Writing the smart city: "relational space" and the concept of "belonging"

This paper explores McQuire’s concept of "relational space", a term he uses to describe the transformed horizon of social relationships within the smart city. Although there is no exact definition, the smart city is predicated on both the rise of digital technology and ubiquitous wireless connectivity. The city, of course, has always been intimately connected with technology. Yet it is clear that this most recent innovation constitutes a significant reconfiguration of the urban experience. Possibilities abound in terms of how citizens might interact with services, the environment and each other. Yet, this paper argues that these transformations are intimately linked to wider changes in thought and experience. As post-industrial cities become more complex, and their communities more dispersed, questions such as "where is home?" and "where and how do I belong?" become increasingly pertinent for a deeper, more sustained understanding of "relational space" and its impact on how we might experience our lives. This paper, drawing on the outcomes of a small project, argues that creative writing can play a fundamental role within the development of the smart city, empowering citizens to redefine "relational space" in terms of our deeper need for "home"

Writing the smart city: "relational space" and the concept of "belonging"

This paper explores McQuire’s concept of "relational space", a term he uses to describe the transformed horizon of social relationships within the smart city. Although there is no exact definition, the smart city is predicated on both the rise of digital technology and ubiquitous wireless connectivity. The city, of course, has always been intimately connected with technology. Yet it is clear that this most recent innovation constitutes a significant reconfiguration of the urban experience. Possibilities abound in terms of how citizens might interact with services, the environment and each other. Yet, this paper argues that these transformations are intimately linked to wider changes in thought and experience. As post-industrial cities become more complex, and their communities more dispersed, questions such as "where is home?" and "where and how do I belong?" become increasingly pertinent for a deeper, more sustained understanding of "relational space" and its impact on how we might experience our lives. This paper, drawing on the outcomes of a small project, argues that creative writing can play a fundamental role within the development of the smart city, empowering citizens to redefine "relational space" in terms of our deeper need for "home"

The use of single-subject research design for assessment, evaluation, and research in higher education

While enrolling in a college for a degree is still considered to be more of the expectation than the rule in households across the United States it is facing public criticism regarding its overall cost versus long-term benefits. This has prompted researchers to reevaluate practices in higher education to determine ways in which post-secondary institutions can improve their overall outcomes. In part, research indicates that this should include revisions to assessment, evaluation, and research (AER) practices. Currently, higher education faces many challenges associated with rigorous AER practices, which include an institutional focus on accountability measures, organizational challenges, and difficulties in operationally defining and measuring constantly changing definition for students, faculty, and higher education. These challenges have forced higher education to move away from rigorous quantitative designs that show causality. Additionally, higher education’s focus on large N research struggles to capture the unique identities and experiences of today’s college campus, which also poses challenges for the use of AER by practitioners across academic and student affairs. At present, new approaches to AER must be considered. The purpose of the current study was to propose and investigate one potential way to supplement large N AER with the use of single-subject research design (SSRD). Using visual analysis and the calculation of effect sizes with nonoverlap of all pairs (NAP), archival data from a unique behavioral program in a post-secondary transition program located at a land-grant institution in the southeastern United States was evaluated to determine if its implementation reduced student referrals at the program (N =25) and cohort level between Fall 2019 to Spring 2020. Results indicated that the behavioral program was most effective at the program level but had variable results at the cohort level. These results indicate that SSRD can be an effective approach to AER practices in higher education and would adequately supplement and potentially inform further large N research with its ability address to assess smaller populations

Apparent Communicative Efficiency in the Lexicon is Emergent

Is language designed for communicative and functional efficiency? G. K. Zipf famously argued that shorter words are more frequent because they are easier to use, thereby resulting in the statistical law that bears his name. Yet, G. A. Miller showed that even a monkey randomly typing at a keyboard, and intermittently striking the space bar, would generate “words” with similar statistical properties. Recent quantitative analyses of human language lexicons (Piantadosi et al., 2012) have revived Zipf\u27s functionalist hypothesis. Ambiguous words tend to be short, frequent, and easy to articulate in language production. Such statistical findings are commonly interpreted as evidence for pressure for efficiency, as the context of language use often provides cues to overcome lexical ambiguity. In this study, we update Miller\u27s monkey thought experiment to incorporate empirically motivated phonological and semantic constraints on the creation of words. We claim that the appearance of communicative efficiency is a spandrel (Gould & Lewontin, 1979), as lexicons formed without the context of language use or reference to communication or efficiency exhibit comparable statistical properties. Furthermore, the updated monkey model provides a good fit for the growth trajectory of English as recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary. Focusing on the history of English words since 1900, we show that lexicons resulting from the monkey model provide a better embodiment of communicative efficiency than the actual lexicon of English. We conclude by arguing for the need to go beyond correlational statistics and to seek direct evidence for the mechanisms that underlie principles of language design

Perceived quality of life impacts and tourism-related stress

Tourism has many impacts on residents’ quality of life. One outcome that can result from these impacts is the experience of stress. Individuals who experience stress are at increased risk for mental and physical illnesses. This paper examines the relationship between residents’ perceived impacts of tourism on their quality of life and their experience of tourism related stress. Paper surveys were completed by 247 residents of the Hawai’ian island of Oahu, a heavily developed tourism destination that is economically reliant on the tourism industry. A logistic regression model revealed that clean air and water, crowding and congestion, the preservation of residents’ way of life, the value of residents’ house and/or land, and plenty of festivals, fairs, and museums, were all significantly related to the experience of tourism related stress. Tourism decision makers can address tourism quality of life impacts in these specific areas to help mitigate tourism related stress