scruffy days

Readings:
Death and Life of Great American Cities: Ch.2 The Uses of Sidewalks: Safety, Jane Jacobs
Victorian Internet: Ch.9 War and Peace in the Global Village, Tom Standage
Wired/Unwired: The Urban Geography of Digital Networks, Anthony Townsend

Jane Jacobs breaks down why previous approaches to city planning and rebuilding have failed. Money, gardens, fences, so-called utopian ideals have failed great cities, including New York, Los Angeles, St. Louis, Chicago and Boston - the cities which she focuses on here. She argues that in order to understand what will make cities thrive, you must observe daily life, especially neighborhoods which provide a sense of community and safety.

“A city sidewalk by itself is nothing” - The sidewalks serve as veins for the life of the city. They must be used and shared to build a sense of belonging, home, and safety. That safety comes not from knowing a police station exists nearby, but from knowing the neighborhood as a whole serves as eyes on the street, “surveillance in a least conscious manner”. The sense of knowing your street, belonging there, calling it home builds a social currency - that you have something to share as well as protect.

Even though the city environment is made up of strangers, Jacobs reveals insights to behaviors that emerge from day-to-day living, and also explains what occurs when city planners ignore these observations in favor of greed or just plain ignorance - blight, crime, emptiness.

****

The Victorian Internet maps the history of the telegraph to the internet today - its development, reception and usage. Both events brought about huge changes to communications, and linked people to an international arena of information. Many of the changes brought about by the telegraph parallels the development of the Internet: increased speed of information transfer, access to news from around the world, development of agencies to disseminate news from various sources, and information overload.

***

Townsend’s dissertation explores the importance of research in communications networks as it relates to urban planning and studies. In looking at cities as information systems, the focus is observing and studying the city as a whole, rather than only its individual characteristics. Communications geography provides a means of visualizing and interpreting data about how communications are structured and utilized within a space. His third approach analyzes mediated spaces - physical spaces augmented with digital technologies to provide new, or enhanced functionality - which leads to further research in in HCI, ubiquitous computing, intelligent environments, tangible media, GIS, and GPS technologies.

In essence, Townsend is pointing to the fact that an interdisciplinary approach is required to understand what opportunities are possible for “shaping more livable cities.”