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Thanks.	
  In	
  this	
  talk,	
  I’m	
  going	
  to	
  look	
  at	
  issues	
  of	
  context	
  and	
  community	
  through	
  
the	
  lens	
  of	
  a	
  long-­‐term	
  interest	
  of	
  mine	
  –	
  design	
  for	
  ci<es,	
  and	
  in	
  par<cular,	
  urban	
  
green	
  space.	
  

What	
  do	
  I	
  mean	
  by	
  urban	
  green	
  space?	
  Just	
  what	
  you	
  think.	
  Any	
  place	
  with	
  plants	
  
in	
  a	
  city	
  –	
  from	
  window	
  boxes	
  to	
  giant	
  parks.	
  	
  

I’m	
  not	
  a	
  planner,	
  nor	
  an	
  architect.	
  I’m	
  an	
  interac<on	
  designer.	
  But	
  I’m	
  interested	
  
in	
  the	
  design	
  of	
  interven<ons	
  in	
  built	
  spaces,	
  and	
  I	
  think	
  you	
  all	
  should	
  be	
  too.	
  As	
  
industrial	
  design	
  spills	
  out	
  into	
  interac<on	
  design	
  spills	
  out	
  into	
  appliance	
  design	
  
spills	
  out	
  into	
  service	
  design,	
  ques<ons	
  of	
  how	
  and	
  where	
  we	
  deal	
  with	
  not	
  just	
  
building	
  scale	
  but	
  urban	
  scale	
  maHers	
  becomes	
  a	
  ques<on	
  we	
  can	
  ask	
  ask	
  and	
  
answer.	
  	
  

I	
  have	
  two	
  goals	
  for	
  this	
  talk.	
  The	
  first	
  is	
  to	
  show	
  you	
  how	
  fascina<ng	
  and	
  
interes<ng	
  this	
  space	
  is	
  -­‐-­‐-­‐	
  and	
  then	
  second,	
  to	
  discuss	
  why	
  its	
  hard.	
  But	
  don’t	
  
worry	
  –	
  I’ll	
  be	
  going	
  over	
  some	
  tac<cs	
  that	
  I’ve	
  found	
  par<cularly	
  useful.	
  And	
  
finally,	
  I’ll	
  be	
  turning	
  back	
  to	
  the	
  ideas	
  of	
  context	
  and	
  community,	
  which	
  animate	
  
this	
  session.	
  	
  	
  

This	
  is	
  going	
  to	
  be	
  a	
  whirlwind	
  tour	
  of	
  a	
  big	
  area.	
  Let’s	
  hope	
  I	
  raise	
  a	
  lot	
  of	
  
ques<ons	
  and	
  issues	
  that	
  we	
  can	
  discuss	
  in	
  the	
  panel.	
  	
  



                                                                                                                                            1	
  
At	
  the	
  moment,	
  I’m	
  a	
  PhD	
  candidate	
  at	
  UC	
  Berkeley.	
  My	
  background	
  is	
  in	
  design	
  research	
  –	
  
research	
  for	
  product	
  development,	
  prototyping	
  and	
  design	
  as	
  a	
  way	
  to	
  do	
  R&D	
  for	
  large	
  
companies,	
  and	
  research	
  on	
  design	
  prac<ce.	
  	
  
This	
  talk	
  combines	
  two	
  long-­‐term	
  interests	
  of	
  mine.	
  	
  

The	
  first	
  is	
  what’s	
  been	
  called	
  urban	
  compu<ng	
  or	
  urban	
  informa<cs,	
  which	
  I’ve	
  been	
  thinking	
  
about	
  since	
  about	
  2002.	
  You	
  can	
  think	
  about	
  it	
  as	
  applica<ons	
  for	
  city	
  life,	
  such	
  as	
  the	
  map-­‐
based	
  chat	
  you	
  see	
  in	
  the	
  middle	
  and	
  a	
  picture	
  above	
  that	
  of	
  map-­‐based	
  urban	
  theater	
  game	
  
I	
  designed.	
  	
  
The	
  second	
  is	
  what’s	
  oVen	
  called	
  user-­‐centered	
  or	
  human-­‐centered	
  design.	
  I’ve	
  taught	
  design	
  
research	
  at	
  Berkeley,	
  and	
  I’m	
  in	
  the	
  middle	
  of	
  revising	
  Observing	
  the	
  User	
  Experience,	
  a	
  
handbook	
  of	
  user	
  research	
  techniques.	
  	
  

At	
  any	
  rate,	
  aVer	
  focusing	
  for	
  a	
  while	
  on	
  what	
  you	
  might	
  call	
  sidewalk	
  and	
  streetlevel	
  
interac<ons,	
  I	
  got	
  into	
  studying	
  urban	
  green	
  space	
  largely	
  because	
  it	
  seemed	
  like	
  such	
  
unexplored	
  territory	
  for	
  digital	
  design.	
  “GREEN	
  SPACE?!”	
  People	
  would	
  say	
  to	
  me.	
  “How	
  is	
  
THAT	
  digital?”	
  I’m	
  just	
  contrary	
  enough	
  to	
  take	
  that	
  as	
  a	
  challenge	
  to	
  see	
  what	
  there	
  was.	
  	
