[gview file=”https://courses.bowdoin.edu/digital-computational-studies-2430-fall-2014/wp-content/uploads/sites/52/2014/12/Providing-Access-to-Public-Wi-Fi-and-Computers.pdf”]
All posts by Mingo Sanchez
Transect Walk (Parking) – 10/13/14
For my transect walk, I decided to focus on the parking spaces available to tourists and residents in Portland. I started on Temple Street, walked through Bayside, and ended my walk in Old Port. The sheer amount of free parking in Bayside astonished me, since I have heard countless people talk about how little parking there is in Portland. While parking options in Old Port were certainly more limited (and almost always paid), there was an abundance of parking space in Bayside. Seeing such a stark difference between parking in Old Port and parking in Bayside reinforced what I had already seen during my café ethnography and what I learned from my mental mapping discussions with Portland residents: there is incredible class-based separation in the city.
Truthfully, I am not completely sure how the parking situation in Portland should be addressed. One idea that initially came to my mind would be to somehow encourage people who would normally park in Old Port to instead use the existing space in Bayside, perhaps through the use of shuttles between Bayside and Old Port. This idea seems problematic, however, for a number of reasons. First of all, encouraging people to park in Bayside would likely displace many of the people living there or, at the very least, disrupt their ways of life. I’m worried that encouraging “Old Port people” to park in Bayside would in a sense gentrify the area and drive away the lower-income population currently living there. Furthermore, if people were to start parking in Bayside for free, it would likely only be a matter of time until lots started charging people to park there, thus compounding and expanding the problem of limited free parking in the city. In a way, I feel that the best way to solve the parking problem while also not displacing current Bayside residents would be to first address the problem of homelessness in that part of the city (easier said than done, I know). Once the people in Bayside have been helped out of poverty (which will not happen for a long time and may never happen completely), implementing some sort of parking-shuttle service between Bayside and Old Port will be much more feasible and will not drive people out of the area. The key point here is that I do not believe Bayside should be gentrified in the sense we have discussed in class: Instead of forcing the homeless population out of Bayside, the city should take measures to help those people climb out of poverty. Once this has been done, the parking situation in the city can be improved for everyone, as can other aspects of the city in general.
Transect Walk Notes (Parking):
- The Temple Street Parking Garage near Nickelodeon Cinemas charges hourly.
- There is free 15-minute parking on Federal Street West.
- On Congress Street, there is two-hour paid public parking.
- At Two Monument Square, there is a parking garage for tenants only.
- Elm Street Parking Facility – public, $1.75 per hour with a $21 daily maximum.
- At the Portland Public Library, there is parking in the back for staff only.
- Portland Public Market Parking Garage – $21 per day, $110 per month.
- TD Bank (481 Congress Street) has a parking garage for customers.
- Salvation Army Adult Rehab Center (88 Preble Street Extension) has free parking.
- There are many free parking lots on Preble Street.
- In Bayside, there is a lot more parking than in Old Port. All of the parking structures and lots I’ve seen here are free.
- Despite the abundance of spaces to park in Bayside, there are very few cars in most of the lots.
- There are signs in the parking lots for Planet Fitness and Walgreens (both on Marginal Way) that say “video recording in progress.”
- The Salvation Army Thrift Store on Alder Street has a lot for staff parking only.
- Custom House Square Parking Garage (25 Pearl Street) – paid parking at an hourly rate.
- On Commercial Street, there is a lot of paid 2-hour parking.
- There are several parking lots on piers on Commercial Street in Old Port. These are all paid, I believe.
- Fore Street – 15-minute street parking.
- Market Street – 2-hour paid parking.
- Many of the roads that intersect with Commercial Street and Fore Street have no parking on the street.
Holy Donut Ethnography and Mental Mapping – 10/13/14
My trip to Portland showed me just how divided the city is due to socioeconomic factors. The class-based segregation in the city became apparent to me during the first two and a half hours of my day at the Holy Donut on Exchange Street. During the entire time in which I was observing people in the donut shop, nearly every person I saw appeared to be middle-class or upper-class based on their clothing and topics of conversation. Similarly, almost everyone I saw in the Old Port area was either a tourist or a person who was middle-class or higher. This was definitely not the case as soon as I crossed into Bayside, where a large number of people appeared to be homeless or very poor.
