from my hotel in Madrid

Without going into too much detail, I had a very interesting and rather enlightening time in Madrid this week, discussing what it might mean to create or engage a smart city, what we can do with the data generated and collected in that city, and how what we learn from it can affect how we live.

At the end of a two-day workshop, BBVA's Innovation Center hosted a public event featuring talks on "Beyond the Smart City"* by Adam Greenfield, Nicolas Nova, and Kevin Slavin. What they shared was a sense that autonomous technological infrastructure alone cannot and does not make a city smart and that such a definition of the "smart city" not only excludes people, but that it may in fact be dangerous for them. Where they differed, of course, is the slight variation on how such danger may be mitigated while taking advantage of what these organized technologies have to offer.

What got me thinking, however, did not come directly from the three, but from the final audience question of the evening. A gentleman stood and asked, "Who will win, Man or Machine?," and I realized what was missing from the evening's discussion. (To be fair, the point was implied a couple times and perhaps nodded toward another couple times...and, really, I realized what it was that I would write about here.)

The thing is that there are no purely autonomous machines, infrastructures, mechanisms, nor algorithms. The automated algorithms driving our financial systems discussed by Slavin, just as the highly efficient automated systems meant to run the city of the future, are indeed inhumane but are in every way human-driven. These things are designed and exist by design. Their purposes, products, and processes are not only man-made and human-determined but exist in service to mankind(ish). It is not a question of whether Man or Machine will ultimately prevail, but a question of whether those humans with access to the technology, the funders of those machines, the creators of those algorithms, will win over those who have no such access, no such resources, and no such funds.

The responses (excluding Adam's entirely warranted non-response) spoke of the need for cities to cooperate with the information they produce, but did not directly discuss the need for citizens to cooperate with each other (again, there was a nod but nothing so explicit as what I'm about to launch into). Adam ended his talk with one of my all-time favorite and oft-cited thoughts from Lefebvre's Production of Space: that "social space is a social product." Whatever it is that we make of our cities is something we will have to make together. Sadly, I fear, the concentration of wealth -- and thus the concentration of access to information, the concentration of the control of its use, the concentration of the resources to understand it, the concentration of the ability to deploy products and systems predicated on its interpretation, and the concentration of the technology to even engage or participate in those systems -- is making that collaborative effort more and more difficult.

In a nutshell, Great Cities are great because of the quality of life they offer, with manifestations of that quality ranging from the economic opportunities present for those who seek them to the availability of a delighful Saturday afternoon. By my personal definition, Great Cities are Just Cities -- not necessarily utopias of pure equality of all kinds, but places of equity at a minimum. Further, it matters not how smart a city claims itself to be if the benefits of that intelligence are not accessible to all of its citizens. A Great City can house and feed its population and addresses additional needs through multiple means, not just those available to the users of smart phones and Twitter.

Of course, I make my living off of the information produced by cities. I feed myself based on the dual facts that data proliferates in urban environments and that I have (borrowed lots and lots of money for) the privilege to work with that data. I also teach at a graduate school of social work, because I thoroughly believe that every dataset I crunch, every conclusion drawn from that information, and every map I draw is an opportunity for intervention, an act of advocacy, and an instigation toward change. I agree that in many ways our cities are already smart, but I know that they are not just. They are not smart enough to make their intelligence transparent, nor are they smart enough to fully share the opportunities presented by that intelligence.

In the terms of economics, information is a semi-public good: It is not consumable, but undeniably excludable. It if is the use of our information that will make our cities smart, then it is the control of that information that may or may not make our cities just.

[*Just for fun: If you follow that link, you'll see a slide of maps I had fun making a couple months ago.]

leaving Madrid, from the sky

A few years ago, in the development of a project called This is Later with Aaron Davis, I became rather obsessively interested in the smaller towns of rural Spain. As a late-industrializing nation, certain policies of the first half of the twentieth century pulled young people out of these regoins toward the city as necessary labor in new factories. Disinvestment in agriculture created a condition without incentive for them to ever return. Today, these towns are quickly becoming ghost towns -- depopulated and decaying ruins of the twentieth century. They represent the flipside of an urbanizing world. They represent the forgotten despite having thrived for centuries before the last hundred years. Further, they represent a fate ready to befall so many regions worldwide, as populations migrate to cities and the replacement rate in rural areas is simply not being met.