  
And	
  also,	
  of	
  course,	
  I	
  felt	
  that	
  green	
  space	
  –	
  parks,	
  and	
  especially	
  community	
  gardens	
  –	
  was	
  
something	
  I	
  wanted	
  to	
  support.	
  Green	
  spaces	
  are	
  places	
  of	
  beauty	
  and	
  play.	
  They	
  mi<gate	
  
pollu<on	
  and	
  storm	
  damage.	
  Sidewalks	
  and	
  streets	
  can	
  be	
  difficult,	
  messy	
  places,	
  full	
  of	
  
arguments	
  about	
  traffic,	
  rights-­‐of-­‐way,	
  and	
  other	
  issues	
  that	
  come	
  up	
  when	
  people	
  bump	
  and	
  
crowd	
  each	
  other.	
  	
  
Green	
  space,	
  I	
  thought.	
  What	
  a	
  completely	
  benign	
  and	
  harmonious	
  topic.	
  	
  
I	
  had	
  a	
  lot	
  to	
  learn.	
  	
  




                                                                                                                                                     2	
  
Since we’re in New Orleans, I wanted to kick off this talk with a story of community and context from right here. This
story exemplifies some of the thorny issues involved in designing for urban green space, and with neighborhoods..
Can every one who’s seen the map to the right raise a hand? Good.


Here’s the short story. In 2006, a taskforce called “Bring New Orleans Back” released this map to accompany a plan
created with the Urban Land Institute for New Orleans neighborhoods. What it showed is some areas where rebuilding
would continue, some areas where rebuilding would be put on hold, and SOME areas, marked with green dots, which
there was a real possibility would be turned into parkland. There was a real chance, residents believed, that they
would be bought out, whether they wanted to move or not.


The release of this map immediately triggered an uproar, especially in neighborhoods like Broadmoor – inhabitants
shown at a Times Picayune photo at left – under the shadow of the green dots. Faced with what they feared would be
the destruction of their homes and their neighborhood, they revolted against the plan. Just think about that quote –
“Mama, they plan on putting a greenway on your house.”


What I find interesting about this map is the contrast between the specificity of the red-outlined areas, and the
“approximate” vagueness of the green dots. It’s as if the real focus of attention were those red outlines, and the green
dots were just…background. “Context,” let’s say, for the new development.


There are two immediately obvious kinds of design taking place. One, urban planning for post-Katrina New Orleans,
and two, the communication design of the poster. I would argue that there was a third process, perhaps
unacknowledged but key to the success of the first two, which was the design of the collaboration between “the
commission” and “the community.”


The green dots backlash, I would argue, is the revenge of “context.” And community. What you think of as background
may well be the central battleground of someone’s life.

REFERENCES
Kennedy School of Government case study: http://www.ksgcase.harvard.edu/caseTitle.asp?caseNo=1893.0
Times Picayune article http://www.nola.com/katrina/index.ssf/2010/08
many_areas_marked_for_green_space_after_hurricane_katrina_have_rebounded.html
                                                                                                                           3	
  
We’ll return to urban planning and the green dots later. For the moment, though, I
want to highlight some interesting stuff happening in product and service design for
urban green space right now.

My motive here in discussing these at all is two-fold.


First, I want to highlight some inspirations for, possibly, your own work.


Second, I want to give you a sense of the richness of this space, and the number of
different disciplines that can potentially get involved – industrial and interaction
designers, landscape designers and architects – and of course, not to mention policy-
makers and community groups.

I’ve divided these projects into four themes. I’ll discuss them in order of complexity.
From projects that intervene in small or brief ways in the built environment, to projects
that seek to reshape entire cities and regions.

I’ll be honest – I would love to spend the entire talk highlighting inspirational and
exciting projects. But I really don’t have the time/ Instead, I’m going to breeze past a
limited number of exemplar projects, and ask you guys to come up and talk to me or
email me about them later if you want more information.




                                                                                            4
The art group Rebar, for example, sponsors International Park(ing) Day each year, in which
people around the world turn parking spots into temporary mini-parks.


The industrial design group Common Studio turns a vintage candy vending machines into
dispensers for seedbombs – globs of local seeds, clay, and fertilizer that, when thrown into an
abandoned lot, turn it into a carpet of wildflowers.


Parisian artist Paule Kingleur mods anti-parking posts on sidewalks into tiny planters by
attaching small bags of soil.


These three projects are all close to traditional industrial design. What they all have in
common is a playful approach to urban infrastructures, and in particular abandoned or
underused spaces. They rely largely on individual initiative, and suggest ways in which
passersby could also intervene. I label these projects “planting ideas” because their effects lie
not in the scale of their effects, but in the way they provoke the imagination.




                                                                                                    5	
  
This second category of projects tries to help individuals reap the personal benefits of
gardening by helping them learn to do it better.


Botanicalls is a cheap sensor kit that actually calls you or tweets when your plant needs water.


MyFolia is a gardening website which connects gardeners who grow similar plants or live
under similar conditions. In a sense, it’s accumulating expert, microlocal knowledge about
what to do, when.


