Monday, January 24, 2011
Permeability - shaping how people move within cities
Permeability and crowdsourcing
Permeability is
defined by the ability of the urban tissue to offer different routes, through
and within it and measures opportunity for movement. Accessibility is a product
measure of permeability; it is actually the product of the individual and the
cadastral system the cadastral street patterns which is the layout of urban
blocks shows the public space network and pinpoints pain areas that are
blocking permeability in an urban area.
By defining the
spaces that define the blocks ,we can analyze the nature of the tissue of the
development.
By analyzing the
tissue, we can understand better the relationship between the buildings and the
space around them; this relationship will give us insight on their
permeability.
.
Old Souk,Dubai -
http://www.dubaiwall.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/old_souk.jpg
is the
availability of vistas, which are the views corridors in a tissue 
represents
the ability to seek different routes .
The measure of
permeability is the degree of the grid texture; finer grid permits higher
visual and physical permeability than coarser grids.
links
essentially to the mental map of the city for its visitors and residents-
it is the amenability of its tissues for new imprints-
new crowd courcing techniques are rewriting the way permeability has been deisgned - the sheer volume of information relating to how citizens view their city permeability means that designers ,urban planners and policy makers may be more and more challenged -
NYC launched a competition last year AND GUESS WHO WINS- A WAY FINDING APPLICATION -this gives a real indication that permeability is one of the most important quality that citizen look in cities because it is what helps moveand experience its spaces.would be interesting to see what types of urban information such application might tell us ?
Thursday, January 20, 2011
So What is Accessibility for Public Spaces?
Public space should be accessible to and used by all. (Arendt ,1958) It is particularly important,
as Fraser (1990) and Hartley (1992) argue, that by claiming that public space
as an embodiment of the public realm, it should include and foster interactions
between different groups of the society. It should also offer excluded groups
an opportunity to claim their rights of representation within the general
community.
Demographic accessibility refers to
the link between the production activities of the space and the output
generated to the entity operating it whether it’s a public or private agency. The production activities, such as retail, can be analyzed through the
formal and informal programs that the implemented design generates as well as
the one designed for [N1] [N2] .The inclusivity of the public space is established collectively
through the diverse groups that uses is to engage in dialogue, debate and
oppositional struggles. Key aspects of inclusive public space are its
suitability for gatherings and encounters and its accessibility as an arena
through which privacy is contested (Mitchell 1995)>Inclusive public space also encompasses the range of wage groups it serves and being served
to. Demographic accessibility is important since it allows for various
perceptions of the space to surface. In fact, (Ramon,
2004) advocates that variables
such as age, sex, social class and ethnic identity
affect the way urban life is perceived[N3] .
Physical accessibility is defined
by the nature of the network that links the urban space to its surrounding
urban fabric. The nature of these networks , highway or a pedestrian street,
can change their role from linkages to
obstructions facilitating or preventing exchange processes and therefore the
inclusivity as a quality of Publicness. “Environments,
individuals and/or groups perceived either as threatening, comforting or
inviting may affect entry into a public space” (Tiesdell and Oc, 1998: 648).
Symbolic accessibility can be
distinguished by the degree of users’ engagement with the space in terms of
active/passive engagement. The nature and the scope of
activities incorporated in the public spaces can either allow or prevent the
emergence of spaces of representation. The impact of the spaces of
representation vary depending on the flexibility of such a representation. If
it is narrow, it would only allow for representations of selected groups, if it
is wide, it would allow for overlapping representations and increase its circle
of influence beyond the development to the city scale.
This could even extend to national scale especially in
extraordinary events such as the place de martyrs in Beirut
in becoming an arena for multiple representations for Lebanon over the past two years. By
outlasting mortal lives, it memorializes and thereby conveys a sense of history
and society (Arendt 1958). Public spaces are defined in
terms of the social encounter and exchange “where groups’ interest converge ’(
Borja and Muxi ,2001;Glazer and Lilla 1987;Vernez Moodar 1992;Sorkin
1992;Tibbalds 1992;Worpole 1992). It reinforces the collective identity of the
community (Valle Del,1997; Franck and Paxson,1989;Gehl,1987;Lynch
960;Whyte,1980;Kenstler 1993;Ruddock 1996).
Reinforcing residents’ feelings of
belonging to the city is attributed to the actions that can be carried out in
public space which reflects an opportunity to urban justice (Borja, 2000).
Thursday, January 13, 2011
regional boundaries drawn by phone
An Analysis of phone calls shows how regional boundaries could be ideally drawn by generating a map of regions of Great Britain in which people communicate more with each other than with outsiders.
Crowd sourcing technologies might change the way we view our boundaries , As Heidegger once said, a boundary is where reality begins it own unfolding ..
An interesting study coordinated between Cornell, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and in the United Kingdom Analysed telephone calls in UK and generated a map in which the community/communication boundaries and patches were compared to boundaries between admistrative regions . The map is a result of looking at a database of 12 billion calls over a one-month period, from which 20.8 million nodes and 85.8 million links between them were extracted. The map of the island was divided into 3,042 pixels, each 9.5 kilometres square- The main measure used was total call time between nodes in each pixel and those in every other pixel. The computer then automatically generated groupings among pixels until it found an arrangement that showed the most links within communities and the fewest between them.