It was very clear from my conversations with Portland residents as I was collecting mental maps that the city is separated along socioeconomic lines. The first woman I asked for a mental map (she did not end up making a map for me) was, until recently, homeless. When I explained to her that one of the reasons we were collecting mental maps was to make the city better, she voiced her concerns that we would only pay attention to what the “yuppies” had to say. Three homeless people I tried to interview in Monument Square did not want to speak with me, which I presume was at least in part because they were skeptical of my intentions as someone from a different socioeconomic group. Of the four people who ended up giving me mental maps, three spent a large amount of time discussing the problems of poverty and homelessness in the city.
Needless to say, the issue of class must be addressed when considering making any improvements to the city. Although I had initially proposed implementing a public Wi-Fi network in Portland, I now realize that in order for a system like that to benefit as many people as possible, there needs to be increased access to technology for people from all backgrounds. Internet access at the Portland Free Library is a great first step toward providing everyone with access to technology, but more needs to be done. At the moment, there appear to be almost no ways for people in Bayside to access the Internet without using their own devices and private networks. Perhaps the city could provide desktop computers and Wi-Fi routers to various organizations for low-income or homeless individuals, such as the Preble Street center or the Salvation Army Adult Rehab Center. This is not to say that Portland would not benefit from a public Wi-Fi network, but rather that providing Internet access to all people, regardless of socioeconomic status, should take priority.
Café Ethnography Field Notes (Holy Donut – 10/13/14):
- 10:46: I just came into the shop. The line is very long.
- 10:46: There are lots of people here. Based on clothing, most seem to be middle-class.
- 10:48: No women are alone here. All women are with friends or other people. There was one man alone sitting at a table.
- 10:50: Two young women ahead of me in line took one of the only tables. They seemed excited to find a table because of how busy it was.
- 10:51: Employees behind the counter are talking about how busy today is.
- 10:53: I’m sitting on the sofa facing the entire shop. There is no Wi-Fi here.
- 10:57: Two couples, one with baby, are sitting at table next to me.
- 11:06: The girls who were in front of me in line are talking about how busy it is today.
- 11:08: Girls are talking about shopping and L.L. Bean.
- 11:09: Couples at the table next to me are talking about good local restaurants.
- 11:09: Now one woman at the table with the baby is talking about how hard it is to find non-domestic wines here.
- 11:10: Lots of people are walking on Exchange Street. There isn’t a lot of traffic on Exchange Street, but a few cars have passed by on Fore Street.
- 11:11: A woman just walked in with a fancy camera. She and her friend might be tourists.
- 11:13: The people at the tables on the right side of the shop seem to leave pretty quickly. The same people have been sitting on the left side for almost half an hour.
- 11:16: A group of four older (look like they’re in their 50s) women and two older men just sat down. They bought A LOT of donuts (it looks like there are two boxes).
- 11:17: A woman just left the shop with a donut on a paper plate.
- 11:19: A family with two boys in their teens to early twenties just sat down on the right side of the shop. They’re the first young men who have stayed instead of getting donuts to go.
- 11:19: A man in a dress shirt and tie just walked in. Maybe he’s on his lunch break.
- 11:20: The sun is shifting such that I am now sitting in the sunlight.
- 11:21: Table of older people started talking to the younger couples at table next to me. The couple with a baby is visiting the other couple, who moved here from Rhode Island six months ago. Holy Donuts is a place that they frequent.
- 11:22: The family that took two individual tables on the right-hand side of the shop has moved the two tables together to make a bigger table.
- 11:23: Two nice people just sat next to me on the couch. They might come here often, since when the woman asked the man if he wanted coffee, he said, “You know what I like.” The woman has a slight Southern accent.
- 11:26: The man commented on how they use potatoes in the donuts. They probably don’t frequent this place.
- 11:28: Table of older people know people sitting next to me. They’re getting dinner tonight at 6:30.