Cleveland (left) & Soria (right) : image credits linked in text

My last few days in Spain spurred a conversation that at once reminded me of these ghost towns and reminded me of the soon-to-be-ghost-town suburbs resulting from the American foreclosure crisis. (The above photos represent "Foreclosuretown" (i.e. Cleveland, OH) and Soria, Spain.) Despite the history and ocean that separates them, they share both an apparent future and interconnected economic causes.

Given my research on The Buell Hypothesis and the upcoming Foreclosed show based on that research, I had been necessarily focused on the phenomenon of suburbs failing for having been built on speculation and supported by an unsustainable building industry boom and the financial structures that enabled it.  What I hadn't yet considered is the global extent of the same phenomenon. And now I have learned that while long-standing towns of Spain are quickly disappearing (in population only, of course), so too are brand new satellite suburbs ringing around Spain's major cities. The global financial crisis seems to have similar manifestations in the built environment despite the differences in structure and place.

I feel new comparative research emerging.

work in progress (photo by Adam Greenfield; click image for source)

On Format
The most obvious (so we’ll get it out of the way quickly) difference between what I’ve done and what I’m doing is its ultimate format. These are not static cartographic images. These are not even the sort of dynamic, but limited, animated maps I’ve done on occasion before. While they are culled, curated, and designed, these are geographic information systems in their own right. Users are not just able to interact with the map; they must be able to query, analyze, and make use of the data (plural). The conceptual and methodological implications of this directive for my work flow, approach, and techniques really can’t be overstated. 

Because I’m designing more than my own investigation, because I’m designing for others’ investigations, there is no room for the messiness of artistic license or the idiosyncrasies of personal design processes. (By “artistic license” I am talking about the things we all do with our datasets, the analysis shortcuts that we’ve developed and that lead to solid results but may not constitute the sort of rigor that enables easy replicability.) For my component of Urbanscale’s projects, “interactivity” means that I’m designing more than a map interface, more than the ability to pan and zoom, more than the representation of information. It means that I am spending most of my energy designing Frankenstein datasets, stitched together from disparate sources, into something instrumental, something spatial that can functionally interact -- with users, with the city, and while enabling further interaction between the two. (Forgive me if I sound like an architect.)

meetingish (photo by Adam Greenfield; click image for source)

On Collaboration
Clearly, I can’t do this alone. While I collaborate on most, if not all, of my projects, there has always been a pretty clear-cut understanding of what portions of a project were my responsibility. Further, my results were always required to be “finished” before they went to someone else. These days, there is a daily (sometimes three or four times per day) need for handing off mid-process material. The back-and-forth between myself and JD (Urbanscale’s CTO and Developer Extraordinaire) has become a two-way street of datasets, databases, and geometries. Over the past several weeks, we’ve grown to identify where the fuzzy line between our skillsets might lie. Still that line remains fuzzy and for good reason: we enjoy an interesting overlap of capability wherein we can accomplish some of the same tasks through decidedly different avenues. The trick in our constant negotiation (toward a better product) is the process by which we are learning whose tools create cleaner, more elegant, methods. At the risk of sounding like even more of a data dork than usual, I have to admit that it’s insanely fun.

