically segregated and economically stratified socio-spatial interaction/habitation. In other words, how can cities use digital crowdsourcing and geosocial networking to make more city spaces visible to more people?

Start Small:

MyBlockNYC.com is an interactive mapping website that captures and presents personal video accounts of the life and culture of New York City with the goal of creating an intimate, evolving, and complete portrait of the city. New Yorkers upload videos they take of their neighborhood which are then geo-tagged and organized geographically, thus building an interactive video map of New York. I’ve contacted the developers of myblockNYC.com about their site and what it would take to expand the tool to Boston. I’ve also contacted Boston Mayor Menino’s New Urban Mechanics lab and asked for the contact information of the group working on segregation that was mentioned in our studio’s meeting last Thursday.

Act Now:

While I’m waiting to hear back from the New Urban Mechanics lab, this weekend I plan to start taking my own video of some of the neighborhoods identified as relatively homogenous via 2010 census data.


 

“Where do I go to talk to my neighbors about the new building policy?”

“How do I find out about lectures and events around my area?”

“Can I borrow a lawnmower from a neighbor?”

“I want to tell people about how much I love this park!”

 

Think Big

While the internet excels at facilitating discussions with strangers located halfway across the world, there is a conspicuous absence of online services that cater to answering the above questions. These activities are still largely conducted via analog means, ie. bulletin boards and face-to-face encounters. But one can imagine a whole host of applications which can benefit from location-specificity. These include:

 

Can we create an easy-to-use medium for the exchange and dissemination of location-specific information?

 

Start Small

The service will be rolled out in a phased manner. Events and announcements will be introduced first in order to generate site traffic. Discussion boards will follow once a larger readership is established.

 

Act Now

I am currently mocking up a front-end interface for the service. It will initially focus on location-specific announcements and events.


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