Mapping the smart
city: dashboards,
data, design
Michiel de Lange @mdelange | @themobilecity [email protected] ! TRADERS TRAININGWEEK #3 - Performative Mapping
!
July 3 2015
Sander Veenhof - Meet Your Stranger
Photo%credit:%Christophe%Losberger%(sitatof)%on%Flickr
This talk:
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1. Mapping cities beyond the cartographic: real-time
city dashboards
2. Critical issues with mapping the smart city
Point of departure: performative mapping
1. Maps do not merely reflect reality but produce this reality.
2. Mapping can be thought of as an event/practice instead of an object.
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Urgency:
- rise of pervasive digital media using maps as interfaces to the city
- new constellations of real-time data/analytics + mapping, like the urban dashboard.
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Question:
How do urban dashboards as a contemporary form of mapping shape our understanding of the city, our ways of knowing about the city, and how we shape the city as city makers?
1. Mapping cities beyond the cartographic: real-time
city dashboards
pervasive games & play
navigation sensing & visualisation annotation
social networking
Amsterdam’s De Digitale Stad (DDS), founded in 1994.
Rustema,)Reinder.)2001.)The$Rise$and$Fall$of$DDS:$ evalua4ng$the$ambi4ons$of$Amsterdam’s$Digital$ City.)Masters)thesis,)Communica7on)Science,) University)of)Amsterdam,)Amsterdam.)
Digital mapping: from (cognitive) reading to writing the city
Onder-Anderen: project by Richard Vijgen Biomapping: project by Christian Nold
for rationalized efficient consumption,
Dashboards and mapping the urban with data
Sources of data: !
- digitization of analog documents - automated surveillance
- personal mobile devices - embedded sensors
- interaction/transactional data - IoT data in objects
- social media, crowdsourcing, citizen science !
Urban dashboards - a short history
Ma>ern,)Shannon.)2015.)Mission)Control:)A)History)of)the)Urban)Dashboard.)Places$Journal,)) h>ps://placesjournal.org/ar7cle/missionIcontrolIaIhistoryIofItheIurbanIdashboard/.
Urban dashboards - project Cybersyn in Chile, 1972
Medina,)Eden.)2006.)"Designing)Freedom,)Regula7ng)a)Na7on:)Socialist)Cyberne7cs)in)Allende’s)Chile.")Journal$of$La4n$American$Studies)no.)38:571I606.)) h>p://www.cybersyn.cl/ingles/home.html
Urban dashboards - components (1/4)
Platform
• physical-digital hybrids: city control rooms • purely web-based platforms
• specific mobile platforms (e.g. for police in the field) • dedicated IoT devices
Urban dashboards - components (2/4)
Data and uses
• single - composite indicators
• descriptive or contextual indicators; diagnostic, performance and target indicators; predictive and conditional indicators
• standardized and comparable data, situation-specific data
• Nominal data, Ordinal data, Interval data, Ratio data (cf. Kitchin 2014)
• user-generated or collected by private parties
• open source or closed/proprietary data • etc.etc.
Urban dashboards - components (3/4)
Visualizations
• charts, graphs, diagrams, maps
• indexical interfaces - symbolic interfaces
• fixed and interactive visualizations - dynamically refreshing or cumulative
Urban dashboards - components (4/4)
Purpose:
• accountability of municipality/institution/individual • collecting intelligence
• benchmarking and comparison • surveilling and controlling
Urban dashboards - issues
Ontology - understanding the smart city
• Dashboards combine measuring data + mapping urban processes in real-time. • City as cybernetic system: assumption that cities are knowable and manageable
systems acting in rational, mechanical, linear and hierarchical ways (Kitchin, Lauriault, and McArdle 2015: 14).
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Epistemology - knowledge about the smart city
• Reflecting the world or constructing the world?
• “Turning epistemology into ontology”: instant, transparent and realistic information about urban processes; “know the city as it actually is” (Mattern; Kitchin).
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Politics - making the smart city
• Anticipatory mapping takes people out of equation, runs counter to acting (deliberative or affective) in the city.
• “Algorithmic governance” based on data + real-time mapping.
• Dashboards support “new managerialism” - technocratic rule, no true politics. !
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Downsides of data driven computational urban politics
Tufekci, 2014: !
1. Further excludes the excluded: ‘splintering’ the urban public domain even more. 2. Information asymmetry and secrecy is built into computational politics: hiding its own workings.
3. Against the ideal of status-free deliberation, where it did not matter who said what. Now identity of the public is at forefront in the present ‘reputation economy’.
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[4. Addressing the public as consumers: trending topics and messages tailored to be “liked” and shared.]
Some issues with big urban data
1. Information asymmetry: who have access to these data? Big data is not yet open data..
2. What role is there for citizens to own the data?
3. Opaque algorithms and models: what biases may be in there?
4. Quantifying everything is modernist wet dream, aimed at total control.
How can you quantify/visualize issues like wellbeing, or sense of privacy?
5. Seems opposite of Foucault’s biopolitics, aimed at group control; now policy again is tailored to the individual.
6. What are the limitations of algorithms? example “Google Flu Trends”. 7. Surveillance and privacy issues…
3. Towards smart citizenship with performative
maps
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1. Urbanites can become stakeholders and self-organize in networked publics.
www.verbeterdebuurt.nl
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2. People can engage with the city via media art, ludic interventions, etc.
Digital maps for people-centric smart cities
www.geluidsnet.nl !
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3. People can make issues visible and debatable
Digital maps for people-centric smart cities
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4. People can share resources: value creation by pooling resources.
x-m-l.org
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4. Sharing resources: digital data as new resources.
www.faceyourworld.nl !
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5. People cab become co-creators of their cities, together.
Mapping beyond the cartographic?
Mapping the smart
city: dashboards,
data, design
Michiel de Lange @mdelange | @themobilecity [email protected] ! TRADERS TRAININGWEEK #3 - Performative Mapping
!
July 3 2015
Sander Veenhof - Meet Your Stranger
Photo%credit:%Christophe%Losberger%(sitatof)%on%Flickr