What I didn’t see coming with this collaboration is the need to flex more GIS-related muscle than I have in years. Because more is possible, more data changes hands than I could’ve predicted. More geometric analysis is needed on my part than in any set of previous work in order to enable his programming, as we realize that spatial questions he could crunch in code are more easily solved with GIS. In return, his ability to program more often creates that Aha! moment when we realize we can now give users access to even more useful data about their city. And so on.

queried -- work in progress. (photo by Adam Greenfield; click image for source)

On Storytelling
And that’s the thing, isn’t it? As we work toward giving users access to their city through its information, the format and collaboration become absolutely necessary because, for once, it isn’t my story (as geographer, analyst, or cartographer) to tell. It’s the city’s story. It’s the user’s Choose Your Own Adventure story to decide.

Most of my maps have been narrative and/or argumentative. At best, I hope they tell stories -- stories of research methods and conclusions, stories of city systems, stories of situations past and present. Some are expository. Some advocate. Some try to work toward intervention. Still, they are stories of my determination, decision, and design. Their data are analyzed by me toward a story I hope to tell. Their graphics are based on the communication of that story.

The most challenging and rewarding part of this learning curve has been adjusting my thinking away from a story I might want to tell. My want to editorialize through cartography must be shushed in favor of examining what cartography might do to democratize urban information, in favor of interpreting a dataset for any and all of its uses rather than my immediate use, in favor of showing the situation on the ground so that it might be inhabited, and in favor of creating a tool that enhances the experience of urban space rather than replacing it.

In this way, what I’m doing and learning at Urbanscale is not a step away from argument or advocacy through mapping. Far from it, in fact. My work, now more than ever, is advocating for a mutually beneficial and more transparent relationship between cities and their citizens. And I’m reconfirming, in light of current events and in light of my own learning, that considering the means toward mediating and enabling that relationship -- whether those means are tools or processes or spaces -- might just be what it is to consider living together, living in cities. In addition to the development of a citizenry and the development of a city, we must consider the development of their interaction. We’re responsible for all three elements, before we can rely on each other and say, “Here. Here is your city. Do with it what you will.”

2010 Housing Variables : Dot Density by block

2010 Population and Housing Variables by block

photo: DoctorTongs via Flickr (click image for source)

Upfront Disclaimer: This is not a short post.

Perhaps it goes without saying that I (like more or less everyone else) have had the Occupy Everywhere movement on my mind. I’m grateful for the courage many members of the ninety-nine percent have shown in their willingness to share what we so often don’t talk about in public. I am encouraged by the members of the one percent who understand that by and large their circumstances are the result of some work but also a great deal of luck. I am inspired that a movement can still emerge in this country without partisan politics and without hierarchical leadership. I am proud to witness concerned and concerted action when so many feel they lack agency and recourse as individuals. I am appalled when nonviolent assembly against real and significant economic injustice can be met with the organized deterrence of a (pseudo?-)police state. I am (somewhat selfishly) reinvigorated by the implications of a movement reliant and predicated on the availability and appropriation of space. I am hopeful the occupiers and those of us who stand with them will be heard.

While there is much that I could sit here and rant about w/r/t the Occupy movement, it seems like a perfect opportunity for two specific and related topics: (1) the continuation of my ongoing discussion of the degradation on a crucial freedom in this country and (2) the repetition of what many who have worked with me have heard about the utility of measures of distribution.

On the first: In the United States, we have nominal and cliche rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It seems ridiculous to explain how the last in that trifecta is today just a bait-and-switch April Fool’s prank played on most Americans. The so-called pursuit of happiness (and the American Dream it embodies) is a farce these days as structural barriers to entry can and do prevent its attainment from birth for many. As a means toward understanding that prank, we can focus on the concept of liberty. "Freedom" in its many incarnations is the ultimate American trope and rallying cry. Concepts of freedom and liberty allow for American individualism, American capitalism, and the American Bill of Rights. But today -- in a time when corporations are afforded the rights and freedoms of citizens, in a time when financialization structures are often impenetrable and opaque so as to prevent their oversight and use by average citizens, in a time when the freedom to lobby is more recognized than the rights of constituents for legitimately representative representation, in a time when the opportunities presented by the best education are only available to those who already have access to those opportunities as indicated by their ability to afford tuition -- today, one of the most impactful freedoms in the United States is financial freedom.