"A community is something where most of the links are inside the community instead of outside," explained It was Steven Strogatz, the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Applied Mathematics, that advised the researchers on how to analyze the data using an algorithm- The basis of the algorithm is on the number of links generated by phone calls inside a certain boundary – it is an interesting study since anthropology, sociology, mathematics and information technology experts all worked together to test our main hypothesis of a community – which is by definition an introverted group of people that share together values – mathematics interprets the quantity of the links generated by these values. IT will be more insightful to see if specific data mining on specific key words that relate to specific communal historical values can lead to the same results. .*
The research according to its instigator Dr, Strogatz saus that it could be applied in areas where conflict of boundaries cannot be resolved through technical ways such as surveying> this method seems to have a more basis into the social dimension as it relates directly to how people interact with each other and in that case it has a lot of capabilities if a historical dimension is also investigated.
Social science usually used observation – such as field trips and questionnaire in order to describe, analyse and study specific cultural and political organisations. It is here the overlay of geography that makes this research multi dimensional
The result is that the groupings coincided nicely with existing boundaries of administrative regions. The researchers came to the conclusion that "cohesive patterns within society promoting change in administrative boundaries and the latter, in turn, affecting human interaction."
Two main discrepancies from administrative boundaries were observed:
- People in eastern Wales communicated extensively with those around nearby cities in the adjacent region of West Midlands.
- Scotland communicated less with other parts of Britain.
- new "region" west of London was showing which is very close to a growing centre of high-tech industry
The methods used in this research can be extended to cell phone records, credit cards or personal travel patterns which would measure more personal as opposed to business communication, or with credit card transactions or personal travel patterns,
The research will be very interesting since it is giving a new social dimension to what preciously known as geographical analysis – it is the overlap of the geography with social that will give transportation planners, policy makers, local councils and other city managers the possibility to see linkages on their blind spot- is not this what planning is ? Is not this one of the way we can use technology to assist us in sustainable planning?
- The algorithm was developed by former Cornell researchers Michelle Girvan, now a University of Maryland physics professor, and Mark Newman, now a University of Michigan physics professor. The research is reported in the Dec. 8 issue of the online journal PLoS ONE. The Cornell algorithm is described in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 103: 89577-8582 (2006).
Monday, January 10, 2011
why research on public space is now more important for policy makers?
In an era of globalization, the role of public policy makers and
urban designers is increasingly concerned in marketing their cities by advocating that they are integrated into the global map.
Technology, and most precisely the upgrade of information technology sector,
becomes essential in marketing the urban space as being connected with
the global flows of capital, people (Porter et al. 2000 cited in Marshall
2003:18).
Subsequently, global urban projects described as large scale developments built to accommodate
high-end functions, are increasingly
initiated such as Cyberport (Hong Kong) ,Tokyo Rainbow Town, Muang Thong
Thani(Thailand), Luijazui and the Pudong
Redevelopment Area (Shanghai),New Downtown(Singapore), Putrajaya (Malaysia)
(Olds 1995,Marshall 2003).
However, under the pressure
of economic development and global agenda, Public spaces are increasingly
privatized and purified (Graham and
Aurigi 1997, Graham and Marvin 2001).
As a result, investigating interventions that aim at providing inclusive
public space in the context of a global agenda will provide linkages in between
the growing urban research on the privatization of public space and the actual
urban design practices and products.
Therefore, the study of possible urban interventions targeting the
public space of suburban developments spurred by the global agenda is important.
These interventions need to be based on a conceptual framework that
will synthesize the design attributes of public space with the development goals set by
the global agenda.
In particular, there needs to be a more thorough exploration on how the purification and privatization of public space can be reversed
through urban interventions that can benefit from the recent growing research
on retrofitting suburbs that share the same attributes of
global projects .
In addition, the analysis needs to take into consideration how public
space were conceived in the context and the
reasons behind the particular design and policy decisions which lead to the particular
characteristics of these spaces.
Importance of global projects
Research on
Globalization developed intensively (e.g. Castells 1989; Harvey 1989; Giddens
1990; King 1993; Sassen 1991) during the last decade although it is believed to
start during 1970’s (Waller stein 1974; Castells 1989; Harvey 1989; Giddens
1990; King 1993; Sassen 1991).
However, the focus of the research
was on mainly economic and political processes that generalized globalization
debate into abstract forces affecting the urban space. Global projects are
emerging concepts that deal with the specificities of the urban space being
remodeled to respond to global agenda. As such, they offer an opportunity to
investigate specific articulations in space and time.
Urban research on
globalization based on a locale is needed as it provides new directions in term
of being more empirical and specific and leading to practical interpretation of
theoutput of the design process .
§ Importance of the study public space
Although privatization of
public space has been researched on since 1980, the research focused more in
identifying the problems and ills of such a privatized ’’public space’’.
Starting from a more activist
perspective, there needs to be more thinking on interventions that capitalize on
existing research and address the possibility of the success of such
interventions within the global context.
The approach will be essentially more multidisciplinary
as public space is defined by integrating multiple layers in terms of
anthropology than sociology, urban interventions formulated shall offer the
opportunity of a holistic integrative approach
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