What is most interesting is the way in which projects like this suggest how we could start
distributing the responsibility for caring for plants
        - Not just keep the things alive
        - But developing trust relationships with other people through the shared attachment
        to a living thing


        ----



Botanicalls photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/blackbeltjones/3155923557/




                                                                                                   6
The	
  third	
  category	
  takes	
  up	
  that	
  idea	
  of	
  stewardship	
  to	
  move	
  from	
  Do	
  It	
  Yourself	
  to	
  Do	
  it	
  Ourselves,	
  rethinking	
  
no<ons	
  of	
  ownership.	
  	
  We tend to draw strong lines between public and private space, between what we can and
cannot physically access, or can and cannot care for. A few recent projects use the Internet to rethink who	
  provides	
  
food	
  to	
  whom,	
  and	
  what	
  kinds	
  of	
  rela<onships	
  we	
  have	
  to	
  property.	
  These	
  projects	
  broker	
  rela<onships	
  between	
  
people	
  and	
  places.	
  	
  

They	
  network	
  the	
  produc<on	
  and	
  consump<on	
  of	
  food	
  –	
  and	
  of	
  less	
  tangible	
  goods.	
  In	
  guerilla	
  gardening,	
  in	
  which	
  
an	
  ad-­‐hoc	
  groups	
  of	
  gardeners	
  self-­‐organize	
  to	
  replant	
  an	
  abandoned	
  areas	
  neglected	
  by	
  the	
  city.	
  Or	
  the	
  Find	
  Fruit	
  
iPhone	
  app,	
  which	
  allows	
  people	
  to	
  find	
  publicly	
  accessible	
  fruit	
  trees	
  in	
  people’s	
  front	
  yards,	
  ready	
  to	
  harvest.	
  
Finally,	
  we	
  have	
  a	
  new	
  business	
  model	
  –	
  that	
  of	
  the	
  distributed	
  backyard	
  farm,	
  in	
  which	
  backyards	
  across	
  a	
  city	
  are	
  
turned	
  into	
  one	
  giant	
  community	
  supported	
  agriculture	
  project.	
  What’s	
  interes<ng	
  to	
  me	
  is	
  that	
  many	
  of	
  these	
  
projects	
  are	
  not	
  objects,	
  per	
  se,	
  but	
  compelling	
  ideas	
  that	
  are	
  some<mes	
  ar<culated	
  as	
  books	
  and	
  online	
  forums,	
  
as	
  in	
  the	
  guerilla	
  gardening	
  movement	
  or	
  urban	
  scavenging,	
  some<mes	
  as	
  a	
  business	
  model,	
  as	
  in	
  distributed	
  
farming.	
  




                                                                                                                                                                                      7
But what about larger, longer processes and ecosystems?


Collecting and visualizing information about very local events and conditions can be used to
tell stories about bigger trends. Then, how those stories are told and distributed can help form
new coalitions. Coalitions that can work towards political action and commitment. ParkScan is
a citizen reporting system for park maintenance violations in San Francisco. It makes it easy to
get individual problems fixed – but also allows the non-profit which runs it to track government
responsiveness to citizen complaints. Photographs and other visualizations of these patterns
are important to collective action. They become charismatic images – images that can prompt
belief, and action. Like the green dots.


Landshare is a website that brokers agreements online to share cultivation of unused urban
and suburban land, so that I could find someone who wants to garden in, literally, my own
backyard. What’s interesting is that the website has also started to encourage and support
political organizing campaigns in the UK to make the practice easier. But I think it’s amazing,
in terms of doing urban food politics through the clever use of existing web technology.




                                                                                                   8
So we’ve gone through some great examples of what designing for urban green space can
look like.


What I want to do now is take a step back and propose some concepts – some tools for
thinking with – that you could use in your own work. Some concepts that have helped me get
some purchase on the complexity of getting involved, often as a relative outsider, in spaces
and places that people care for.




                                                                                               9	
  
 We often think of green space as a kind of “nature” in cities that is somehow opposed to
technological innovation. 	
  

The	
  first	
  thing	
  I	
  want	
  to	
  point	
  out,	
  which	
  may	
  be	
  obvious	
  to	
  you,	
  but	
  which	
  was	
  not	
  to	
  me	
  when	
  I	
  
started,	
  is	
  that	
  green	
  spaces	
  are	
  a	
  technology	
  of	
  urban	
  living.	
  

This picture is a representation of the Air Trees installation in an arid, hot housing
development near Madrid. While waiting for “real trees” to grow in, architects planned a
temporary gathering place for inhabitants that would serve some of the same purposes that
parks or plazas might. The circular structure is filled with rings of potted plants. The plants
condition the air inside and provide shade. The circular arrangement works like a chimney,
drawing hot air up and leaving the shaded area many degrees cooler – like natural air
conditioning.

I’m not recommending that everyone install something like this. What I’m suggesting is that we
can see greenery as a kind of technology of cities. And I think this example highlights how we
can see greenery as technology in different ways – as a tool to accomplish certain ends, as a
deliberately engineered artifact, as a techne – a skill, of life.

The	
  ques<on	
  is,	
  like	
  all	
  designed	
  tools,	
  for	
  what	
  end?	
  For	
  the	
  personal	
  growth	
  of	
  individuals?	
  For	
  food	
  
security	
  and	
  jobs?	
  For	
  neighborhood	
  survival?	
  	
