Photo by PlanetEye

A recent article in the New York Times by Alice Rawsthorn highlights the role of visualizing community information for the benefit of sociological research. However the article was not looking at a contemporary example, instead it featured an example from 1886. Charles Booth of London created a series of maps from 1886 to 1903 that featured a color coding system to visualize the different socioeconomic situations of residents in the city. The article points out that these maps helped to draw attention to the growing problem of poverty in London.

The article celebrates Booth’s work as an example of effective information design where large amounts of information where placed into a structure that made it easy for the user to navigate and process.

By making something so complicated seem straightforward, Booth’s Poverty Map was also a triumph of information design. It fulfilled one of design’s most useful functions — helping us to make sense of the world — by distilling an avalanche of information into a clear, coherent form.

Already in 1886 Booth saw the power of effective design in helping to make sense of large quantities of information. In 2010, we are faced with the same challenge of finding ways to organize and contextualize the large amounts of information that are produced everyday. City managers are turning to Geographic Information Systems while Neighborhood associations are using google maps to present users with the locations of resources.

Visualizing information, or in this situation more specifically, mapping information, gives people an overhead view of what is happening in their environment. Rather than asking people to sift through information that has been extracted from its context, information that is organized and presented through a map helps give the user a starting point that returns information to its place of origin.

One of my favorites on the list was number 5

The Complete Streets Movement

For most of human history, everyone shared the streets. They were a commons where kids played and neighbors chatted.

Today, legally speaking, the streets still belong to us all; but in reality they have become the exclusive property of motorists. And when traffic proliferates, streetlife disappears and our lives suffer, too-crime rises, pollution increases, social connections decline and we have fewer transportation options.

Thankfully, the Complete Streets movement has emerged to reclaim America’s roads for everyone: pedestrians, bicyclists, transit riders, the disabled, old people and children, as well as drivers.

Local organizations and the National Complete the Streets Coalition are pushing for new policies that make streets safe, accessible and convenient for all. The Complete Streets Act is now before Congress, and nine states and many localities have recently enacted complete streets legislation. Meanwhile, in 2009 the Obama administration quietly infused cities with funds for public transit, green building and retrofitting, inter-agency sharing, and education, creating new possibilities for renewing the urban commons.

Photo by Eric Perrone

In Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s recent book, “CommonWealth” the authors focus on the idea of the city as a location where the disenfranchised are able to organize and take what they have to contend their marginalized position. In other words, the authors look at the common resources available to people and how, when individuals come together,they can leverage their “common wealth” to overcome obstacles.

Referring to this common wealth as the Commons, the authors note that it refers not only to what 18th century European social theorists saw as commonly held land and other physical resources, but also to the brain power or services that individuals are able to provide. For the authors, what makes the Commons visible between individuals is what they call the Felicitous Encounter, or the moment when two individuals come together and because of their interaction, combine their mutual resources to the benefit of a common good. This idea of of the Felicitous Encounter is what Hardt and Negri say is the “great wealth” of the city.

“The great wealth of the metropolis is revealed when the felicitous encounter results in a new production of the common—when, for instance, people communicate their different knowledge’s, different capacities to form cooperatively something new. The felicitous encounter, in effect, produces a new social body that is more capable than either of the single bodies was alone.” (Hardt & Negri, 2010, p. 254)

The authors go on to say that it is the political imperative of the metropolis to promote the felicitous encounter. “Its task is to promote joyful encounters, make them repeat, and minimize infelicitous encounters.” (p.255)

Looking beyond the theory of the felicitous encounter and to its practical manifestations, the authors point to studies done by scholars on metropolitan regions in Africa that span from Lagos and Kinshasa to Johannesburg. The scholars show that despite impoverished conditions, the residents of this region have been able to overcome complete destitution and finds ways to survive through “informal networks of communication, mobility, employment, exchange, and cooperation that are large invisible to outsiders”(P.254)

“The multitude of the poor, in other words, invents strategies for survival, finding shelter and producing forms of social life, constantly discovering and creating resources of the common through expansive circuits of encounter” (P.254)

Looking at the previous post on this site, the idea of the felicitous encounter is related to the idea of weak ties and how they depend on the presence of public space where the formation of weak ties can occur. If we are faced with a scarcity of public space we must think about the ways we promote more opportunities for the formation of “expansive circuits of encounter” to emerge.

The role of the encounter in its ability to steer people towards beneficial resources and partnerships is directly related to the theme of the previous post where the paper by Nilan and D’Eredita (2007) pointed out that information is the product of conversation. When we take this idea of the Felicitous Encounter as it relates to the idea of organizing resource information around the act of the conversation, we are again drawn to the power of social networking sites or forums and the role they can play in helping people to be resourceful, self sufficient, and valuable members of their community. Looking then to established information platforms in Boston and elsewhere, we must think about what role they can play in creating the conditions for Felicitous Encounters to occur, or in other words, creating the public space for people to interact.