Figure 2: Gini Index of Various Countries during different years. (data source: US CIA World Fact Book)

This comparison includes all the countries for which the CIA offers Gini data between 0.40 and 0.50. That's it. The only other G8 country within this range is Russia. Where are the other G8s? Answering questions like that means things will start to get embarrassing: Americans must begin to realize that our national wealth and financial system along with the quality of life they imply are not globally up to par.

The G8 Nations and their Gini Scores, according to the CIA: 

• Canada: 0.321 (2005)
• France: 0.327 (2008)
• Germany: 0.270 (2006)
• Italy: 0.320 (2006)
• Japan: 0.376 (2008)
• Russia: 0.422 (2009)
• United Kingdom: 0.340 (2005)
• United States of America: 0.450 (2007)

According to the US Census Bureau, the US's Gini index score in 2010 was 0.469, which puts us squarely even with Equador. In fact, only three other G20 nations (Russia, Argentina, and China) have a Gini score within the range shown on Figure 2.

What am I getting at? While I admit the dangerously broad-brush language I'm about to use here, those among us who let blind national pride obscur our perception of the effects of our policies on our way of life may soon need to accept the notion that this Home of the Free is not the freest place on the planet. The American Dream is largely founded on the promise of financial freedom. Today, opportunity comes at a cost that most of us can't afford, and that problem can be inferred from the Gini Index. The condition wherein the already wealthy continue to accumulate wealth while the have-nots slip into having even less is not only characterized by this statistic, but exacerbated by the reality it describes. The thing is not that the have-nots lack access to opportunity; it is that access is offered with an interest rate, and Americans will purchase their opportunity on credit in the hopes of chasing that Dream unaware that they'll be shackled with debt they will not be able to repay.

We watch our population grow, our gross domestic product, our stock markets. For decades we've watched these numbers grow and felt confident in our prosperity in global comparison. Sadly, we've neglected several other indicators -- those that have been steadily aligning the US with much of the developing world. And in a year when citizens around the world have protested for their freedoms, it is no wonder that protest has come here.

"What the hell is this crazy woman talking about?" (photo by Ron Jones Photography)

Last month, Aaron Davis and I were honored to give the evening keynote at AIA Georgia's annual design conference.  As people were settling into their seats, before our introduction, Aaron and I had a chance to chat with Steve the representative from Georgia Power and AIA GA president Ed Bernard. The look of abject horror on Steve's face seems an unfortunate side effect of listening to me talk about baseball. (In my -- or his -- defense I believe I made that same face while he described the typical Atlanta Braves fan.) What made the evening thoroughly enjoyable was the ease with which this group could casually discuss those things that really aren't casual at all. Devoid of a certain level of stuffiness I've grown used to, the night was fun -- from economic and professional crises to social responsibility in architecture to what really loving baseball will do to and for your life.

I'd like to quickly thank the leadership of AIA Georgia for the invitation to speak, specifically Mark Levine and Ed, as well as Marci Reed for making everything (including the two-hour ride from ATL to Athens) happen more smoothly than imaginable.

Our talk "Grow[ing] Up: Slow[ing] Down" focused on models of architectural practice persisting through an economy counterproductive to the development of buildings and those models emerging as a result of a dearth of building opportunities. We discussed our strange experience as young designers matriculating into a profession in crisis, some of the conclusions drawn from PRE-Office's ever-ongoing Conversations with Architects (CWA) research, and some of the professional and very personal decisions we've been forced to make early on in our careers.

Several times that evening -- in conversations over drinks before the talk and over many more drinks after the talk -- I found myself engaged in discussion over these personal decisions. Since that evening, I've come to two preliminary conclusions. The first is that, if Aaron and I are any indication of an architectural generation, the economy has created specialists of designers by forcing us to dig deep and articulate that one thing in architecture that we just must do. The lack of job opportunities for archi-generalists looking to fulfill their IDP requirements meant that not only did we have to get creative to pay our bills, but we had to do so while creating new career paths. If those paths were going to be personally rewarding, we'd have to identify why it is that we got into this crazy profession in the first place. In an incredibly wide field, we'd have to find the niche in which we'll be happy. Both Aaron and I have very narrowly specialized as a result, and while our scales are different, our approaches are comparable: Aaron designs systems as parts of buildings, and I understand buildings as parts of systems.

