Paper by Jason Potts, Ellie Rennie and Jake Goldenfein: “The Smart City agenda of integrating ICT and Internet of Things (IoT) informatic infrastructure to improve the efficiency and adaptability of city governance has been shaping urban development policy for more than a decade now. A smart city has more data, gathered though new and better technology, delivering higher quality city services. In this paper, we explore how blockchain technology could shift the Smart City agenda by altering transaction costs with implications for the coordination of infrastructures and resources. Like the Smart City the Crypto City utilizes data informatics, but can be coordinated through distributed rather than centralized systems. The data infrastructure of the Crypto-City can enable civil society to run local public goods, and facilitate economic and social entrepreneurship. Drawing on economic theory of transaction costs, the paper sets out an explanatory framework for understanding the kinds of new governance mechanisms that may emerge in conjunction with automated systems, including the challenges that blockchain poses for cities….(More)”.
Data and the City
Book edited by Rob Kitchin, Tracey P. Lauriault, and Gavin McArdle: “There is a long history of governments, businesses, science and citizens producing and utilizing data in order to monitor, regulate, profit from and make sense of the urban world. Recently, we have entered the age of big data, and now many aspects of everyday urban life are being captured as data and city management is mediated through data-driven technologies.
Data and the City is the first edited collection to provide an interdisciplinary analysis of how this new era of urban big data is reshaping how we come to know and govern cities, and the implications of such a transformation. This book looks at the creation of real-time cities and data-driven urbanism and considers the relationships at play. By taking a philosophical, political, practical and technical approach to urban data, the authors analyse the ways in which data is produced and framed within socio-technical systems. They then examine the constellation of existing and emerging urban data technologies. The volume concludes by considering the social and political ramifications of data-driven urbanism, questioning whom it serves and for what ends.
This book, the companion volume to 2016’s Code and the City, offers the first critical reflection on the relationship between data, data practices and the city, and how we come to know and understand cities through data. It will be crucial reading for those who wish to understand and conceptualize urban big data, data-driven urbanism and the development of smart cities….(More)”
Shaping space for civic life: Can better design help engage citizens?
Patrick Sisson at Curbed: “…The Assembly Civic Engagement Survey, a new report released yesterday by the Center for Active Design, seeks to understand the connections between the design of public spaces and buildings on public life, and eventually create a toolbox for planners and politicians to make decisions that can help improve civic pride. There’s perhaps an obvious connection between what one might consider a better-designed neighborhood and public perception of government and community, but how to design that neighborhood to directly improve public engagement—especially during an era of low voter engagement and partisan divide—is an important, and unanswered, question….
One of the most striking findings was around park signage. Respondents were shown a series of three signs, ranging from a traditional display of park rules and prohibitions to a more proactive, engaging pictograph that tells parkgoers it’s okay to give high-fives. The survey found the simple switch to more eye-catching, positive, and entertaining signage improved neighborhood pride by 11 percent and boosted the feeling that “the city cares for people in this park” by 9 percent. Similar improvements were found in surveys looking at signage on community centers.
According to Frank, the biggest revelation from the research is how a minimum of effort can make a large impact. On one hand, she says, it doesn’t take a genius to realize that transforming a formerly graffiti-covered vacant lot into a community garden can impact community trust and cohesion.
What sticks out from the study’s findings is how little is really necessary to shift attitudes and improve people’s trust in their neighborhoods and attitudes toward city government and police. Litter turned out to be a huge issue: High levels of trash eroded community pride by 10 percent, trust in police by 5 percent, and trust in local government by 4 percent. When presented with a series of seven things they could improve about their city, including crime, traffic, and noise, 23 percent of respondents chose litter.
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In short, disorder erodes civic trust. The small things matter, especially when cities are formulating budgets and streetscaping plans and looking at the most effective ways of investing in community improvements….
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Giving cities direction as well as data
Beyond connecting the dots, Frank wants to give planners rationale for their actions. Telling designers that placing planters in the middle of a street can beautify a neighborhood is one thing; showing that this kind of beautification increases walkability, brings more shoppers to a commercial strip, and ultimately leads to higher sales and tax revenue spurs action and innovation.
Frank gives the example of redesigning the streetscape in front of a police station. The idea of placing planters and benches may seem like a poor use of limited funds, until data and research reveals it’s a cost-effective way to encourage interactions between cops and the community and helps change the image of the department….(More)”
Inside the Algorithm That Tries to Predict Gun Violence in Chicago
Gun violence in Chicago has surged since late 2015, and much of the news media attention on how the city plans to address this problem has focused on the Strategic Subject List, or S.S.L.