  




                                                                                                                                                                     10
Green spaces – not just gardens – connect together many disparate urban elements. They
bring individuals together. They are part of urban ecosystems, working to process pollution
and drain water. They are part of neighborhood revitalization, as in Quesada Garden, a one-
block community garden in San Francisco that serves as a local hub for political organization
and anti-crime efforts.


So here’s a diagram, drawn from my research on community gardens, that suggests how
many actors might be involved in something as seemingly simple as a single community
garden. The closer a circle is to the big green “garden” circle, the more present it is in the
physical space of the garden.


It’s striking how many different kinds of actors are involved in keeping community gardens
alive – people, technologies like email lists and GIS, laws about how you can use land,
political parties who get involved in supporting or limiting gardens, chemicals.


That’s why I think it’s helpful to think of green spaces not on their own but as networks – of
ecosystems, of social relationships, of urban political arrangements. We can start to ask
ourselves – who and what can green spaces connect? And what connects green spaces? It
allows us to see non-humans like bees and water drops as part of the design space – and
think about not just human-centered design but design for non-humans as well.




                                                                                                 11
The	
  next	
  thing	
  I	
  want	
  to	
  discuss	
  is	
  everything	
  that	
  stands	
  in	
  the	
  way	
  of	
  remaking	
  urban	
  spaces	
  through	
  design	
  –	
  
        their	
  obduracy.	
  

Obduracy is a very useful concept coined by urbanist Anique Hommels to describe why Things. Don’t.
Change. Many people have brought up similar ideas, but I think the concept of obduracy is a helpful
framework for putting your dilemma into perspective. It has three different dimensions.
1) Frames – local political interests and struggles for dominance.
2) Embeddedness – the degree to which an object depends on other ones, and is in turn a source of
     dependency.
3) Enduring attitudes and habits – what we might call ‘cultures.’
Obduracy is an excellent way to describe what happened to the promoters of the “green dots” plan.
The framing of this particular issue was very damaging – it seemed like outsiders coming in, with the
    help of powerful local politicians, and telling people what to do with what they saw as their own
    homes.

But even despite the ravages of Katrina, these homes and neighborhoods were embedded – people
    owned their homes and had legal protection. Many of them had some insurance that would repay
    rebuilding. And indeed, many worked to make their homes even more embedded in the fabric of the
    city by renovating as fast as they could, to make their neighborhoods ever more solid – in order to
    contradict any idea to demolish them.

Finally, there’s the culture of homeownership and neighborhood allegiance. The map of New Orleans is
    iconic, and people feel like it represents their lives. I would argue that people felt that their
    neighborhood belonged to them, and felt angry at the erasure of their love and commitment as
    symbolized by the flat green dots.




                                                                                                                                                                                  12	
  
So what do we do if we want to change things – for the better?


Here are three starting points – tools to think with in approaching green space and other urban
issues.




                                                                                                  13	
  
Where do you think this photo was taken?

This is Golden Gate Park -- before it was a park, before the space was
completely remade.

As I said earlier, we forget that urban nature isn’t natural. Plant life and
greenery survive in cities because humans either make room for it, actively
cultivate it. Sometimes, destroy neighborhoods for it.

One way to denaturalize green space – and other spaces – is to defamiliarize
it. As “to make by making strange.”

This	
  is	
  the	
  idea	
  underlying	
  a	
  lot	
  of	
  the	
  seeding	
  ideas	
  projects	
  –	
  you	
  rethink	
  urban	
  
infrastructure,	
  like	
  a	
  parking	
  lot.	
  And	
  call	
  it	
  out	
  as	
  man-­‐made	
  and	
  redesignable

Designers,	
  of	
  course,	
  do	
  this	
  all	
  the	
  <me.	
  But	
  there	
  are	
  some	
  special	
  tricks	
  for	
  working	
  
in	
  ci<es,	
  because	
  ci<es	
  are	
  so	
  mundane	
  and	
  so	
  easily	
  taken	
  for	
  granted.	
  It’s	
  easy	
  to	
  
believe	
  that	
  Golden	
  Gate	
  Park	
  has	
  always	
  been	
  parkland,	
  because	
  that’s	
  what	
  your	
  
eyes	
  tell	
  you.	
  This	
  is	
  what	
  geographers	
  call	
  “the	
  lie	
  of	
  the	
  land”	
  –	
  the	
  tendency	
  to	
  
assume	
  that	
  what	
  you	
  see	
  is	
  what’s	
  there.	
  	
  	
  

So one of my primary tools in thinking about green space is the study of
history. What can the victory gardens of WWII tell us about today?




                                                                                                                                            14	
  
One way to work around obduracy is to get yourself your own allies. You can read this literally
– as in getting political allies.

But I’m fascinated by the power and weakness of what I might call charismatic images –
images that mobilize constituencies for and against the programs and ideas that they
represent. The green dots map was, in a sense, charismatic. It mobilized constituencies to
defeat it. It was, in a sense, a very successful map.

For a different example, take these satellite photos to the right – which have been called “50
Million Dollar Photos”. Why where they worth 50 Million?

On the right are two satellite photos of Washington DC. Taken together, they document the
disappearance of trees in the metropolitan area. They’re pretty murky photos, honestly. Kind of
the opposition of charismatic. But in conjunction with a newspaper photo they prompted a 50
Million Dollar commitment to reforesting DC from a charitable foundation. The city hired a
professional urban forester for the first time in many years, increased tree planting, and
drafted and approved its first tree ordinance.