The second is one I briefly touched on in the talk and one that's been on my mind since. Several times in our CWA discussions, architects have told us that the recession provides a necessary moment of recalibration for the profession and offers the opportunity for architectural theory to regain the momentum it lost during the building boom. In short, they said that the recession was A Time to Think. I maintain that the broken economy did much more than just provide the luxury of time for reflection. It did architects the favor of explicating our present mandate. It clearly spelled out the issues upon which we should be reflecting. It definitively told us which problems need our attention and threatened us with a future of complete irrelevance if we failed to heed. Development halted while, globally and locally, the spatial description of how people live was changing before our eyes. And while many of the problems were primarily caused by policy (or lack thereof), financialization, and economics, we cannot deny that those issues are also spatial and, thus, architectural. They are of and from and affecting architecture, urbanism, and how we live together.

Guy Zinn, New York AL, sliding back into first base against Boston at Hilltop Park, New York City, 1912 (click image for source)

As briefly mentioned last month through various online media, I've very happily joined the crew of matte-black-wearing rabble-rousers at Urbanscale. Having hit the ground running, in only the first few weeks, I've had to flex more GIS-related muscles than I've used in a fairly long time while climbing the many learning curves involved in programming, new workflows, software I've never played with, interactions I haven't previously designed for, and mapping a city I haven't mapped before. (On that last one: Big props to the City of Chicago for the pretty incredible amount of data made available.) Suffice it to say for now that the challenges presented are both welcome and exhilarating for two reasons: (1) with this new post I'm offered the opportunity to apply a great deal of my thinking through new (to me) technologies and venues, and (2) if the wardrobe weren't enough, it's always a pleasure to work in an office with the like-minded. Brief updates on my first project are frequently part of Urbanscale's notes as development progresses.

In other news, (while it wrapped up in the first half of the summer, I realize now there was no word on it here) the summer course at NYU's Silver school was a fantastic experience (and getting to spend a week in the Domincan Republic wasn't too bad either). In my first foray into teaching GIS data collection and analysis techniques outside of the design professions, I got a much appreciated peek into and reaffirmation of the real potential of combining spatial and social research.

Next month, Aaron Davis and I are representing PRE-Office in a keynote on the formation of an infrastructure for practice at the annual design conference of the AIA Georgia Chapter. The talk (titled "Grow[ing] Up: Slow[ing] Down") will discuss some of PRE's research into the different modes of architectural practice, calling out some of our conclusions regarding various incarnations of responsibility and sustainability, particularly through turbulent and uncertain economic cycles.

And as the air is signalling that we are well into September, with two and a half weeks left in the regular season, at the time of writing the Yankees are up 2.5 games in the AL East.

photo: Gavin Browning's phone

Other mentions along the Information Superhighway include this brief description of the exhibition, this commentary on an early-in-the-process event (by one-time classmate Troy Conrad Therrien), and the MoMA PS1 blog throughout the design process.

1.  I was catching up on some of my Internet reading today and noticed a bit of infrastructural talk. While I read about more high-speed rail project stalling and cancellations, I also read a bit of heavy-hearted sanity by Scott Huler on the necessity of taxes in order to build and maintain our infrastructures. If you choose not to follow the link, I'll excerpt the ending:

After a year of begging people to want to pay taxes, I’m tired of the frowny faces. I’m tired of the insane arguments. So I’m genuinely asking: What’s the solution? We can’t live without clean water, without sanitary sewage treatment. We need roads and transportation and oversight on power and communications. We need somebody to make sure the people running nuclear plants keep them safe – and to help protect us if something goes wrong. This always seems to be the government’s job. I personally am glad for that.