The list is made by an algorithm that tries to predict who is most likely to be involved in a shooting, either as perpetrator or victim. The algorithm is not public, but the city has now placed a version of the list — without names — online through its open data portal, making it possible for the first time to see how Chicago evaluates risk.
We analyzed that information and found that the assigned risk scores — and what characteristics go into them — are sometimes at odds with the Chicago Police Department’s public statements and cut against some common perceptions.
■ Violence in the city is less concentrated at the top — among a group of about 1,400 people with the highest risk scores — than some public comments from the Chicago police have suggested.
■ Gangs are often blamed for the devastating increase in gun violence in Chicago, but gang membership had a small predictive effect and is being dropped from the most recent version of the algorithm.
■ Being a victim of a shooting or an assault is far more predictive of future gun violence than being arrested on charges of domestic violence or weapons possession.
■ The algorithm has been used in Chicago for several years, and its effectiveness is far from clear. Chicago accounted for a large share of the increase in urban murders last year….(More)”.
Social Network for Doctors to Transform Medical Crowdsourcing
Press Release: “SERMO, a global social network for physicians has expanded its footprint globally to revolutionize medical crowdsourcing. SERMO is now open to physicians on all seven continents, delivering on its promise from day one to unite physicians from every corner of the globe, ensuring the free flow of expert information amongst physicians.
Now available in more than 150 countries, physicians from both rural and urban areas, in developed and developing nations, can be exposed to the same expertise from their peers, providing an even higher level of care to their patients.
According to one orthopedic surgeon from Greece, SERMO offers “Exciting doctor interactions, is very helpful with difficult cases and always prompts us with very interesting social topics and discussions. It is a form of collective intelligence that allows individuals to achieve more than they could on their own.”
Combined with last month’s Drug Ratings launch, physicians will now be able to evaluate prescription drugs, in addition to communicating with peers and solving tough patient cases. These tools are revolutionizing the way physicians exchange and obtain information, as well as offer personalized care to their patients. With over 300,000 drug ratings gathered since the beta launch began last year, Ratings enables doctors globally to share prescription drug treatment experiences with their peers, transforming how physicians around the world make prescribing decisions in their daily practice.
SERMO’s membership has grown from 130,000 in 2012, when SERMO merged with WorldOne, to 650,000 total members prior to today’s expansion – now, the network includes close to 800,000 physicians….(More)”.
6 Jurisdictions Tackling Homelessness with Technology
The most common of these are data sharing between groups involved with the homeless, the ability to track interactions between individuals and outreach providers, and a system that makes it easier to enter information about the population. Recently, we spoke with more than a half-dozen government officials who are involved with the homeless, and while obstacles and conditions varied among cities, all agreed that their work would be much easier with better tech-based solutions for the problems cited above.
These officials, however, were uniformly optimistic that such solutions were becoming more readily available — solutions with potential to solve the logistical hurdles that most often hamstring government, community and nonprofit efforts to help the homeless find jobs, residences and medical care. Some agencies, in fact, have already had success implementing tech as components in larger campaigns, while others are testing new platforms that may bolster organization and efficiency.
Below are a few brief vignettes that detail some — but far from all — ongoing governmental efforts to use tech to aid and reduce the homeless population.
1. BERGEN COUNTY, N.J.
One of the best examples of government using tech to address homelessness can be found in Bergen County, N.J., where officials recently certified their jurisdiction as first in the nation to end chronic homelessness. READ MORE
2. AURORA, COLO.
Aurora, Colo., in the Denver metropolitan, area uses the Homeless Management Information System required by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, but those involved with addressing homelessness there have also developed tech-based efforts that are specifically tailored to the area’s needs. READ MORE
4. NEW YORK CITY
New York City is rolling out an app called StreetSmart, which enables homelessness outreach workers in all five boroughs to communicate and log data seamlessly in real time while in the field. With StreetSmart, these workers will be able to enter that information into a single citywide database as they collect it. READ MORE… (Full article)“
The Way Ahead
Transcript of lecture delivered by Stephen Fry on the 28th May 2017 • Hay Festival, Hay-on-Wye: “Peter Florence, the supremo of this great literary festival, asked me some months ago if I might, as part of Hay’s celebration of the five hundredth anniversary of Martin Luther’s kickstarting of the reformation, suggest a reform of the internet…
You will be relieved to know, that unlike Martin Luther, I do not have a full 95 theses to nail to the door, or in Hay’s case, to the tent flap. It might be worth reminding ourselves perhaps, however, of the great excitements of the early 16th century. I do not think it is a coincidence that Luther grew up as one of the very first generation to have access to printed books, much as some of you may have children who were the first to grow up with access to e-books, to iPads and to the internet….
