socialurb 2011 - International Workshop on Social Connections in the Urban Space

Today, a significant amount of data is collected in the urban space. Most of this data is collected without our knowledge, in top-down fashion by government or various agencies. Satellites are used to capture movement and transport while ‘dataveillance’ captures people’s use of credit card, mobile phone, and loyalty card information. CCTVs are also considered ubiquitous, a normal part of everyday urban life. More recently, people can use their mobile phone as a sensor to capture real-time environmental data in the urban space to contribute to this pool of urban data. This bottom-up approach may also be achieved collaboratively. ‘Participatory Urbanism’ sees a shift in mobile device usage ? from communication tool to networked mobile personal measurement instrument. Through this, individual citizens can become more proactive in their involvement with their city, neighborhood, and urban self-reflexivity. Given this growing pool of data of the urban space, the question is how we can use this data fruitfully and sensibly to better understand sociality and to inform future configurations of our urban environment.