But if it’s not with tax money, then I want to know: How do we pay for all this? We need the money; we can’t do without the systems. If not from taxes, where does it come from?

I’m begging: somebody give me an answer.

I have no original answer. After studying the nature of several different and overlapping infrastructures (transportation, utilities, economic, political and governmental, health care, education), I can offer nothing more than an agreement. I am officially at a loss. 

If we don't quickly acknowledge that each of us will suffer when these systems fail and thus that each of us needs to chip in to maintain them, then we will soon lose these infrastructural systems. There are certain things that we need our government to provide. The most commonly agreed upon infrastructure requiring government provision are roads. We need our roads and expect our local, state, and federal governments to maintain them. Have we forgotten that we are the government? As trite and cliche as this is about to sound, I'll forgo my better judgment and just say it: For, Of, and By.

The truth is, however, that there are all those other infrastructural systems upon which our entire society relies as well. If we can't house our citizenry, our economy suffers. If our economy suffers, so too does a world of other things. If we can't supply our younger generations with an (at least) adequate education, we all suffer. Not just those of us who can't afford a good education -- seriously, all of us. If we can't provide reasonably affordable healthcare, more than the sick will suffer. That's fewer people in the work force. That's less overall productivity. That's a lower general life expectancy. That's another world of problems.

Generally speaking, the quality of our many infrastructures are those things that define our quality of life. Because I am at a loss of what else to say: Do with it what you will.

2.  Here's a moment to note that at least one more infrastructure is getting some governmental policy attention.

Spring is upon us. I know this not because of changing clocks, because of longer days, because of a groundhog, or even because the calendar has told me. I know this because my boys in pinstripes are down in Tampa.* I know this because my husband (the Red Sox fan who somehow tolerates me) has already gotten our first set of Yankee tickets for when they return to the City. I know this because the Brooklyn Cyclones are sending us information on this summer's ticket bundles. (BTW, I highly recommend taking advantage of that deal: Food, drink, and a minor-league fun time.) I know it is spring because the promise of baseball is hanging in the air.

*[This always reminds me of home: The YES Network setting up shots off the Courtney Campbell Causeway, around Steinbrenner (nee Legends) field, of the bay, of the palm trees. Always makes me wish I knew how awesome this game was when I lived there, which (I should clarify) was before the Tampa Bay Rays were even a thing.]

In celebration, I decided to change my monitor's desktop image. This is an admittedly minor celebratory move, but not insignificant to a person who spends upwards of 12 hours a day staring at the thing. My usual suspects were considered: the incomparable Tex, AJ Burnett, Robbie Cano. I also considered Jeter because of what I wrote in the off-season. Then I remembered Swisher.

Rather, I remembered that my new favorite seats in Yankee Stadium are those behind right field for no reason other than that Nick Swisher is a riot, a refreshing riot. Seated somewhere between Swisher and the bleachers is all it really takes to remind you why you're at a baseball game. Here I offered some thoughts on what we expect from our sports celebrities. Following that note, following the LeBron thing, in the context of the athlete ego, I'd like to give props to Number 33 (for more than just being followed on Twitter by @charliesheen). Yes, playing baseball is his job...but, seriously, his job is playing baseball. Despite the manifest talent, the focus, the work, the discipline, the expectations, the contract negotiations, the entertainment factor, the business of sports, and the diving catch, he seems to play (and play with the fans) in such a way as to acknowledge that his job is playing baseball. And that is awesome. Swisher seems to exude an effortless fun when he plays -- as if he were playing rather than working, as if to acknowledge that his work is our recreation. Steeped in basketball season, I'm over the egos. Giving fans some honest evidence that you know just how lucky you are, that it's way more than a job, that you have fun when we're out having fun, this is what a professional athlete should look like:

In the end, as a show of faith, I decided to go with an image of AJ. This season is not last season, and AJ's a rockstar.