The next big step for AI is the inevitable achievement of Artificial General Intelligence, or AGI, sometimes called ‘full artificial intelligence’ the point at which machines really do think like humans. In 2013, hundreds of experts were asked when they thought AGI may arise and the median prediction was they year 2040. After that the probability, most would say certain, is artificial super-intelligence and the possibility of reaching what is called the Technological Singularity – what computer pioneer John van Neumann described as the point “…beyond which humans affairs, as we know them, could not continue.” I don’t think I have to worry about that. Plenty of you in this tent have cause to, and your children beyond question will certainly know all about it. Unless of course the climate causes such havoc that we reach a Meteorological Singularity. Or the nuclear codes are penetrated by a self-teaching algorithm whose only purpose is to find a way to launch…
It’s clear that, while it is hard to calculate the cascade upon cascade of new developments and their positive effects, we already know the dire consequences and frightening scenarios that threaten to engulf us. We know them because science fiction writers and dystopians in all media have got there before us and laid the nightmare visions out. Their imaginations have seen it all coming. So whether you believe Ray Bradbury, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Isaac Asimov, Margaret Atwood, Ridley Scott, Anthony Burgess, H. G. Wells, Stanley Kubrick, Kazuo Ishiguro, Philip K. Dick, William Gibson, John Wyndham, James Cameron, the Wachowski’s or the scores and scores of other authors and film-makers who have painted scenarios of chaos and doom, you can certainly believe that a great transformation of human society is under way, greater than Gutenberg’s revolution – greater I would submit than the Industrial Revolution (though clearly dependent on it) – the greatest change to our ways of living since we moved from hunting and gathering to settling down in farms, villages and seaports and started to trade and form civilisations. Whether it will alter the behaviour, cognition and identity of the individual in the same way it is certain to alter the behaviour, cognition and identity of the group, well that is a hard question to answer.
But believe me when I say that it is happening. To be frank it has happened. The unimaginably colossal sums of money that have flowed to the first two generations of Silicon Valley pioneers have filled their coffers, their war chests, and they are all investing in autonomous cars, biotech, the IoT, robotics Artificial Intelligence and their convergence. None more so than the outlier, the front-runner Mr Elon Musk whose neural link system is well worth your reading about online on the great waitbutwhy.com website. Its author Tim Urban is a paid consultant of Elon Musk’s so he has the advantage of knowing what he is writing about but the potential disadvantage of being parti pri and lacking in objectivity. Elon Musk made enough money from his part in the founding and running of PayPal to fund his manifold exploits. The Neuralink project joins his Tesla automobile company and subsidiary battery and solar power businesses, his Space X reusable spacecraft group, his OpenAI initiative and Hyperloop transport system. The 1950s and 60s Space Race was funded by sovereign governments, this race is funded by private equity, by the original investors in Google, Apple, Facebook and so on. Nation states and their agencies are not major players in this game, least of all poor old Britain. Even if our politicians were across this issue, and they absolutely are not, our votes would still be an irrelevance….
So one thesis I would have to nail up to the tent is to clamour for government to bring all this deeper into schools and colleges. The subject of the next technological wave, I mean, not pornography and prostitution. Get people working at the leading edge of AI and robotics to come into the classrooms. But more importantly listen to them – even if what they say is unpalatable, our masters must have the intellectual courage and honesty to say if they don’t understand and ask for repetition and clarification. This time, in other words, we mustn’t let the wave engulf us, we must ride its crest. It’s not quite too late to re-gear governmental and educational planning and thinking….
The witlessness of our leaders and of ourselves is indeed a problem. The real danger surely is not technology but technophobic Canute-ism, a belief that we can control, change or stem the technological tide instead of understanding that we need to learn how to harness it. Driving cars is dangerous, but we developed driving lesson requirements, traffic controls, seat-belts, maintenance protocols, proximity sensors, emission standards – all kinds of ways of mitigating the danger so as not to deny ourselves the life-changing benefits of motoring.
We understand why angry Ned Ludd destroyed the weaving machines that were threatening his occupation (Luddites were prophetic in their way, it was weaving machines that first used the punched cards on which computers relied right up to the 1970s). We understand too why French workers took their clogs, their sabots as they were called, and threw them into the machinery to jam it up, giving us the word sabotage. But we know that they were in the end, if you’ll pardon the phrase, pissing into the wind. No technology has ever been stopped.