These images didn’t speak for themselves – they needed human spokespeople, or maybe an
influential and far-reaching spokes-institution like the Washington Post, to argue for what they
should mean, and why they should be important.

Even if you think your work stands on its own, it will always be perceived by others as having a
context. Having allies and a community. The question is, as with the Urban Land Institute and
the Bring New Orleans Back Commission, whether your audience sees your allies as a benefit
or a downside.




                                                                                                   15	
  
In 1969, Sherry Arnstein put forward this model for understanding citizen participation in urban
planning. I’m not going to go into the details here – there are copies you can read online – but
the rungs of the ladder move up from lesser to greater participation. I think works equally well
for thinking about the agency of potential consumers and users in design.

More tactical level, the question often is: what level am I working on? What level should I be
working on?

I often think of moving up and down the ladder in terms of obduracy. The more embedded a
network is. The more tied in it is to existing physical installations, to ways of doing things. The
more tendentious it is in terms of organizational frames. The more bound up in cultural
understanding of the “right” way to live and be happy – the higher one should consider going.
Many of the projects I’ve shown you – for example, many in the planting ideas sections – do
not face particular challenges of obduracy. Projects like reforesting a city…may well.

This requires a certain amount of honesty with ourselves. The lower levels of the ladder are
not necessarily bad – although it is hard to make a case for therapy or manipulation – but they
are often not suitable for what we want our interventions in green space to do as technologies.




                                                                                                      16	
  
So. Let’s return to the notions of community and context that I brought up at the beginning of
this talk.

When people talk about context, they usually mean “background.” Something passive. I want
to suggest that in working with urban green space – or really, any kind of social design project
at all, context, as it’s usually understood, does not exist. There is no way to cleanly assume a
passive background. Projects spring from specific constellations of people and interests, and
interact with others. Depending on what audience they reach, the green dots are either a
sideshow or the main event.

Community, as it’s usually understood, can be a little misleading. First, because “community”
doesn’t mean agreement. Often, things that we describe as “communities” are contentious
and divided. Certainly, that’s what I see in “community” gardens. Second, because
“community” may not be the most interesting way to describe all the actors involved in a
project. Maybe they are tax payers, hives of bees, renters, or simply passers-by.

And that’s great. It means the world is more exciting, more diverse, more risky. It means you
cannot take your status as an “expert” for granted, or the applause of the people you want to
help. It makes the world more fun.




                                                                                                   17	
  
18	
  

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From park bench to satellite: designing from the ground up