- 11:29: The older table is leaving and headed to Duck Fat for lunch. The people next to me aren’t joining them. When the man asked where the restaurant was, one of the women said, “You’re in America now, so you can Google it. This young man next to you (referring to me) can help you!”
- 11:30: As the older people were leaving, one of the women at the table next to me said, “Enjoy your visit!” Some or all of them are probably visiting.
- 11:34: The line got busy again. The family on the right side of the shop has left and a new one has taken their table.
- 11:36: “Billie Jean” just started playing. It’s the first time I’ve noticed the music in the donut shop.
- 11:37: The young couples (here for almost an hour now) are talking about good places to shop. They might go pumpkin picking later today.
- 11:39: Young couples are leaving.
- 11:40: The line was short, but just got very long again because eight people (three groups of two) just walked in.
- 11:41: “Billie Jean” just finished playing. There is still music playing, but I don’t recognize the song. I wonder if there was music beforehand that I didn’t notice.
- 11:43: A woman who was sitting by the window on the right side of the shop is leaving with a young girl (her daughter, I assume). I haven’t seen any young children with only men. All young children have been with at least one woman.
- 11:45: One of the men who has been working the counter for a few minutes was not there when I came into the shop an hour ago.
- 11:46: A man just walked in wearing a Bowdoin Preorentation 2010 T-shirt. He’s with a woman about his age.
- 11:47: I just saw a car drive down Exchange Street for the first time since I got here. I’m facing away from the window, so it’s possible there have been others that I did not see.
- 11:49: The man and woman who sat next to me are leaving. The man said to me, “Y’all have a nice day, now!” I didn’t notice at first, but he had a vaguely Southern accent as well.
- 11:49: At the table closest to the counter on the left side of the shop, four young men (twenties or thirties) are talking about some website that is just like Facebook.
- 11:51: The “Bowdoin Preorientation guy” and women with him left without sitting down. It looks like they only got coffee.
- 11:51: Three men just walked in together. One has a camera without a strap or bag. Maybe they have a car nearby. It wouldn’t make sense to carry a camera around all day without a bag.
- 11:52: A young man sitting at the table in front of me (where the younger couples were sitting) is playing games on his iPad.
- 11:55: There have been very few people of color here. I’ve seen two Hispanic people, three black people, and one Asian woman. Everyone else I’ve seen here appears to have been white.
- 11:55: An older couple wearing backpacks just walked in. There have been several people with backpacks (many holding shopping bags) and several people with cameras. I’m guessing those people are tourists.
- 11:56: I noticed the woman who gave me my donuts over an hour ago looking at me. I wonder if it’s strange for people to stay here for a long period of time since this is not a typical café setting.
- 11:58: For the first time since I got here, there is no line. It probably gets less busy here during lunchtime.
- 11:59: The only other people sitting in the shop are a man sitting at a table in front of me (the one on the iPad) and two people sitting by the opposite window. Three older people are standing and talking in the center of the shop.
- 12:00: Two Asian people walked into the shop and immediately left.
- 12:05: Lots of people just walked in. An employee just started wiping the tables.
- 12:06: A group of four people just left. One made a joke about how they could hang out here and listen to the music and eat great donuts.
- 12:07: There are cars on Exchange Street. One that was parked in front of the donut shop just left.
- 12:07: An employee just told a customer that all donuts here except the apple donut (which I bought) are made with potato. He said something about there already being too much starch in that one.
- 12:11: The shop is nearly empty. Only two customers are at the counter. The man with the iPad and two people sitting by the other window are the only customers here besides myself.
- 12:12: A new man is working at the counter with the other man. I don’t see the woman who served me at the counter; I think she’s in the back.
- 12:13: An Asian girl just left. There still have been very few non-white people here.
- 12:14: The first male employee at the counter remarked that he got here at 10 and it was a “madhouse.”
- 12:15: The man who I noticed behind the counter three minutes ago is now sitting at a table on the left side of the shop with a laptop.
- 12:16: There aren’t nearly as many people walking by on the street as there were an hour ago.
