Introducing the Digital City Audit (DCA) Project

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Introducing the Digital City Audit (DCA) Project
3011 Geographies of Cyberspace

• Martin Dodge
• (m.dodge_at_ucl.ac.uk)
• Practical 4, Friday 29th October 2004
• http//www.casa.ucl.ac.uk/cyberspace

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The emerging digital city - remaking urban
space and cyberspaceBy the year 2050,
everything around us will be some form of
computer. As planners we are accustomed to
using computers to advance our science and art
but it would appear that the city itself is
turning into a constellation of
computers.Michael Batty (1995)
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Objectives of the DCA

• getting you thinking about the diversity of
  infrastructure in the streets around us. think
  about how people are using the infrastructure
• what is the geography of cyber infrastructure at
  the micro scale? how is it distributed?
• who owns urban cyberspace?
• how dependent is city on cyberspace? how
  vulnerable are people if something goes wrong?
• you will be contributing useful baseline data on
  geographies of cyberspace
• team working skills and project management
• surveying skills
• mapping, design/graphics, extending website
  building skills

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What is the Digital City Audit project?

• a group project for practicals after reading week
• survey and map all the visible digital
  infrastructure in local urban environment
• work in teams of 3/4
• 1 x practical carrying out a detailed street
  survey
• 2 x practicals to do mapping and make a website
• 1 x presentation of your findings
• this forms the assessed course work and is a
  compulsory part of the course. It is worth 50

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Assessment of DCA

• based on the performance of the group and your
  individual activity in the group
• fieldwork attendance 10
• practical attendance 10
• website and presentation 40
• individual report 40
• ------------------------------------------------
• total 100
• you all write an individual report summarising
  the work of your group. maximum 1,500 words
• submission of this report is Wed. 12th January
  2005

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Time schedule of the DCA

• Friday 29 Oct. this introduction
• Friday 5 Nov. DCA fieldwork
• Reading Week
• Friday 19 Nov. DCA mapping
• Friday 26 Nov. CCTV control centre visit
• Friday 3 Dec. DCA mapping / website
• Friday 10th Dec. presentation your DCA findings

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Things you need to audit

• 1. phone boxes - ordinary phone boxes broken
  phone boxes new broadband/email phone boxes
  (they have a keyboard) info kiosks
• 2. bank ATMs
• 3. CCTV security cameras
• 4. traffic cameras (CC, speeding, red-light)
• 5. satellite dishes (small Sky ones on side of
  buildings, also bigger white telecommunications
  dishes on roofs)
• 6. microwave dishes on roofs
• 7. mobile phone antennas on roofs
• 8. digital bus information screens

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Cyberspace is all around us

• Its very easy to ignore local environment
• not just ground level. look on lamp posts, on
  walls, in door recesses, above street height,
• look up - stuff high on buildings, on roofs
• note, we are only surveying public space
• obviously we cant tell where all the stuff is
  underground
• think about the relationship between
  infrastructure and local environmental settings
  and social geography of the area

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What does this stuff look like?

• typical mobile phone antennas, tall, thin
• typical microwave dishes

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CCTV camera spotting

• try to get as detailed and accurate survey of
  cameras as possible
• survey 4 key criteria
• position (x,y location, plus height)
• type (fixed, movable, dome, with light)
• purpose (door way monitor, car park, street)
• ownership (according to the type building they
  are mounted on)
• plus any evidence of warning signs? what do the
  signs say?

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Types of cameras to look out for
typical fixed, doorway monitoring camera
panning swivel cameras
cameras inside dome
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Urban environmental context

• think about the the type of streets
• is it retail, residential, commercial
• what is the traffic level (vehicle, pedestrian)?
• does it feel safe? any signs of graffiti /
  vandalism?

Ethnography of technology use

• focus on mobile phone use
• try to note the types people and where they are
• also, do you see anyone using a phone box?