  • 1. Thanks.  In  this  talk,  I’m  going  to  look  at  issues  of  context  and  community  through   the  lens  of  a  long-­‐term  interest  of  mine  –  design  for  ci<es,  and  in  par<cular,  urban   green  space.   What  do  I  mean  by  urban  green  space?  Just  what  you  think.  Any  place  with  plants   in  a  city  –  from  window  boxes  to  giant  parks.     I’m  not  a  planner,  nor  an  architect.  I’m  an  interac<on  designer.  But  I’m  interested   in  the  design  of  interven<ons  in  built  spaces,  and  I  think  you  all  should  be  too.  As   industrial  design  spills  out  into  interac<on  design  spills  out  into  appliance  design   spills  out  into  service  design,  ques<ons  of  how  and  where  we  deal  with  not  just   building  scale  but  urban  scale  maHers  becomes  a  ques<on  we  can  ask  ask  and   answer.     I  have  two  goals  for  this  talk.  The  first  is  to  show  you  how  fascina<ng  and   interes<ng  this  space  is  -­‐-­‐-­‐  and  then  second,  to  discuss  why  its  hard.  But  don’t   worry  –  I’ll  be  going  over  some  tac<cs  that  I’ve  found  par<cularly  useful.  And   finally,  I’ll  be  turning  back  to  the  ideas  of  context  and  community,  which  animate   this  session.       This  is  going  to  be  a  whirlwind  tour  of  a  big  area.  Let’s  hope  I  raise  a  lot  of   ques<ons  and  issues  that  we  can  discuss  in  the  panel.     1  
  • 2. At  the  moment,  I’m  a  PhD  candidate  at  UC  Berkeley.  My  background  is  in  design  research  –   research  for  product  development,  prototyping  and  design  as  a  way  to  do  R&D  for  large   companies,  and  research  on  design  prac<ce.     This  talk  combines  two  long-­‐term  interests  of  mine.     The  first  is  what’s  been  called  urban  compu<ng  or  urban  informa<cs,  which  I’ve  been  thinking   about  since  about  2002.  You  can  think  about  it  as  applica<ons  for  city  life,  such  as  the  map-­‐ based  chat  you  see  in  the  middle  and  a  picture  above  that  of  map-­‐based  urban  theater  game   I  designed.     The  second  is  what’s  oVen  called  user-­‐centered  or  human-­‐centered  design.  I’ve  taught  design   research  at  Berkeley,  and  I’m  in  the  middle  of  revising  Observing  the  User  Experience,  a   handbook  of  user  research  techniques.     At  any  rate,  aVer  focusing  for  a  while  on  what  you  might  call  sidewalk  and  streetlevel   interac<ons,  I  got  into  studying  urban  green  space  largely  because  it  seemed  like  such   unexplored  territory  for  digital  design.  “GREEN  SPACE?!”  People  would  say  to  me.  “How  is   THAT  digital?”  I’m  just  contrary  enough  to  take  that  as  a  challenge  to  see  what  there  was.     And  also,  of  course,  I  felt  that  green  space  –  parks,  and  especially  community  gardens  –  was   something  I  wanted  to  support.  Green  spaces  are  places  of  beauty  and  play.  They  mi<gate   pollu<on  and  storm  damage.  Sidewalks  and  streets  can  be  difficult,  messy  places,  full  of   arguments  about  traffic,  rights-­‐of-­‐way,  and  other  issues  that  come  up  when  people  bump  and   crowd  each  other.     Green  space,  I  thought.  What  a  completely  benign  and  harmonious  topic.     I  had  a  lot  to  learn.     2  
  • 3. Since we’re in New Orleans, I wanted to kick off this talk with a story of community and context from right here. This story exemplifies some of the thorny issues involved in designing for urban green space, and with neighborhoods.. Can every one who’s seen the map to the right raise a hand? Good. Here’s the short story. In 2006, a taskforce called “Bring New Orleans Back” released this map to accompany a plan created with the Urban Land Institute for New Orleans neighborhoods. What it showed is some areas where rebuilding would continue, some areas where rebuilding would be put on hold, and SOME areas, marked with green dots, which there was a real possibility would be turned into parkland. There was a real chance, residents believed, that they would be bought out, whether they wanted to move or not. The release of this map immediately triggered an uproar, especially in neighborhoods like Broadmoor – inhabitants shown at a Times Picayune photo at left – under the shadow of the green dots. Faced with what they feared would be the destruction of their homes and their neighborhood, they revolted against the plan. Just think about that quote – “Mama, they plan on putting a greenway on your house.” What I find interesting about this map is the contrast between the specificity of the red-outlined areas, and the “approximate” vagueness of the green dots. It’s as if the real focus of attention were those red outlines, and the green dots were just…background. “Context,” let’s say, for the new development. There are two immediately obvious kinds of design taking place. One, urban planning for post-Katrina New Orleans, and two, the communication design of the poster. I would argue that there was a third process, perhaps unacknowledged but key to the success of the first two, which was the design of the collaboration between “the commission” and “the community.” The green dots backlash, I would argue, is the revenge of “context.” And community. What you think of as background may well be the central battleground of someone’s life. REFERENCES Kennedy School of Government case study: http://www.ksgcase.harvard.edu/caseTitle.asp?caseNo=1893.0 Times Picayune article http://www.nola.com/katrina/index.ssf/2010/08 many_areas_marked_for_green_space_after_hurricane_katrina_have_rebounded.html 3  
  • 4. We’ll return to urban planning and the green dots later. For the moment, though, I want to highlight some interesting stuff happening in product and service design for urban green space right now. My motive here in discussing these at all is two-fold. First, I want to highlight some inspirations for, possibly, your own work. Second, I want to give you a sense of the richness of this space, and the number of different disciplines that can potentially get involved – industrial and interaction designers, landscape designers and architects – and of course, not to mention policy- makers and community groups. I’ve divided these projects into four themes. I’ll discuss them in order of complexity. From projects that intervene in small or brief ways in the built environment, to projects that seek to reshape entire cities and regions. I’ll be honest – I would love to spend the entire talk highlighting inspirational and exciting projects. But I really don’t have the time/ Instead, I’m going to breeze past a limited number of exemplar projects, and ask you guys to come up and talk to me or email me about them later if you want more information. 4