So what is the thesis I am nailing up? Well, there is no authority for me to protest to, no equivalent of Pope Leo X for it to be delivered to, and I am certainly no Martin Luther. The only thesis I can think worth nailing up is absurdly simple. It is a cry as much from the heart as from the head and it is just one word – Prepare. We have an advantage over our hunter gatherer and farming ancestors, for whether it is Winter that is coming, or a new Spring, is entirely in our hands, so long as we prepare….(More)”.
Designing for More Effective Protests
Linda Poon at CityLab: “…It’s also safe to assume there will be more protests to come, and that they may be smaller and more dispersed around cities. That’s the argument made by a handful of design and architecture organizations in an open letter in January to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio suggesting ways the city could make its streets more protest friendly. The Van Alen Institute, one of the signatories, recently followed that up with a related question: How can New Yorkers themselves design for better protests, to make them more inclusive and accessible to the city’s diverse population?
That’s the central question behind the institute’s one-day design contest, “To the Streets,” which asked activists, designers, and people of all backgrounds and disciplines to come up with imaginative—but also realistic—strategies that community members can use to plan effective protests.
One of the key challenges, as outlined in the letter and in the competition rules, is that future protests may not be as big as the Women’s March, nor will they always be held in the most popular protest sites. In a city as diverse as New York, the protests might be more decentralized. Instead of one large protest, smaller ones may happen simultaneously in spaces nestled inside the immigrant communities most affected by the Trump administration’s policies.
The competition asked designers to find ways to link these protest sites together so that their messages resonate throughout the city and so that they stand out. If protests do become more frequent, it’s important that they don’t become normalized, says John Schettino, a fellow at the Design Trust for Public Space and one of the contest judges.
The city might be able to make these protest sites bigger and safer, and it could have the authority to pedestrianize streets like 5th Avenue, where Trump Tower is located. “The physical design of the space tends to be a top-down process that comes from the city government,” Schettino says. But then there’s the “soft infrastructure of activist design,” or how interventions and activism can temporarily reclaim public spaces.
The winning proposal, chosen out of five finalists, came from urban designers James Khamsi and Despo Thoma, who came up with the idea of using flatbed trucks as mobile platforms that act as a central point for protests. Hovering above each truck would be giant balloons whose colorful appearance would draw attention from people miles away, and whose monitors can display the protestors’ messages….(More)”.
Data Collaboratives: exchanging data to create public value across Latin America and the Caribbean
Stefaan Verhulst, Andrew Young and Prianka Srinivasan at IADB’s Abierto al Publico: “Data is playing an ever-increasing role in bolstering businesses across Latin America – and the rest of the word. In Brazil, Mexico and Colombia alone, the revenue from Big Data is calculated at more than US$603.7 million, a market that is only set to increase as more companies across Latin America and the Caribbean embrace data-driven strategies to enhance their bottom-line. Brazilian banking giant Itau plans to create six data centers across the country, and already uses data collected from consumers online to improve cross-selling techniques and streamline their investments. Data from web-clicks, social media profiles, and telecommunication services is fueling a new generation of entrepreneurs keen to make big dollars from big data.
What if this same data could be used not just to improve business, but to improve the collective well-being of our communities, public spaces, and cities? Analysis of social media data can offer powerful insights to city officials into public trends and movements to better plan infrastructure and policies. Public health officials and humanitarian workers can use mobile phone data to, for instance, map human mobility and better target their interventions. By repurposing the data collected by companies for their business interests, governments, international organizations and NGOs can leverage big data insights for the greater public good.
Key question is thus: How to unlock useful data collected by corporations in a responsible manner and ensure its vast potential does not go to waste?
“Data Collaboratives” are emerging as a possible answer. Data collaboratives are a new type of public-private partnerships aimed at creating public value by exchanging data across sectors.
Research conducted by the GovLab finds that Data Collaboratives offer several potential benefits across a number of sectors, including humanitarian and anti-poverty efforts, urban planning, natural resource stewardship, health, and disaster management. As a greater number of companies in Latin America look to data to spur business interests, our research suggests that some companies are also sharing and collaborating around data to confront some of society’s most pressing problems.
Consider the following Data Collaboratives that seek to enhance…(More)”
The cloud, the crowd, and the city: How new data practices reconfigure urban governance?
