From Social Butterfly to Engaged Citizen: Urban Informatics, Social Media, Ubiquitous Computing, and Mobile Technology to Support Citizen Engagement (The MIT Press)

Studies from around the world show how the social media tools of Web 2.0 are shaping engagement with cities, communities, and spaces. Web 2.0 tools, including blogs, wikis, and photo sharing and social networking sites, have made possible a more participatory Internet experience. Much of this technology is available for mobile phones, where it can be integrated with such device-specific features as sensors and GPS. From Social Butterfly to Engaged Citizen examines how this increasingly open, collaborative, and personalizable technology is shaping not just our social interactions but new kinds of civic engagement with cities, communities, and spaces. It offers analyses and studies from around the world that explore how the power of social technologies can be harnessed for social engagement in urban areas. Chapters by leading researchers in the emerging field of urban informatics outline the theoretical context of their inquiries, describing a new view of the city as a hybrid that merges digital and physical worlds; examine technology-aided engagement involving issues of food, the environment, and sustainability; explore the creative use of location-based mobile technology in cities from Melbourne, Australia, to Dhaka, Bangladesh; study technological innovations for improving civic engagement; and discuss design research approaches for understanding the development of sentient real-time cities, including interaction portals and robots Contents 6 Preface 10 Theories of Engagement 11 Civic and Civil Engagement 12 Creative Engagement 12 Technologies of Engagement 13 Design Engagement 14 Conclusion 14 Acknowledgments 16 Part I. Theories of Engagement 20 Foreword 22 Chapter 1. The Ideas and Ideals in Urban Media 24 Technological and Urban Imaginaries 25 U-City 26 Urban Flaneurs and Situationists 28 The City as an Operating System 30 The City as a Commons 31 The City as a Community of Strangers 32 The City as a Public Sphere 33 Conclusion 34 Notes 35 References 37 Chapter 2. The Moral Economy of Social Media 40 The Moral Economy 41 Conceptual Framework 43 Watching Social Media Happen 47 Audiences and Publics 51 Conclusion 54 Acknowledgments 55 Note 55 References 55 Chapter 3. The Protocological Surround: Reconceptualizing Radio and Architecture in the Wireless City 58 Sensual Integration in the Mobile Wireless City 58 Radio on 62 Wireless Regimes and the Lightness of Touch 67 Engagement and Contact in the Wireless Surround 69 References 71 Chapter 4. Mobile Media and the Strategies of Urban Citizenship: Control, Responsibilization, Politicization 74 Mobile Media, Citizen Engagement, and the “Graffiti Problem” 75 Making Cities Better? Models of Citizen Engagement in Graffiti-e-nose, Citizens Connect, and ReFace 79 Mobile Media, Urban Governance, and Citizenship: Control, Responsibilization, Politicization 83 Mobile Technologies and Citizen Engagement: Participation ≠ Empowerment (but Empowerment = Participation) 86 Notes 87 References 87 Part II. Civic Engagement 90 Foreword 92 Chapter 5. Advancing Design for Sustainable Food Cultures 96 The Context of Food Cultures: Engagement across Disciplines 100 Farmers’ Markets: Engagement with and among Users/Nonusers 103 Food Production: Engagement for Sustained Usability 105 Refl ection and Future Directions 108 References 108 Chapter 6. Building Digital Participation Hives: Toward a Local Public Sphere 112 Introduction 112 Analyzing Participation in Web 2.0 Civic Initiatives 114 Building a Participation Hive: Conditions for Growing Participation 119 Conclusion 127 Notes 128 References 129 Chapter 7. Between Experience, Affect, and Information: Experimental Urban Interfaces in the Climate Change Debate 134 Related Work 135 Theoretical Foundation and Relations 138 Case Projects 143 Analysis of the Projects 146 Discussion, Concluding Remarks, and Future Work 150 Notes 151 References 152 Chapter 8. More Than Friends: Social and Mobile Media for Activist Organizations 154 Designing for Activist Organizations 163 Conclusion 167 References 167 Chapter 9. Gardening Online: A Tale of Suburban Informatics 170 The Collaborative Research and Design Project 172 SmartGardenWatering.org.au 174 Going into the Garden: The Reception of SGW 1.0 176 SmartGardenWatering 2.0 179 Theoretical and Practical Implications for HCI Design 180 Conclusion 182 References 183 Chapter 10. The Rise of the Expert Amateur: Citizen Science and Microvolunteerism 186 Manifesto 186 Environment, Technology, and Us 187 Sensor Stories 191 Acknowledgments 210 References 210 Part: III Creative Engagement 216 Foreword 218 Reference 220 Chapter 11. Street Haunting: Sounding the Invisible City 222 “Forget Old Ways to Describe Cities”: Picturing the Invisible in the Real-Time City 224 “Where Did I Lose You, My Trampled Fantasies?” 