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DCA survey areas - 8 groups
each group gets a different area
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Size of your survey area

• 1/4 km square chunk of Bloomsbury
• detailed printed base maps on the day of the
  survey

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Optional - take some photos

• if someone in your group has a digital camera and
  would like to take photos for the DCA survey
• can used on your groups website
• of course, youll need to note where the photos
  were taken and what they show

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Some fieldwork guidance

• most of Bloomsbury is pretty safe, but be alert
  wary
• stay on public streets. do not go into any
  buildings or onto private land (e.g. court yards,
  beer gardens)
• wear warm clothing, be prepared for rain
• stay together at all the times
• carry your UCL id. If asked, tell people politely
  you are doing a small survey for a geography
  course
• if you get any hassle, make a polite excuse and
  walk away
• dont trip over or walk into a lamp post dont
  get arrested dont fall under a bus

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Rest of this practical

• form into team and signup on the sheet
• read and sign the risk assessment form
• then working in your team, undertake fieldwork
  preparation

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Fieldwork preparation

• download the base map for your area
• think about how to do the street survey, in
  particular the coding scheme you will use during
  the fieldwork and labelling the map to go on the
  web
• evaluate approach in some CCTV mapping projects
• look for any traffic cams or webcams in your
  study area
• try to find any ATMs in your study area
• see if there are any mobile phone masts in your
  study area
• check out pollution data websites for local area
• look for useful contextual socio-economic data on
  Bloomsbury
• try to find a aerial photograph of your study area

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Download base map
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CCTV camera mapping projects
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Evaluate CCTV mapping schemes

• go to
• NY Surveillance Camera Players -
  www.notbored.org/scp-maps.html
• Amsterdam map - www.spotthecam.nl
• Institute for Applied Autonomy, iSee interactive
  map for Manhattan (Routes of Least
  Surveillance) www.appliedautonomy.com/isee/
  
• use IE, not netscape for this site

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Take a look at this guidewww.notbored.org/map-mak
ing.html
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BBC London's Jam Camswww.bbc.co.uk/london/travel
/jamcams/
try out this site
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Real-time visual monitoring of London from
cyberspace

• webcams (near-real time)
• personal (fun) tourist promotional business
  promotional traffic cams
• some sources to look for cams in central London
  try to find webcams in
• the Bloomsbury area
• www.londonwebcam.com
• www.bbc.co.uk/webcams
• www.camvista.com
• can you find any more (Google??)

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Any ATMs in your study area?

• Use the ATM Locator, www.multimap.com/clients/plac
  es.cgi?clientlink
• VISA Find a cash machine www.visaeu.com/main.htm
  l

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Sitefinder, an interactive map of mobile phone
antennas www.sitefinder.radio.gov.uk

• see if you can find any mobile phone antennas in
  your survey area. they are shown as little blue
  triangles
• who owns them? how high are they?
• be sure to look for them when you do the
  fieldwork

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Contextual data sources

• what might be the relationship between cyberspace
  infrastructure and other socio-demographic
  characteristics? E.g. is there more CCTV in
  rich or poor areas?
• there are quite a number publicly available
  (free) sources on the web that might be useful
• but need to think at what spatial / temporal
  scales is the data collected and released?
• do any of these sources provide data specific
  enough to your teams survey area?
• think about how you might incorporate some of
  this data into your DCA website?

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• UpMyStreet provides useful socio-economic and
  geodemographic data for small areas. searchable
  by postcode (www.upmystreet.co.uk)

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• Find an aerial photograph for the area
• from www.multimap.com and GetMapping

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Pollution and noise data

• some sources to look for pollution in or around
  Camden. try them yourself
• www.londonair.org.uk/london/asp/home.asp
• www.londonnoisemap.com/

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Next steps

• background readings for this practical,
• they are available from the 3011 website
• Mike Battys article on the Computable City
• Mark Monmoniers article on webcams
• Mondays lecture in on surveillance

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