  • 5. The art group Rebar, for example, sponsors International Park(ing) Day each year, in which people around the world turn parking spots into temporary mini-parks. The industrial design group Common Studio turns a vintage candy vending machines into dispensers for seedbombs – globs of local seeds, clay, and fertilizer that, when thrown into an abandoned lot, turn it into a carpet of wildflowers. Parisian artist Paule Kingleur mods anti-parking posts on sidewalks into tiny planters by attaching small bags of soil. These three projects are all close to traditional industrial design. What they all have in common is a playful approach to urban infrastructures, and in particular abandoned or underused spaces. They rely largely on individual initiative, and suggest ways in which passersby could also intervene. I label these projects “planting ideas” because their effects lie not in the scale of their effects, but in the way they provoke the imagination. 5  
  • 6. This second category of projects tries to help individuals reap the personal benefits of gardening by helping them learn to do it better. Botanicalls is a cheap sensor kit that actually calls you or tweets when your plant needs water. MyFolia is a gardening website which connects gardeners who grow similar plants or live under similar conditions. In a sense, it’s accumulating expert, microlocal knowledge about what to do, when. What is most interesting is the way in which projects like this suggest how we could start distributing the responsibility for caring for plants - Not just keep the things alive - But developing trust relationships with other people through the shared attachment to a living thing ---- Botanicalls photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/blackbeltjones/3155923557/ 6
  • 7. The  third  category  takes  up  that  idea  of  stewardship  to  move  from  Do  It  Yourself  to  Do  it  Ourselves,  rethinking   no<ons  of  ownership.    We tend to draw strong lines between public and private space, between what we can and cannot physically access, or can and cannot care for. A few recent projects use the Internet to rethink who  provides   food  to  whom,  and  what  kinds  of  rela<onships  we  have  to  property.  These  projects  broker  rela<onships  between   people  and  places.     They  network  the  produc<on  and  consump<on  of  food  –  and  of  less  tangible  goods.  In  guerilla  gardening,  in  which   an  ad-­‐hoc  groups  of  gardeners  self-­‐organize  to  replant  an  abandoned  areas  neglected  by  the  city.  Or  the  Find  Fruit   iPhone  app,  which  allows  people  to  find  publicly  accessible  fruit  trees  in  people’s  front  yards,  ready  to  harvest.   Finally,  we  have  a  new  business  model  –  that  of  the  distributed  backyard  farm,  in  which  backyards  across  a  city  are   turned  into  one  giant  community  supported  agriculture  project.  What’s  interes<ng  to  me  is  that  many  of  these   projects  are  not  objects,  per  se,  but  compelling  ideas  that  are  some<mes  ar<culated  as  books  and  online  forums,   as  in  the  guerilla  gardening  movement  or  urban  scavenging,  some<mes  as  a  business  model,  as  in  distributed   farming.   7
  • 8. But what about larger, longer processes and ecosystems? Collecting and visualizing information about very local events and conditions can be used to tell stories about bigger trends. Then, how those stories are told and distributed can help form new coalitions. Coalitions that can work towards political action and commitment. ParkScan is a citizen reporting system for park maintenance violations in San Francisco. It makes it easy to get individual problems fixed – but also allows the non-profit which runs it to track government responsiveness to citizen complaints. Photographs and other visualizations of these patterns are important to collective action. They become charismatic images – images that can prompt belief, and action. Like the green dots. Landshare is a website that brokers agreements online to share cultivation of unused urban and suburban land, so that I could find someone who wants to garden in, literally, my own backyard. What’s interesting is that the website has also started to encourage and support political organizing campaigns in the UK to make the practice easier. But I think it’s amazing, in terms of doing urban food politics through the clever use of existing web technology. 8
  • 9. So we’ve gone through some great examples of what designing for urban green space can look like. What I want to do now is take a step back and propose some concepts – some tools for thinking with – that you could use in your own work. Some concepts that have helped me get some purchase on the complexity of getting involved, often as a relative outsider, in spaces and places that people care for. 9  
  • 10.  We often think of green space as a kind of “nature” in cities that is somehow opposed to technological innovation.   The  first  thing  I  want  to  point  out,  which  may  be  obvious  to  you,  but  which  was  not  to  me  when  I   started,  is  that  green  spaces  are  a  technology  of  urban  living.   This picture is a representation of the Air Trees installation in an arid, hot housing development near Madrid. While waiting for “real trees” to grow in, architects planned a temporary gathering place for inhabitants that would serve some of the same purposes that parks or plazas might. The circular structure is filled with rings of potted plants. The plants condition the air inside and provide shade. The circular arrangement works like a chimney, drawing hot air up and leaving the shaded area many degrees cooler – like natural air conditioning. I’m not recommending that everyone install something like this. What I’m suggesting is that we can see greenery as a kind of technology of cities. And I think this example highlights how we can see greenery as technology in different ways – as a tool to accomplish certain ends, as a deliberately engineered artifact, as a techne – a skill, of life. The  ques<on  is,  like  all  designed  tools,  for  what  end?  For  the  personal  growth  of  individuals?  For  food   security  and  jobs?  For  neighborhood  survival?     10
  • 11. Green spaces – not just gardens – connect together many disparate urban elements. They bring individuals together. They are part of urban ecosystems, working to process pollution and drain water. They are part of neighborhood revitalization, as in Quesada Garden, a one- block community garden in San Francisco that serves as a local hub for political organization and anti-crime efforts. So here’s a diagram, drawn from my research on community gardens, that suggests how many actors might be involved in something as seemingly simple as a single community garden. The closer a circle is to the big green “garden” circle, the more present it is in the physical space of the garden. It’s striking how many different kinds of actors are involved in keeping community gardens alive – people, technologies like email lists and GIS, laws about how you can use land, political parties who get involved in supporting or limiting gardens, chemicals. That’s why I think it’s helpful to think of green spaces not on their own but as networks – of ecosystems, of social relationships, of urban political arrangements. We can start to ask ourselves – who and what can green spaces connect? And what connects green spaces? It allows us to see non-humans like bees and water drops as part of the design space – and think about not just human-centered design but design for non-humans as well. 11
