Real Time Cities, or Just Info Porn?
Andrea Vaccari, from the SENSEable City lab at MIT, spoke at ETech recently about how cities are being transformed by mobile Web technologies. He described MIT's project WikiCity, which monitors cell phone traces in Rome and creates visualizations from them. The goal is ultimately to make this data useful to actual people, in real time. The theory being that this will make cities run more efficiently. And we're seeing proof of this to some degree already - for example electronic bus stop displays that tell you when the next bus is expected, based on GPS data. However, for the most part projects like WikiCity are still academic exercises. For the geeks amongst us, just another beautiful visualization of data to marvel at. When will these projects create meaningful change in cities?
WikiCity is part of a wider trend in technology often referred to as the 'internet of things', in which real world objects are connected by a wireless network. WikiCity is described as an open source real-time system for a city. The city that Vaccari mentioned at ETech was Rome - others that are up and running are Copenhagen and Amsterdam. The goal of the WikiCity Rome project, which was a kind of sequel to the Real Time Rome project in 2006, is to answer this question: "Can you have a city that performs as a real time control system?" The components of this experiment are a city; sensors that accumulate data about the city's state in real-time (commonly mobile phones and GPS data); computing "intelligence" to evaluate the data; and physical actuators to make any changes or adjustments to the city necessary.
Currently, the most common form of physical actuators are things like traffic lights and remotely updated street signage (we've already mentioned the GPS buses). However, MIT suggests that "a much more flexible actuator would be the city's own inhabitants". In other words, people can use and act on the data, which would then change the way the city operates.
As an example, according to MIT a person could "consult the [WikiCity] map to find the most crowded place in Rome to drink an aperitivo - and then identify the least congested route by which to reach it." The theory is that people will then be helping to improve the efficiency of urban systems. Although, of course, it could become extremely inefficient if too many people choose the same crowded place in Rome to drink an aperitivo, and they all take the same "least congested route" to get there. One assumes that the system would update in real-time to offer alternatives, should that scenario occur. But the point is, this theory is untested. We have all this great data and pretty visualizations, but when will we be able to use this.
Jeremy Faludi of the WorldChanging blog wrote that WikiCity is merely "info-porn" at this point, because there hasn't been follow through on the potential. We think that's a fair assessment, but let us know what you think. Also we'd love to hear about other 'real time city' projects that you're aware of - and are they helping real people yet?
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While it is not 'real time', since it is focused more on the history of people and places in a city, Brian's Book (www.briansbook.org) is a place where people can find and curate the history of places, addresses and people in a city's history (this used to be a Rexall Pharmacy from 1948 to 1972, that sort of thing). No fancy visualizations, apart from basic maps, but if you know something about the history of a place (and most history goes unrecorded), check it out.
Couldn't all this real time data also be used for less honorable purposes?
Couldn't all this real time data also be used for less honorable purposes?
Cazoodle is exploring more of these technologies everyday. For example our site currently has information that is updated daily, we would love to have the information linked to an interface that shows exactly where a person is in the city, where the city is a hot bed of activity, and then where a potential apartment may be located in relativity to said hot bed.
Thank you.
So are you are moving to country now? Still No!! Boy, you got some stress capacity:-p
I know next to nothing about all this stuff, so forgive me if this comment is somewhat naive. I just wonder whether these systems simply create new problems and frustrations, rather than solving very much.
The most frequently cited example above is that of GPS buses, which arguably (to my mind at least) only serve to make catching a bus more frustrating. They can be 'two minutes away' for twenty minutes, presumably because the system works by knowing where they are in relation to the bus stop rather than what time they're supposed to arrive (neither scenario is at all reliable).
The more information we have the more susceptible we are to disappointment and frustration. Take those 'quiet coaches' on trains: I feel enraged when people ignore the signs asking them to be quiet, whereas the noise wouldn't bother me if I didn't know it wasn't allowed.
I think there needs to be much better understanding of human cultural behaviour in order for these systems to avoid causing as many problems as they solve.
Cellphone Traces can make nice art from the look of the image. If we could train people to only use their mobiles when they are on the road it could be cool. If you have people on bikes, walking faster than stalled traffic in busy centres, how would you know that the people walking are not in cars and the ones in cars are not standing on the side of the road talking? It could work on motorways where you are not allowed to walk.
Just a side comment, when adding hyperlinks to other sites, its always good to make them open in a new window so you are not directing traffic away from your blog:)
Detecting traffic jams is one application.
has already been implemented in Europe with little success.
Read the article & then went to www.WikiCity.com
'Not the same, but cool nonetheless...