- 12:20: I bought a bottle of water from the woman who sold me the donuts earlier. I told her I was doing work for a class, which was why I had been here for so long. She told me she didn’t mind.
- 12:22: Now that it is much less busy here, the first man from the counter is taking lunch orders (I heard him mention hot dogs and hamburgers) from his coworkers.
- 12:23: An entire group of tourists with a tour guide just walked in. So much for a break for these workers!
- 12:25: These tourists are wearing nametags that say, “Tour guest.”
- 12:25: The tourists are all older people. Only one is not white.
- 12:28: Every order I’ve heard has been an even dollar amount (my donuts were $6 and my bottle of water was $2). I think they set their prices such that all items with tax are even dollar amounts.
- 12:32: The first male employee just told someone the shop was out of something for the day. I didn’t catch what had run out.
- 12:33: The second male employee (the one who took out the laptop for a little while) just propped the door open with a doorstop.
- 12:34: A middle-aged woman at the table next to me is talking about the TV show “Shark Tank” with a teenage girl. They’re here with two other middle-aged women. They haven’t been to Holy Donuts before.
- 12:36: These women all have a Southern accent. They’re amazed by the “Maine potatoes” that are used in the donuts here.
- 12:37: One of the women is talking about places like the Dollar Store and Target with the teenager. Their conversation has something to do with Columbus Day.
- 12:42: The line is starting to get long again.
- 12:44: There are people sitting at all tables on the left side of the shop. One woman (an Asian woman) is here by herself.
- 12:46: One of the women at the table next to me commented on how much she looks like “mom.” These women might all be sisters.
- 12:47: After using an iPhone to take a picture of herself, one of the women at the table next to me jokingly said, “We’re all selling out!”
- 12:48: The woman at the table next to me is talking about Girl Scout cookies and how she doesn’t like working the cash register. I just noticed that she is wearing pink Sperry’s. Sperry’s have a reputation for being a Maine thing or, at the very least, a Bowdoin thing. Maybe one or more of these women are from Maine.
- 12:52: Three women, one from Nova Scotia just sat next to me and two from Yarmouth. The woman from Nova Scotia – sitting on the couch next to me – told me that it is Thanksgiving Day there. She was afraid she and her friends were intruding on “my space,” but I told her she was more than welcome to sit next to me.
- 12:55: The woman from Nova Scotia asked me if I’ve ever been. I told her I hadn’t, but that I went to Montreal and Quebec a week before school started.
- 12:56: The music playing right now is from a Spotify playlist. An ad just played and now “Gimme Shelter” by the Rolling Stones (one of my favorite songs!) is playing.
- 12:58: The women next to me are barely talking to one another. Most of their meal so far has been in silence.
- 1:00: There are more people coming into the shop alone now than there were earlier. I don’t know why this is.
- 1:03: Almost no one has come in here wearing nice business clothes. Most businesspeople probably don’t come to Holy Donuts for their lunch break.
- 1:04: The first man from the counter just congratulated two female customers on their upcoming wedding.
- 1:05: I just heard an order that cost $1.75. That’s the first time I’ve noticed an order that didn’t cost an even number of dollars (although $0.25-cent increments are also convenient for customers).
- 1:06: When a woman said she’d come back later for a particular type of donut, the man at the counter said they might be out later.
- 1:07: I just noticed that the sign on the door says Holy Donuts is open until they sell out of donuts.
- 1:11: There are 12 women here (all but one on the left side) and only two males other than myself.
- 1:12: The women next to me have been gossiping for the past ten minutes or so. They are much more talkative now.
- 1:14: Almost all the customers coming in here now are women. There have only been two men in the last several minutes.
- 1:15: The Asian woman sitting here by herself is writing something on a notepad. She’s been here for over half an hour.
- 1:16: A man in a suit and tie just walked by the shop. He’s the second person who looks like a businessman that I’ve seen today (the first one was the man in the dress shirt and tie who came into the shop earlier.
- 1:19: A lot of younger people are walking by now.
- 1:19: The women next to me are talking about how young people spend all of their time on their phones now.
- 1:21: A group of three teenagers with bags from some shop just left.