While looking at the existing platforms and thinking about how they can be combined to better leverage what they have to offer, the recurring theme that will no doubt dominate  the conversations on this site is the notion of bridging the digital divide. With consumer purchasing habits of poor urban residents pointing to a greater consumption of mobile technology over personal computers, such existing platforms should begin to make themselves amenable to supporting the Felicitous Encounter using mobile technology so that all people can have a relatively equal ability in gaining a greater awareness of the Commons.

Image by Wonderlane

A few months ago I had the pleasure of meeting  Michael Nilan, a professor at the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University. I spoke to him about my interests in local community focused websites and what role they played in helping residents find information on local resources. Immediately he challenged me to throw away the notion of information as something that people find, and instead think of it as the product of conversations.

In their 2007 article “In the Spirit of Collaborating”, Nilan and D’Eredita point out that in the study of cognitive behavior, the moments when people contend with problems or situations are seen as ” a “chunk” of time/space about which people collaborate/communicate.” This chunk of  time/space is what Nilan and D’Eredita say informs system designs where people converge to “share and create meaning to address their situations/solve their problems through access to resources (information/data; computing functionalities; links to others, e.g., experts). “

Taking this concept outside the realm of cognitive science, the authors apply the idea to their definition of community, which “refers to the (direct and vicarious) communicating among individuals engaging with or involved in addressing uncertainty in one or more problems/situations.”

This idea of community and its relation to dealing with uncertainty got me thinking about the role social networking sites play in helping people in times of uncertainty (I understood uncertainty here as questioning what your next decision will be) A special report in the Jan 30th issue of the Economist talks about how social networking sites are being installed on corporate intranets to allow people to communicate outside of the traditional bureaucratic framework of communication. In the report, one writer points out that:

“Often new ideas and insights—as well as warnings about potential threats—come from informal contacts rather than from formal meetings. The trouble is that existing IT systems are geared towards reinforcing separate silos rather than building bridges between them.

Services such as Yammer and Chatter create a more open workplace by letting people see what others are working on and encouraging sharing. The upshot is that good ideas can emerge from anywhere.”

Sociologist James Coleman calls these informal contacts “weak ties” as opposed to “strong ties” which would represent ones relationship with close friends and family. For Coleman, as is mentioned in the Economist quote, “weak ties” are what help us find new and unknown opportunities that fall outside of our initial comprehension of our surrounding environment.

The potential for social networking services to change the relationship between silos does not just exist within the corporate word, it also exists in city neighborhoods, where sociologists and urban design practitioners recognize a lack of public space for people to interact and establish weak ties.

Looking at neighborhood based social networking sites like  Neighbors for Neighbors (NfN) in Boston, we see a complementary space for daily interactions that promotes the opportunity for people to engage in informal contacts and find new information that may help them.

When sociologists like Robert Putnam link the decline of social capital to the decline of peoples use of public space, we see why there is so much excitement around the potential of social networking sites. However in order for these sites to really transform the landscape of city neighborhoods, issues of access and achieving critical mass have to be addressed. Going forward, its is the collaborative work of technologists, community organizers, and urban design practitioners who will have to look at the ways to both increase the awareness of such social networks amongst residents, encourage their use of the sites, and most importantly, improve access to them.

Despite issues of access and ubiquitous integration, there are still valuable work that can be done to bolster the social activity on city based social networks like NfN. Using Nilan’s ideas as cues, participants of NfN should think about the following:

• For neighborhoods with minimal activity, consider seeding conversations in forums to give people a sense of the types of conversations that can be had on the site
• Actively inform friends, family, work relations, and acquaintances about NfN
• Always think of NfN as a go to platform when looking for local solutions to “situations” and “problems.”

The value of neighborhood based social networking sites is based on their visibility. While issues of access will take a while to remedy, working to increase peoples awareness of such sites will help to boost the culture of collaboration on the sites and in the end make the site a valuable asset to the community.

Picture by Grzegorz Łobiński

We all live with maps. In our mind we have our environments charted out. Daily practice, daily interactions, everything we do is a mixture of difference and repetition and we are constantly redrawing our maps to expand or adjust our knowledge of the world. These maps inform our decisions in times of need, and the content of the map determines a large part of our future. If, in a time of need, someone is unaware of a resource that could have helped them, we must ask what could have been done to improve the visibility of this resource.

The notion of mapping as it relates to community development has to do with taking stock of what a community has to offer its residents. When we improve the visibility of commonly accessible resources, we promote a convivial society where people are empowered to take on the challenges in their lives.

The interests of Bostonmaps.org exist at an ever expanding intersection of critical theory, information communication technology, urban design, architecture, and community development. Boston is the focus but the discussion should be informed by examples from around the world.

The quote by Mel King and Mitch Resnick on the about page is the inspiration for this conversation:

“There is no such thing as a poor community. Even neighborhoods without much money have substantial human resources. Often, however, the human resources are not appreciated or utilized, partly because people do not have information about one another and about what their neighborhood has to offer. For example, a family whose oil heater is broken may go cold for lack of knowledge that someone just down the block knows how to fix it”