Erhardt Graeff – Page 20

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Quick read full of insights into how people approach public spaces. This is understandably a classic of urban planning, and is incredibly accessible. I loved how every spread had at least one photo, and often several supporting the text with observable evidence. The book seems like a nice complement to Jane Jacobs classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities, focusing more on the details of design that support the type of livable, walkable cities they both dream of.

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Balancing Deep and Wide Impacts in the Design of Civic Tech (preface)

8 March 2014Erhardt Graeff

Link

https://civic.mit.edu/blog/erhardt/balancing-deep-and-wide-impacts-in-the-design-of-civic-tech

Excerpt

I’m working on a project called Action Path. Similar to Promise Tracker, which will be the featured case study in this session, Action Path is a smartphone app for civic engagement. Specifically, the app uses geo-fencing, a technique based on the awareness of the user’s GPS coordinates, to send notifications to users about opportunities to take quick actions in the form of polls or documentation of a local area for easy, yet contextually-relevant civic engagement. As indicated by my promo slide here, it’s meant to marry mobile computing with the concept of a “Jane Jacobs Walk,” whereby you only really understand a city’s needs and resources through walking its streets. I hope you all agree that this sounds great… at least in theory.

But what does this look like in practice? Well, right now it looks like three two-hour public meetings per week, where I sit and learn about the ongoing planning processes in Somerville—the city where I live and hope to do my research. I am building trust with folks in the planning department at the City of Somerville and the leaders and organizers in civil society organizations who work on issues like land use, affordable housing, and beautification in different neighborhoods around town.

There are lot of conflicting agendas among these different groups, all of whom I need buy-in from in order to, 1) make sure that I have enough people test my app, and 2) ensure the app is stocked with relevant actions that a) make my partners feel good about endorsing it among their members, and b) make the city and private developers happy because the feedback will be in a form that can inform their planning processes, WITHOUT becoming overly politicized. I want to have real impact, and tying the technology to real impact is important for my research

In the end, I have to write this up as a thesis. And that means I need a rigorous study of some kind showing that people’s understanding of their ability to make a difference in their city has changed.

I appreciate that this is an iterative and interactive process that demands flexibility, but it’s also hard from the perspectives of design, research, PLUS overall impact. And it’s actually the social processes around the technology that are harder to design than the mobile app itself.

Balancing Deep and Wide Impacts in the Design of Civic Tech (panel)

8 March 2014Erhardt Graeff

Announcement

http://dml2014.dmlhub.net/event/panel-byv-balancing-deep-and-wide-impacts-in-the-design-of-civic-tech/

Associated Presentation

Graeff, E. 2014. ‘Balancing Deep and Wide Impacts in the Design of Civic Tech.’ Presented at the Digital Media and Learning Conference, Boston, MA, Mar 8.

How to Study Public Life book review

8 March 2014Erhardt GraeffLeave a comment

How to Study Public Life: Methods in Urban Design by Jan Gehl

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I thought this was going to be a methods book on Public Life studies. And it is, but that is only a small part of the book. There is description of the goals and process of public life study, and a set of case examples of how certain methods were used in actual public spaces around the world. I wish there was more detail here and more description of how many people were involved in various aspects and what some of the common pitfalls of this research tend to be. That would have made this a better methods book.

The rest of the book is occupied with celebrating and recounting the career of co-author Jan Gehl. There is an unexpected though interesting literature review of public life studies starting with Jane Jacobs up until about 2012. Each scholar and many of their books get individual treatment here with regard to their contribution to the field and where they expand on past scholars’ work. If you are interested in diving into this field, this is a go to resource.

All in all, it’s an odd book bringing together a lot of loose ends that it seems like Jan Gehl and his co-author Birgitte Svarre had been meaning to publish. The book is beautifully designed and an accessible read; I just wish it spent more time on the “how” in the title.

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Cities for People book review

8 March 2014Erhardt GraeffLeave a comment

Cities for People by Jan Gehl

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is an update to Jan Gehl’s classic Life Between Buildings. Readers of the earlier work will have an opportunity to review the core principles that Gehl has espoused for decades, only updated with full-color photographs from cities around the world—many of which Gehl has worked in but also with many returning from LBB—including Gehl’s obsession with Venice and the Piazza del Campo in Siena. The book does expand it’s arguments by talking about more contemporary building trends with a deep-dive to the triumphs of Gehl’s hometown of Copenhagen, particularly it’s successful increase in bicycle-friendliness.

This is the other area of expansion: Gehl adds on to his livability arguments with new sections on sustainability and healthiness, which reaffirm the needs for cities to be first and foremost for pedestrians. He also touches on developing world contexts and worries about trends there in vehicular traffic crowding out pedestrians and cyclists, making the same mistake developed countries made and are only now undoing. For urban planners and architects, there is a new “Toolbox” section at the end, which collects his principles and diagrams into a few pages for easy reference.

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