City State - Toronto Open Data Workshop Ignite Presentation

Hi, I’m Ma*hew, and I work for a design strategy ﬁrm called Norma<ve. I’d like to thank Mark and team for organizing this event and recognize the leadership our city is providing by opening up its data to the world. This ignite talk is called the New Shape of the City, and it’s a geeky nod to a few diﬀerent authors that I was exposed to while studying environmental planning. 1

I love the no<on of Open – especially that it works in so many contexts. I’m really excited about the fact that our city is really geJng it. The thing is, if we’re learning to be a city that thinks like the web, we need to recognize that “Open” is a two way street. One way informa<on ﬂows won’t cut it. 2

When I think about my open city data dream app, the no<on that Open can (and should) go both ways is the core feature, func<onality, message and value. For ci<zens, it’s not just about what you can take out, but what you can put back. City State is a tool that gets us comfortable with having that conversa<on. 3

Before I ended up doing design strategy, and prior to my embrace of all things web, I was a GIS guy. I ate, drank and dreamed GIS. I did my undergrad in GIS, and worked in GIS research labs and GIS startups. You get the picture. 4

This Allen Ave. My car is the red one right in the middle, and my house is right beside it. We take this data for granted, even though 5 years ago you didn’t see it outside of professional GIS circles. This is an image of the city, it’s shape, but not really. It’s just a picture. It’s not a city. 5

Down at street level is where the real data ﬂows, where the interac<ons happen. Once you’re here, you realize that as comprehensive as our exis<ng data about our ci<es is, it’s s<ll pre*y basic. There’s a disconnect between our physical world hardware and our nascent digital analogs. 6

I guess what I’m trying to say is that ci<es are like computers for the physical world. They’re a soYware layer for our interac<ons with the physical environment. It’s amazing really. You put raw material in, and ci<es push out new value. Talk about parallel processing. We’ve got 2.5 million CPU’s in the Toronto model. 7

So when you think about computers, remember that you don’t just read data from your storage, you write to it as well. And when you write to it, it becomes available for reading. And if you put it on a network, it has the poten<al to become something special. 8

So when I talk about my open data dream applica<on, I’m really talking about enabling the beginnings of the read/write city. I want to see our city work like a big old hard drive, or maybe more appropriately, a big cloud where we can start to collect and share stuﬀ. I know you’re all thinking I’m crazy. What about privacy, legal concerns, and all that other fun stuﬀ? 9

People, it’s always been a read/write city. Always. If anything the last century did more to turn ci<es into read-‐only ci<es than any other period during the history of ci<es. I don’t blame ci<es by the way, I blame the 20th century – it’s an easy target. 10

Richard Feynman gave a talk in 1959 which some point to as the star<ng point of nanotechnology. In it he talked about the future possibili<es that would come from understanding how to manipulate and construct ma*er at an atomic scale. More than having one single point for his talk, he wanted to get people thinking about what it meant to think at that scale. 11

I’m sugges<ng in some ways that we need to ﬁnd or embrace a mind shiY like Richard Feynman’s. We need to rethink scale and look at what the real atoms are in our city, and what that means for open data. I think when it comes to data ﬂows, there’s plenty of room at the bo*om. 12

This is because in my mind, down at the bo*om, ci<zens make the best sensors. We’re all awesome autonomous li*le nano-‐computers, working inside one big computer called Toronto.. We’re awesome at data collec<on; built for it in fact. It’s just really hard right now to share it and aggregate it outside of those cron job elec<on-‐type things. 13

When I see a scene like this, I see everything that makes our city great. So many forms of interac<on, meatspace, builtspace and digitalspace all blended into one. I wonder how we can start to do something that makes our awareness of these overlapping worlds more explicit. 14

Right now in my mind, we need a form ﬁeld for the state of the city. How’s it’s feeling, what it’s doing. Collected as discrete inputs from our ci<zen sensors, and available for rollup, ﬁrehose drinking, or just toe-‐dipping. 15

In “ The Image of the City”, Kevin Lynch talked about how individuals perceive and navigate urban landscapes They form mental maps of how they interact with the space. I say that as we’re star<ng to live in ci<es that are now forming new kinds of space (informa<on), we need to help people build new mental maps 16

If we’re opening our data, making it two-‐way, and (hopefully) looking to do this in real-‐<me, we need to start seeing new images, and new maps. Pulses and pa*erns are the inputs that people need to understand their city as it adds digital informa<on to the exis<ng soYware layer. City and ci<zens alike need this data. It’s not about stalking people, it’s about showing the new shape of the city. It’s about ﬂocks, not individual birds. 17

City State should let people put data into the city. Not prescrip<vely, but emergently. Don’t tell ci<zens what to put in the form ﬁeld; let them decide how to use it. We know what to do with Google, and we kind of know what to do with things like Twi*er, so I don’t see why we can’t ﬁgure out what to do with Toronto. 18

City State isn’t about pushing out new features for users, it’s about listening and reflec<ng. It’s about star<ng by building just enough. Minimum Viable Product as they say in the tech startup world. The data will define itself, just like Toronto defined itself and con<nues to do so. The best way to learn from emergence is to reflect, both inwards and outwards. Complexity doesn’t have to be complex. 19

So that’s my idea for this app concept I’m calling City State. An app that allows ci<zens to act as simple sensors, to give back, to describe the state of the city in real-‐<me from any place at any instant. And we get some raw data for our new digital city soYware layer – something that allows the city and its ci<zens to begin to understand the new shape of the city. 20

City State - Toronto Open Data Workshop Ignite Presentation

by Matthew Milan on Nov 02, 2009

Accessibility

Categories

Tags

Upload Details

Usage Rights

1 Embed 3

Statistics

City State - Toronto Open Data Workshop Ignite Presentation — Document Transcript