From Sentient to Responsive Cities, Long Version

Posted: November 11th, 2008 | 1 Comment »

Last week at Visualizar’08, I presented the long version of my talk From Sentient to Responsive Cities (slides with notes, video). This talk compiles many of the thoughts and works I produced over these past couple of years. It is divided into three parts:

Microscopes and telescopes
I discuss the dynamic data we generate when actively or passively interacting with new urban actors such as wireless networks or RFID systems. The mapping of these data reveal many invisible dynamics of the city and this often in real-time (with Bicing, Velib or Flickr as data sources). Research in that domain have produced beautiful microscopes and telescopes to visualize urban dynamics. Besides their utility in stretching the imagination of stakeholders in the city, they do not allow to understand “what we see”.

New urban actors
Mapping new urban actors

Evidence and loops
New techniques are being developed to transform the massive amount of dynamic urban data into evidences and information that can be acted upon; moving from purely Sentient to Responsive cities. From the dynamic census of a city from its cellular network activity to the definition of indicators to measure the evolution of the attractiveness of places, there are potential to create a new type of urbanism based evidences generated with the analysis of digital footprints actors of a place leave behind them. These evidences can transform the evaluation of urban design and digital urban services with post-occupency evaluations often overlooked in the practice of architecture and urban design. Similarly the communication of the information generated back to actors of the urban space could create a feedback loop in which the analysis of the data impact the activity of people that create new data and so on.

flows june october
The evolution of the flows of photographers in Lower Manhattan in Summers of 2006, 2007 and 2008.

Taxi drivers
But how to integrate this type of mechanism by taking into consideration the complex socio-technical assemblage of cities? A set of answers can come from the observation of current deployment of ubiquitous technologies in the city. Therefore, I studied of the integration of satellite navigation system into the practice of taxi drivers describes the co-evolution people have with technologies: how they adapt to it and how they adapt it to their practice. The observations reveal the necessity to have a large knowledge of the city judge the quality of the information provided by sat-nav system. Novice taxi drivers were often not trusting system and access the paper street guide and maps to support their navigation and wayfinding; the satnav system becoming a tool among a large eco-system of artifacts.

Introducing a direction Expalining Searching map Reading map
A taxi driver mixing the use of a satnav and the official street guide of Barcelona.

Relation to my thesis: An attempt to find a coherence in my multiple works. I might have found a good line of thoughts in describing the potentials to transform urban data into evidences and information that can be acted upon. (Paco Gonzalez produced a summary in Spanish)


One Comment on “From Sentient to Responsive Cities, Long Version”

  1. 1 Joe McCarthy said at 9:51 pm on November 12th, 2008:

    Cool images and intriguing ideas!

    A few thoughts popped into my head while reading this:

    The visualization of _aggregate_ urban sensing data may help offset some of the concerns about the negative impacts of such sensing so creatively – and disturbingly – envisioned in Chris Oakley’s brilliant short video “The Catalogue” (http://www.chrisoakley.com/the_catalogue.html).

    The Seattle Post-Intelligencer had a report a few months ago about a bus driving under a bridge that was too short due to his [over]reliance on GPS navigation (http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/359497_bus18.html?source=rss).

    Finally, you might want to consider embedding your slides directly into the post via SlideShare (http://www.slideshare.net – “YouTube for Powerpoint”). I started downloading your PDF when I started reading this post, and it’s still not done downloading (!). An embedded slideshare presentation would allow me to page through your slides right here on the page :-) .