- 1:22: I’m leaving now.
Mental Maps:
Gender: Male
Age: 70
Residence: Falmouth (7 years)
Improvements for Portland:
• The city needs to be more food truck friendly.
Notes:
• Bob put many restaurants on his map (he started labeling them with the letter “R”).
• Bob is retired.
• Portland is “packed,” but young people do not have as many things to do in the city as older people do.
• The city is great for biking. Because there is so little traffic, bike paths aren’t really needed.
Gender: Male
Age: 51
Residence: Portland (23 years)
Improvements for Portland:
• There needs to be more available business capital in the form of grants or loans.
Notes:
• Doug majored in sociology in college.
• Doug’s favorite area in the city (shaded on the map) is the “least likely to be gentrified.”
• The area labeled as “usually avoid” has lots of tourists and “rambunctious” people.
• Consent Decree – 20 years ago, it was decided that people with mental illnesses couldn’t be held against their will. Because of this, there are lots of “rambunctious” people on the streets.
Gender: Female
Age: 50
Residence: Portland (2 years)
Improvements for Portland:
• There is an excessive amount of panhandling or begging, which looks bad to tourists. Laws would help.
Notes:
• Lisa is an artist who primarily sells on Commercial Street and at a weekly farmers’ market in Deering Oaks Park.
• Tourism is important for Lisa’s business.
Age: 68
Residence: Portland (8 of the past 10 years)
Improvements for Portland:
• Taking care of the homeless is important.
• There needs to be more regulation for art vendors because some people don’t sell their own art and some people who don’t live in Portland come to the city just to sell their art. This makes competition much more difficult. Maybe art vendors would have to be Portland residents – this wouldn’t be done with the intention of excluding people; it’s simply very difficult to make a living as an artist in the city.
• People need to be educated about drug problems and domestic abuse, both of which are issues relevant to Portland.
• There should be more mental health agencies and institutions.
Notes:
• The subject is a photographer.
• The subject loves nature and thinks preserving nature in Portland is important.
• The subject lived in Thailand for 2 of the past 10 years.
• The subject is dyslexic.
• The subject said she “loves Portland.” She wishes there were more regulation for artists because there need to be rules for everything to be fair.
Interconnected Infrastructures
There are many elements of a city. Of course, there are the three overarching subjects that we as a class are focusing on: housing, public space, and infrastructure. Housing is necessary because without it there would be no people inhabiting the city. Public spaces are also vital because they can be used by everyone and make possible encounters and events that would not occur in private areas like workplaces and homes. Unlike housing and public space, infrastructure quite literally makes a city a city. Roads and bridges – edges – connect isolated locations – nodes – to form a greater place known as the city. There are numerous forms of infrastructure, each of which is suited to a different type of city or environment. Areas with a large number of people and businesses might benefit from roads and highways, for example. In a less busy area, sidewalks might be more appropriate than massive freeways. As with anything, determining which types of infrastructure are the best requires context.
There are myriad types of infrastructure useful in the smart city. One of the most promising and relatively new areas of infrastructure is that of digital technology. In the so-called “Silicon Age” we live in, computers seem to have limitless potential for the ways in which they can improve our lives. While public Wi-Fi, Ethernet, and fiber optic networks are of course practical in any modern city, infrastructure does not need to be limited to the physical realm: websites and apps can be just as useful as any physical network. To use an example of which I’m sure most Bowdoin students are aware, the Bowdoin dining app makes those difficult-to-make decisions regarding where to eat that much easier. These applications do not need to be limited to a single developer: the NYC subway application contest we discussed in class is a fantastic example of how the public can be brought together to create something that benefits everyone. [1] The MTA App Quest Challenge is a perfect example of one of the main ideas discussed by Alberto Corsín Jiménez in his paper “The Right to Infrastructure”: “in beta” infrastructure. [2] Furthermore, the crowdsourced nature of the MTA App Quest Challenge takes advantage of the talents of everyone in the community who wants to contribute. This is much like what Jiménez refers to as the “open source” model. [2] This model does not only apply to smart cities, however; it also has tremendous implications for any society.