226 Listening in to the (Invisible) Past within the Present: Archival Detours and Auditory Detournements 229 Conclusion 231 Notes 231 References 232 Chapter 12. Family Worlds: Technological Engagement for Families Negotiating Urban Traffic 236 Families and Technology 236 New Technologies and the Distributed Family 238 Familial Use of Technologies in Urban Contexts 239 Children and Urban Traffi c 243 Discussion 245 Implications for Design of Family-Oriented Technologies 246 Conclusion 248 References 249 Chapter 13. Urban Media: New Complexities, New Possibilities—A Manifesto 254 Understanding Urban Media 254 Urban Narratives 255 Case Studies 256 Conclusion 269 Acknowledgments 269 Note 270 References 270 Links: Active Projects, Parsons The New School for Design 271 Chapter 14. Bjørnetjeneste: Using the City as a Backdrop for Location-Based Interactive Narratives 272 Related Work 273 Augmenting the City with Fiction 277 Bjørnetjeneste 279 The Bjørnetjeneste Prototype System 280 The Storyline 281 User-Experience Test Screenings 285 Discussion 287 Conclusion 289 Acknowledgments 290 References 291 Chapter 15. Mobile Interactions as Social Machines: Poor Urban Youth at Playin Bangladesh 294 Mobile-Use Holding Power 295 Methodology 297 Findings 298 Discussion 303 Conclusion 306 Acknowledgments 306 Notes 306 References 307 Part IV: Technologies of Engagement 310 Foreword 312 Reference 314 Chapter 16. Sensing, Projecting, and Interpreting Digital Identity through Bluetooth: From Anonymous Encounters to Social Engagement 316 Space, Place, and Identity 317 The Studies 319 Conclusion and Ongoing Work 328 Acknowledgments 330 Note 330 References 330 Chapter 17. The Policy and Export of Ubiquitous Place: Investigating South Korean U-Cities 334 Korean Social Context and U-Cities 336 New Songdo as Ubiquitous City 339 Exportation of Urban Form 342 Civic Engagement and the U-City 345 Conclusion 347 References 349 Chapter 18. Engaging Citizens and Community with the UBI Hotspots 354 UBI Hotspots 355 Discussion 367 References 369 Chapter 19. Crowdsensing in the Web: Analyzing the Citizen Experience inthe Urban Space 372 Introduction 372 Collecting and Mining Buzz 373 The Eyes of the World: Visualizing Buzz as it Comes Online 376 Ranking Buzz: A Case Study in Architecture 379 Understanding Buzz: Natural Language Text Analysis of User-Generated Content 383 Conclusions 389 Acknowledgments 390 Note 390 References 390 Chapter 20. Empowering Urban Communities through Social Commonalities 394 Semantic Profiles 396 Recommendation Approach 399 Semantic Space Approach 402 Comparing Semantic Profiles 405 Measure 407 Conclusion 409 References 410 Part V: Design Engagement 412 Foreword 414 Sitting on the Train with Our Backs to the Engine 414 References 417 Chapter 21. A Streetscape Portal 420 Background 421 The Streetscape Portal 423 Discussion 427 Other Examples 429 Conclusion 435 Acknowledgments 436 Note 436 References 437 Chapter 22. Nonanthropocentrism and the Nonhuman in Design: Possibilities for Designing New Forms of Engagement with and through Technology 440 Theoretical Roots of Nonanthropocentrism and the Nonhuman 441 Expressivities and Affordances in Deleuze, Guattari, and DeLanda 441 Actor-Network Theory 442 Nonanthropocentrism in Design 443 The Experience of Decentering 448 Conclusion 452 References 453 Chapter 23. Building the Open-Source City: Changing Work Environments for Collaboration and Innovation 456 Theoretical Background 457 Breakout! Escape from the Office 460 Discussion 463 Conclusion 473 Acknowledgments 474 Notes 474 References 476 Chapter 24. Dramatic Character Development Personas to Tailor Apartment Designs for Different Residential Lifestyles 480 The Case-Study Site 482 Workshop Method 484 Data Analysis—Part 1: Design Personas 488 Data Analysis—Part 2: Use Scenarios 493 Conclusion and Future Work 498 Acknowledgments 499 Note 500 References 500 Epilogue: The City as Information Organism 504 References 508 Editor Biographies 510 Author Biographies 514 Index 534 Web 2.0 tools, including blogs, wikis, and photo sharing and social networking sites, have made possible a more participatory Internet experience. Much of this technology is available for mobile phones, where it can be integrated with such device-specific features as sensors and GPS. From Social Butterfly to Engaged Citizen examines how this increasingly open, collaborative, and personalizable technology is shaping not just our social interactions but new kinds of civic engagement with cities, communities, and spaces. It offers analyses and studies from around the world that explore how the power of social technologies can be harnessed for social engagement in urban areas. Chapters by leading researchers in the emerging field of urban informatics outline the theoretical context of their inquiries, describing a new view of the city as a hybrid that merges digital and physical worlds; examine technology-aided engagement involving issues of food, the environment, and sustainability; explore the creative use of location-based mobile technology in cities from Melbourne, Australia, to Dhaka, Bangladesh; study technological innovations for improving civic engagement; and discuss design research approaches for understanding the development of sentient real-time cities, including interaction portals and robots. -- Book Jacket