Introduction to Special Issue of Big Data & Society by Philip Ashton, Rachel Weber and Matthew Zook: “The urban archetype of the flâneur, so central to the concept of modernity, can now experience the city in ways unimaginable one hundred years ago. Strolling around Paris, the contemporary flâneur might stop to post pictures of her discoveries on Instagram, simultaneously identifying points of interest to the rest of her social network and broadcasting her location (perhaps unknowingly). The café she visits might be in the middle of a fundraising campaign through a crowdfunding site such as Kickstarter, and she might be invited to tweet to her followers in exchange for a discount on her pain au chocolate. As she ambles about Paris, the route of her stroll is captured by movement sensors positioned on top of street lights, and this data—aggregated with that of thousands of other pedestrians—could be used by the City of Paris to sync up transit schedules. And if those schedules were not convenient, she might tap Uber to whisk her home to her threadbare pension booked on AirBnB.
This vignette attests to the transformation of the urban experience through technology-enabled platforms that allow for the quick mobilization and exchange of information, public services, surplus capacity, entrepreneurial energy, and money. However, these changes have implicated more than just consumers, as multiple technologies have been taken up in urban governance processes through platforms variously labeled as Big Data, crowd sourcing, or the sharing economy. These systems combine inexpensive data collection and cloud-based storage, distributed social networks, geotagged locational sensing, mobile access (often through “app” platforms), and new collaborative entrepreneurship models to radically alter how the needs of urban residents are identified and how services are delivered and consumed in so-called “smart cities” (Townsend, 2013). Backed by Big Data, smart city initiatives have made inroads into urban service provision and policy in areas such as e-government and transparency, new forms of public-private partnerships through “urban lab” arrangements, or models such as impact investing, civic hacking, or tactical urbanism (cf. Karvonen and van Heur, 2014; Kitchin, 2014; Swyngedouw, 2005).
In the rhetoric used by their boosters, the vision and practice of these technologies “disrupts” existing markets by harnessing the power of “the crowd”—a process fully evident in sectors such as taxi (Uber/Lyft), hoteling (AirBnB), and finance (peer-to-peer lending). However, the notion of disruption has also targeted government bureaucracies and public services, with new initiatives seeking to insert crowd mechanisms or characteristics—at once self-organizing and collectively rational (Brabham, 2008)—into public policy. These mechanisms envision reconfiguring the traditional relationship of public powers with planning and governance by vesting data collection and problem-solving in crowd-like institutional arrangements that are partially or wholly outside the purview of government agencies. While scholars are used to talking about “governance beyond-the-state” (Swyngedouw, 2005) in terms of privatization and a growing scope for civil society organizations, technological intermediation potentially changes the scale and techniques of governance as well as its relationship to sovereign authority.
For instance, civic crowdfunding models have emerged as new means of organizing public service provision and funding community economic development by embracing both market-like bidding mechanisms and social-network technologies to distribute responsibility for planning and financing socially desirable investments to laypeople (Brickstarter, 2012; Correia de Freitas and Amado, 2013; Langley and Leyshon, 2016). Other practices are even more radical in their scope. Toronto’s Urban Repair Squad—an offshoot of the aptly named Critical Mass bike happenings—urges residents to take transportation planning into their own hands and paint their own bike lanes. Their motto: “They say city is broke. We fix. No charge.” (All that is missing is the snarky “you’re welcome” at the end.)
Combined, these emerging platforms and practices are challenging the tactics, capabilities, and authorizations employed to define and govern urban problems. This special theme of Big Data & Society picks up these issues, interrogating the emergence of digital platforms and smart city initiatives that rely on both the crowd and the cloud (new on-demand, internet-based technologies that store and process data) to generate and fold Big Data into urban governance. The papers contained herein were presented as part of a one-day symposium held at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) in April 2015 and sponsored by UIC’s Department of Urban Planning and Policy. Setting aside the tired narratives of individual genius and unstoppable technological progress, workshop participants sought to understand why these practices and platforms have recently gained popularity and what their implementation might mean for cities. Papers addressed numerous questions: How have institutional supports and political-economic contexts facilitated the ascendance of “crowd” and “cloud” models within different spheres of urban governance? How do their advocates position them relative to imaginaries of state or market failure/dysfunction? What kinds of assumptions and expectations are embedded in the design and operation of these platforms and practices? What kinds of institutional reconfigurations have been spurred by the push to adopt smart city initiatives? How is information collected through these initiatives being used to advance particular policy agendas? Who is likely to benefit from them?…(More)”.