What is so great about the open source model of creating infrastructure is that anyone and everyone can contribute to a project to make it better. Jiménez gives many examples, such as the El Campo in Madrid and the Inteligencias Colectivas initiative. [2] As El Campo shows, open infrastructural projects may have nothing to do with digital technology. Whether they are physical or digital instances of infrastructure, open source projects have the potential to help and empower communities in ways unlike any other. Again going back to the example of El Campo, the forum of people governing the space – known as La Mesa – met with Madrid’s City Hall less than two years after its creation. As Jiménez states, “This move challenged almost thirty years of urban politics in Madrid, where City Hall had long ignored all citizen claims that were not channelled through local Neighborhood Associations.” [2] Open source projects have the potential to give people a voice who otherwise would have none. Surely this is a promising model of infrastructure for promoting the common good. By giving everyone a voice and the ability to directly impact the city, infrastructure can best serve everyone.
This open source model is already starting to have an impact on Portland. Below is a user-created map of bike paths in the city: [3]
As we can see from this map, there are several, but not lots of bike paths in Portland. One way Portland could improve would be to have more transportation options for people trying to get around the city. Currently, there are limited public transportation options and few other ways of getting around the city other than walking and driving. Although Portland is a very walkable city, it would be nice for people without cars to have faster ways of getting around. Taking inspiration from our class discussion about bicycle lanes in Berlin, I think a greater abundance of bike lanes in Portland would certainly benefit those who want to quickly get across the city without having to drive. Currently, bicyclists have to choose between riding on the sidewalk or riding on the road, neither of which were designed for bicycles. As Michael Sorkin puts it, “Modern city planning is structured around [. . .] conflict avoidance. Elevated highways, pedestrian skyways, subway systems, and other movement technologies clarify relations between classes of vehicles for the sake of efficient flow.” [4] While it might be a stretch to say Portland needs to be reworked to incorporate subway systems and pedestrian skyways, having bike lanes would make traveling much easier for cyclists.
[1] “Home,” MTA App Quest, accessed October 8, 2014, http://2013mtaappquest.challengepost.com/.
[2] Alberto Corsín Jiménez, “The Right to Infrastructure: A Prototype for Open Source Urbanism,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, volume 32 (2014): 342–362.
[3] Gordon Harris, “Bicycle Routes in Portland Maine,” Cycling Routes in New England (blog), March 2011, http://cyclingnewengland.blogspot.com/2011/03/bicycle-routes-in-portland-maine.html.
[4] Michael Sorkin, “Traffic in Democracy,” in The People, Place and Space Reader, ed. Jen Jack Gieseking et al. (New York, Routledge), 411–415.
Housing in the Smart City and Beyond
There is perhaps nothing in the city of greater importance to the individual than housing. Housing is the foundation upon which every society is based: without living space, there would be no people, no infrastructure, and no city. That being said, different environments demand different types of living spaces. As such, we must consider a variety of factors when determining how to create the best possible housing system for any particular city.
Smart cities all over the world are constantly experimenting with new housing ideas. In Songdo, for example, video conferencing has been built into every apartment. [1] This telepresence has fundamentally changed how the city operates, such as by allowing children to have classes from the comforts of their homes. [2] As we discussed in class, however, technologies like this discourage face-to-fact interactions that are so characteristic of the quintessential urban experience. This is not to say that all “smart” technologies have to fundamentally change the ways in which we live. Crowley et al. describe their study in which sensors and social media are used in workplace environments to reduce energy usage. If implemented into living spaces, technologies such as this could certainly make our living environments more cost-effective and eco-friendly. Technologies should not necessarily change how housing works on a foundational level. Rather, technologies should be used to preserve and enhance those aspects of housing essential to people’s day-to-day lives.
While “smart” technologies can certainly be used to improve housing in cities, there are even more basic steps that can be taken to promote the common good. First and foremost, housing should be considered a necessary service and not solely a means of making money. As Neil Smith says in his article about the Lower East Side of New York, “The perverse rationality of real estate capitalism means that building owners and developers garner a double reward for milking properties and destroying buildings