Book review: Geomedia: networked cities and the future of public space

McQuire, S. 2016. Geomedia: Networked Cities and the Future of Public Space. Cambridge: Polity

Community through digital connectivity? Communication infrastructure in multicultural London: final report

This project, supported by an LSE Seed grant, examines the role that communication plays in promoting and hindering community among London’s diverse populations. While symbolic and structural resources such as education, local institutions and property have been systematically studied as community-building resources, communication infrastructures are little studied and their potential as a community asset largely unrecognised. Yet with over half of the world population now inhabiting cities (UN 2010), how people communicate across or withdraw from difference in urban societies matters greatly. For London, the most culturally diverse city in the world and one of the most connected (Massey 2005), these questions are pressing. How does London’s rich communication infrastructure enable Londoners to communicate with each other? Does this in turn contribute to social capital and building community? Or does it segregate people across cultural and generational lines? By focusing on a highly culturally diverse part of London – Harringay, North London – this study examines the role of communication infrastructure in bridging, bonding and separating the different groups occupying the same locale. It focuses on communication assets – the resources that enhance urban dwellers’ social capital, sense of belonging and mutual understanding. Its main research question is: In what ways does communication infrastructure mobilise Haringey’s diverse population in building social capital and community? Conceptually, we juxtapose the original theory of communication infrastructure developed by Ball-Rokeach and her research team under the Metamorphosis project with Bourdieu’s social capital. The communication infrastructure theory takes an ecological approach to understanding the role of communication of all kinds in promoting or undermining belonging, civic engagement and collective efficacy (Ball-Rokeach, Kim and Matei, 2001; Kim and Ball-Rokeach, 2006). We explore this theory alongside and vis-à-vis Bourdieu’s (1985, 1992) conception of social capital as the sum of resources that accrue to the possession of durable networks of sustained (institutionalised) relations and recognition. These approaches provide interesting parallels in how practices of communication and sociability support groups’ efforts to gain access to resources that will advance their symbolic and material power. Our particular focus is on how different local groups mobilise knowledge and information resources for work, education, health and leisure. The project adopts a multi-method approach, which includes creative and participatory tools for data collection, locale mapping and community sharing alongside established methods in social sciences

Mediated spatial cultures: place-making in London neighbourhoods with the aid of public interactive screens

This paper takes a mediated spatial cultures approach to examine how interactive urban screens are understood and utilised in two super-diverse neighbourhoods in London. Qualitative data was collected over a year of ethnographic fieldwork and six workshops. The study focuses on how residents construct a sense of belonging through both material culture and mainstream digital media (place-making efforts). Participants were grouped into three age groups according to their distinctive patterns of socialisation, digital media and material culture use. We show that individuals relate to public interactive screens with the frames of reference they already employ to approach other place-making efforts, which underpin the social life of their neighbourhoods. We demonstrate that the lens of mediated spatial culture helps elucidate how a sense of place is formed and patterned through different temporalities, materialities, media, imaginations, and behaviours, which are highly biographical

Making sense of assets: Community asset mapping and related approaches for cultivating capacities

This working paper critically reviews some main aspects from asset based approaches highlights key strengths and weaknesses for future research/development. Drawing on a large body of reports and relevant literature we draw on different theoretical traditions and critiques, as well as practices and processes embedded within a broad range of approaches including, widely acknowledged frameworks such Asset Based Community Development (ABCD), Appreciative Inquiry (AI), Sustainable Livelihood Approaches (SLA) and Community Capitals Framework (CCF). Although these are presented as distinct approaches, there is a sense of evolution through them and many of them overlap (in terms of both theories and methodologies). We also include emerging frameworks, including geographical, socio-spatial, visual and creative approaches, stemming from a number of projects within AHRC’s Connected Communities programme and additional collaborations

Vote with your feet : hyperlocal public polling for urban screens

Technological advances have led to an ongoing spread of public displays in urban areas. However, they still mostly show passive content such as commercials and digital signage. Researchers took notice of their potential to spark situated civic discourse in public space and have begun working on interactive public display applications. Attracting people’s attention and providing a low barrier for user participation have been identified as major challenges in their design. This thesis presents Vote With Your Feet, a hyperlocal public polling tool for urban screens allowing users to express their opinions. Similar to vox populi interviews on TV or polls on news websites, the tool is meant to reflect the mindset of the community on topics such as current affairs, cultural identity and local matters. It shows one Yes/No question at a time and enables users to vote by stepping on one of two tangible buttons on the ground. This user interface was introduced to attract people’s attention and to lower participation barriers. Vote With Your Feet was informed by a user-centred design approach that included a focus group, expert interviews and extensive preliminary user studies in the wild. Deployed at a bus stop, Vote With Your Feet was evaluated in a field study over the course of several days. Observations of people and interviews with 30 participants revealed that the novel interaction technology was perceived as inviting and that Vote With Your Feet can spark discussions among co-located people

Considering communities, diversity and the production of locality in the design of networked urban screens

Highly diverse settings such as London (with people from ~179 countries speaking ~300 languages) are unique in that ethnic or socio-cultural backgrounds are no longer sufficient to generate a sense of place, belonging and community. Instead, residents actively perform place building activities on an ongoing basis, which we believe is of great importance when deploying interactive situated technologies in public spaces. This paper investigates community and place building within a complex multicultural context. We approached this using ethnography, complemented with workshops in the wild. By studying the relationships arising between different segments of the community and two networked screen nodes, we examine the place building activities of residents, and how screen nodes are incorporated into them. Our research suggests that urban screens will be framed (and eventually used) as part of this continuing process of social, spatial and cultural construction. This highlights the importance of enabling socially meaningful relations between the people mediated by these technologies