  • 12. The  next  thing  I  want  to  discuss  is  everything  that  stands  in  the  way  of  remaking  urban  spaces  through  design  –   their  obduracy.   Obduracy is a very useful concept coined by urbanist Anique Hommels to describe why Things. Don’t. Change. Many people have brought up similar ideas, but I think the concept of obduracy is a helpful framework for putting your dilemma into perspective. It has three different dimensions. 1) Frames – local political interests and struggles for dominance. 2) Embeddedness – the degree to which an object depends on other ones, and is in turn a source of dependency. 3) Enduring attitudes and habits – what we might call ‘cultures.’ Obduracy is an excellent way to describe what happened to the promoters of the “green dots” plan. The framing of this particular issue was very damaging – it seemed like outsiders coming in, with the help of powerful local politicians, and telling people what to do with what they saw as their own homes. But even despite the ravages of Katrina, these homes and neighborhoods were embedded – people owned their homes and had legal protection. Many of them had some insurance that would repay rebuilding. And indeed, many worked to make their homes even more embedded in the fabric of the city by renovating as fast as they could, to make their neighborhoods ever more solid – in order to contradict any idea to demolish them. Finally, there’s the culture of homeownership and neighborhood allegiance. The map of New Orleans is iconic, and people feel like it represents their lives. I would argue that people felt that their neighborhood belonged to them, and felt angry at the erasure of their love and commitment as symbolized by the flat green dots. 12  
  • 13. So what do we do if we want to change things – for the better? Here are three starting points – tools to think with in approaching green space and other urban issues. 13  
  • 14. Where do you think this photo was taken? This is Golden Gate Park -- before it was a park, before the space was completely remade. As I said earlier, we forget that urban nature isn’t natural. Plant life and greenery survive in cities because humans either make room for it, actively cultivate it. Sometimes, destroy neighborhoods for it. One way to denaturalize green space – and other spaces – is to defamiliarize it. As “to make by making strange.” This  is  the  idea  underlying  a  lot  of  the  seeding  ideas  projects  –  you  rethink  urban   infrastructure,  like  a  parking  lot.  And  call  it  out  as  man-­‐made  and  redesignable Designers,  of  course,  do  this  all  the  <me.  But  there  are  some  special  tricks  for  working   in  ci<es,  because  ci<es  are  so  mundane  and  so  easily  taken  for  granted.  It’s  easy  to   believe  that  Golden  Gate  Park  has  always  been  parkland,  because  that’s  what  your   eyes  tell  you.  This  is  what  geographers  call  “the  lie  of  the  land”  –  the  tendency  to   assume  that  what  you  see  is  what’s  there.       So one of my primary tools in thinking about green space is the study of history. What can the victory gardens of WWII tell us about today? 14  
  • 15. One way to work around obduracy is to get yourself your own allies. You can read this literally – as in getting political allies. But I’m fascinated by the power and weakness of what I might call charismatic images – images that mobilize constituencies for and against the programs and ideas that they represent. The green dots map was, in a sense, charismatic. It mobilized constituencies to defeat it. It was, in a sense, a very successful map. For a different example, take these satellite photos to the right – which have been called “50 Million Dollar Photos”. Why where they worth 50 Million? On the right are two satellite photos of Washington DC. Taken together, they document the disappearance of trees in the metropolitan area. They’re pretty murky photos, honestly. Kind of the opposition of charismatic. But in conjunction with a newspaper photo they prompted a 50 Million Dollar commitment to reforesting DC from a charitable foundation. The city hired a professional urban forester for the first time in many years, increased tree planting, and drafted and approved its first tree ordinance. These images didn’t speak for themselves – they needed human spokespeople, or maybe an influential and far-reaching spokes-institution like the Washington Post, to argue for what they should mean, and why they should be important. Even if you think your work stands on its own, it will always be perceived by others as having a context. Having allies and a community. The question is, as with the Urban Land Institute and the Bring New Orleans Back Commission, whether your audience sees your allies as a benefit or a downside. 15  
  • 16. In 1969, Sherry Arnstein put forward this model for understanding citizen participation in urban planning. I’m not going to go into the details here – there are copies you can read online – but the rungs of the ladder move up from lesser to greater participation. I think works equally well for thinking about the agency of potential consumers and users in design. More tactical level, the question often is: what level am I working on? What level should I be working on? I often think of moving up and down the ladder in terms of obduracy. The more embedded a network is. The more tied in it is to existing physical installations, to ways of doing things. The more tendentious it is in terms of organizational frames. The more bound up in cultural understanding of the “right” way to live and be happy – the higher one should consider going. Many of the projects I’ve shown you – for example, many in the planting ideas sections – do not face particular challenges of obduracy. Projects like reforesting a city…may well. This requires a certain amount of honesty with ourselves. The lower levels of the ladder are not necessarily bad – although it is hard to make a case for therapy or manipulation – but they are often not suitable for what we want our interventions in green space to do as technologies. 16  
  • 17. So. Let’s return to the notions of community and context that I brought up at the beginning of this talk. When people talk about context, they usually mean “background.” Something passive. I want to suggest that in working with urban green space – or really, any kind of social design project at all, context, as it’s usually understood, does not exist. There is no way to cleanly assume a passive background. Projects spring from specific constellations of people and interests, and interact with others. Depending on what audience they reach, the green dots are either a sideshow or the main event. Community, as it’s usually understood, can be a little misleading. First, because “community” doesn’t mean agreement. Often, things that we describe as “communities” are contentious and divided. Certainly, that’s what I see in “community” gardens. Second, because “community” may not be the most interesting way to describe all the actors involved in a project. Maybe they are tax payers, hives of bees, renters, or simply passers-by. And that’s great. It means the world is more exciting, more diverse, more risky. It means you cannot take your status as an “expert” for granted, or the applause of the people you want to help. It makes the world more fun. 17  
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