Embed Size (px)
DESCRIPTION
This investigation is part of the Digital methods initiative of the University of Amsterdam (UVA), a two week long summer school held in June 2014.
Citation preview
The City as InterfaceNataliya Tkachenko, Xinyang Xie (Yang), Peta Mitchell, Maarten Groen, Adrian Bertoli, Khwezi Magwaza, Naomi Bueno de Mesquita, Joe Shaw, Alexander van Someren, Tim Leunissen, Michele Mauri, Philip Schuette,
Donato Ricci, Sabine Niederer
The city as interface
Background
The “parochial realm [is] characterized by a sense of commonality among acquaintances and neighbors who are involved in interpersonal networks that are located within ‘communities’” Lofland, Lyn. The Public Realm: Exploring the City’s
Quintessential Social Territory. New York: de Gruyter, 1998, p 10.
“[Cities] are not like suburbs, only denser. They differ from towns and suburbs in basic ways, and one of these is that cities are, by definition, full of strangers.” Jacobs, Jane. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. 1961.
#dmi14
The city as interface
Background
Martijn de Waal on parochial realms and urban media“This raises the following questions: how do urban media enable us to shape these different domains in new ways? How does the emergence of a new technology shift the balance between parochial and public domains? Does the emergence of new technologies reinforce the parochial domain, and do new technologies make it easier for city dwellers to withdraw to their own ‘turf ’? Or can they actually reinforce the public domain, which is dominated by mutual interchange?” (City as Interface, pp. 16–17)
“Urban spaces are becoming hybridized, meaning they are composed through a combination of physical and digital practices”. (Gordon, Eric, and Adriana de Souza e Silva. Net Locality: Why Location
Matters in a Networked World. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2011, p. 14.)
#dmi14
The city as interface
Research Question:
What kind of Amsterdam do geosocial media platforms (such as Foursquare, Twitter, Pinterest, Flickr, Meet-up, and Geocaching) present?
… and can we identify the parochial and the public spaces of a city by looking at the places put forward by these platforms?
#dmi14
The city as interface
Methodology & DataRetrieve Amsterdam-specific posts/meetups/pins on (secondary) social media and plot on a map.
Data:Pinterest: Term ‘Amsterdam’ in “place” boards = list of 781 boards, pulling first 100 pins per board, total of 31479 pins (8274 geolocated) Meetup - 489 events in 258 locations from 172 community's over a 4 month period.Twitter: keyword Amsterdam over a 10-day period (13–22 June), resulting in 4930 geotagged tweets in the Amsterdam areaGeocaching: 700 of geocaches in Amsterdam (geocaching.nl)
Analyze first the type of Amsterdam the platform presents, and secondly identify stacks of parochial spaces (within and cross platform); the more overlapping parochial spaces, the more public this space is.
#dmi14
Layered map of Amsterdamhttps://mmauri.cartodb.com/
link to interactive cartodbchange background
The city as interface
Meetup - Categories on map#dmi14
The city as interface
Meetup - Public and Parochial places#dmi14
PinterestMain Findings: Pinterest produces the ‘Boutique view’ of Amsterdam >where specialist interests like food, interior design, child-friendly & culture intersect
>Local pinners and boards described as ‘hidden gems’ in outskirts while travel and touristy hotspots in city center
>Also an interesting view of retail culture in particular Haarlemmerstraat and Haarlemmerdijk which feature concept stores plus smaller bars and restaurants, not the larger commercial predominate.
Proliferation of travel industry and local business and how they are leveraging the platform for destination marketing and commercial promotion could provide for interesting extra study.
The city as interface
● Used TCAT to find all geolocated Amsterdam-area tweets with keyword Amsterdam over a 10-day period (13–22 June), resulting in 4930 tweets
● Analysed this data to identify what type of users were geo-tweeting (locals, out-of-towners, tourists) and which sources/platforms the tweets were generated from (e.g., Twitter apps, foursquare, instagram, flickr)
● Geovisualised tweets by user type (local/out-of-towner/tourist) to show different user visions of the Amsterdam area
#dmi14
The city as interface
Amsterdam geotweets: sources & users
#dmi14
The city as interface
instagram & foursquare geotweets by user
#dmi14
Amsterdam: tourists vs locals
Amsterdam: tourists vs locals
The city as interface
#dmi14
PLAY - Ingress (location-based AR) and figure runningThrough geosocial media platforms, narratives are created and played out in the city. In Ingress players must be physically
near objects (public art landmarks) on the map to interact with them. In figure running players compete with each other,
creating drawings on their city.
The city as interface
PLAY - geocachingInspired by psychogeography, geocaching (a treasure hunt game) could be seen as an encountering of new and authentic
ways of experiencing the city. The journey and the narrative around it seems to be of similar interest.
#dmi14
The city as interface
#dmi14
The city as interface
#dmi14
The city as interface
#dmi14
The city as interface
#dmi14
The city as interface
#dmi14
The city as interface
#dmi14
Geocaching findings
In comparison with other geosocial platforms/networks, geocaching is less of an urban phenomenon, and geocachers are more likely to engage with places that are harder to get to or on the periphery of the city.
The city as interface
Findings & future researchComparing pinterest, meetup, geocaching and twitter: http://cdb.io/1jMz3aG Flickr: http://cdb.io/VloTIA
Software filters:
Pinterest: Amsterdam Boutique CityTwitter: Amsterdam Leisurely CityMeetup: Amsterdam Parochial CityGeocaching: Amsterdam Playful City
Future research: Bottom-up approach, ranking places from most public to most parochialmaps per category (cross-platform
#dmi14
Layered map of Amsterdam
link to interactive cartodbchange background
