All posts by rmoussap

Uncategorized

Amending the Comprehensive Plan: A Study of Portland’s Recreational Infrastructure

1 Comment

Amending the Comprehensive Plan: A Study of Portland’s Recreational Infrastructure

 

Introduction and Research Question:

Portland, ME is a vibrant, diverse city in an easily accessible location only two hours north of Boston. As a major vacation destination throughout the summer, Portland places great value on its tourism industry. Healthy and vibrant cities must provide residents with proper infrastructure, namely the physical structures that make up the city, to support their and their primary industries. Portland’s infrastructure must support its tourism as well as its significant year-round population, 17.1% of whom are under the age of eighteen. As a substantial percentage of Portland’s population, school-age citizens have certain infrastructural needs that should be met by the city. Portland outlines certain policy goals in the city of Portland’s Comprehensive Plan including one stating that “recreational opportunities should be available for all ages and genders” and that “neighborhood open space should be within walking distance” for all residents. However, playspaces in Portland are not all easily accessible by children and do not serve children in all four seasons. For Portland to successfully meet its own goal of providing playspace infrastructure for its youngest citizens, it needs to provide more playspaces throughout the city, but also playspace infrastructure that is functional in multiple seasons and various weather conditions. I propose that Portland not only expand the number of playspaces in the city, but also create technology-controlled, weather-adaptable playspaces for children to use throughout all four seasons of the year.

 

Approach to the Common Good:

Residents in cities select a city in which to live for various reasons. However, one thing that all residents in any given city have in common is that together, they make up the living and breathing aspects of that city. Because of their proximity to restaurants, cultural hubs, and downtown areas, city residents often take for granted the variety of services and experiences to which they have access. There seem to be an endless number of perks to living in a city. However, many of these perks and services are expensive, and not all city residents are wealthy. Is a city truly accessible to all and benefitting the common good if it is not giving opportunities to all of its residents? While open park and recreation space is seen as a public good, it is often located in regions not easily accessible by lower socioeconomic classes. Further, playgrounds that do exist in lower-class neighborhoods are often dilapidated, run down, and known as dangerous locations after dark. In these circumstances, how can we create something that is accessible by all and for the common good? In my mind, children have a “right to play” similar to Henri Lefebvre’s “right to the city.” While the idea of creating something for the common good usually refers to the production of something that is entirely inclusive to all populations, children seem to have been vastly underserved in many other aspects of city planning in Portland, and therefore deserve to have something created specifically for them. If Portland as a city lists a policy goal relating to giving more of the population access to park and play space, then Portland needs to provide experiences for all, including the less wealthy and those without a vote: youth.

 

Approach to the Smart City:

One way in which a city can be characterized as a “smart city” is if aspects of the city are capable of adapting technology to fit the needs of the city. This could come to fruition in many ways. For example, this can be achieved with sensors that trigger changes in functionality of an office building depending on the number of people inside and whether they are working alone or collaboratively. The definition of a smart city varies depending on the goals of the project; they can benefit citizens economically, socially, politically, or culturally. There are also many methods by which a smart city can be created. Certain smart cities are built from the ground up; one example of this is Songdo, a city that is being developed as an “international business district” in South Korea. Other cities can become “smart” over time depending on the integration of technology into pre-existing city life.

I see a smart city as a city that is able to use technology to make itself more accessible to all residents. Portland is a very quaint city in that it fits within a specific New England architectural style, so a mass overhaul of Portland’s architecture to would not only be expensive, but would cause Portland to lose its New England tourism draw. Portland is capable of incorporating technology in other ways in order to benefit all of its citizens. As Margarita Angelidou says in her article “Smart city policies: A spatial approach,” “emphasis should be placed on regenerating degraded urban areas,” rather than just starting from scratch. This is entirely applicable to playspaces in Portland, as Portland’s already existing playgrounds can be redone and new ones can be created in derelict space in order to create technologically advanced, adaptable playgrounds.

 

Literature Review:

While the idea of a “weather-adaptable” playground is entirely new, the idea of play as a crucial part of a child’s development is supported by a number of national and international organizations. For example, the USA chapter of the International Play Association’s stated purpose is “to protect, preserve, and promote play as a fundamental right for all humans.” Roger Hart, the director of the Children’s Environments Research Group at CUNY, echoes this in an article in which he makes a claim about children’s right to play as a “basic right, fundamental to children’s development” based off of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child was a meeting in 1989 that wrote a document with a number of articles relating to the rights of all children. Article 31 of the document declares that “States Parties recognize the right of the child to rest and leisure, to engage in play and recreational activities appropriate to the age of the child and to participate freely in cultural life and the arts.” Since then, many researchers have worked tirelessly to stress the importance of play in children’s lives and how to incorporate new ideas of play into playspaces.

A considerable portion of literature on the idea of play is primarily focused on the link between outdoor playtime and its medical benefits, such as a decrease in obesity. More recent research has focused on creating new kinds of playspaces as well. In an article for Parks & Recreation, associate editor Samantha Bartram discusses two important thoughts, the idea of “play deserts,” spaces where there is a lack of playspace, and how fewer than four out of ten Americans live within walking distance of a park. In another article for Parks & Recreation, Steve Casey discusses the redevelopment of a playground in Missouri into an adventure playground. This playground not only incorporates the idea of “free play” into its design, but also happens to be a very environmentally sustainable playground in its construction and function. These articles both highlight the need to create playspace where it lacks and the need to do so in creative and ecologically friendly ways. They reference the ways in which the development of adequate play space is difficult; in certain regions, it does not exist at all, and in others, economic, geographic, social, and visual factors have to be taken into account before the construction of a playground.

While researchers are away of the importance of play in a child’s development, very little research has done about the incorporation of smart technology into playspaces. In my research, I browsed numerous technology websites to look into how playgrounds are currently being designed. My search led me towards three websites in particular, wired.com, gizmodo.com, and nytimes.com. Through these websites, I found numerous contemporary playspace ideas. One article I read on wired.com outlines the creation of a company, Free Play, focused on “creating a series of abstract play structures that will challenge children’s creativity during playtime.” Free Play structures are designed in a way so that children can interact with them how they please, a very new idea compared to a playground containing a typical swing and ladder. Giving children the freedom to interface with playspaces in unique ways allows them a certain level of freedom that does not necessarily exist in a standard playground.

 

renderfull-660x434Figure 1: A playspace designed by Free Play, a company focused on bringing imagination-based play to children through unique playspace pieces.

Another article on wired.com outlines a 2010 contest on the website for designing the future of playgrounds and contains images of newfangled playgrounds that could exist in the year 2024. These playgrounds are complete with an autonomous stroller rink, 360º rocket swing, and 10-G merry go round. While these ideas are not currently feasible in terms of safety, cost, and implementation, they speak to the creativity that can go into the construction of playgrounds today.

An article from the New York Times, “Beer for Me, Apple Juice for Her,” outlines a very unique idea of a playspace, the German beer garden, as a space in which parents and children can come together, both indoors and outdoors, to play. In one beer hall in Brooklyn, NY, there is even a “Babies & Bier” playgroup with a $10 entrance fee that includes snacks and drinks (both alcoholic and nonalcoholic). The owner of the Brooklyn beer hall started the playgroups “to address a lack of indoor play spaces” because she found that playspaces options were quite limited in inclement weather. While not exactly smart technology, this is a unique way to incorporate the element of play into less-traditional locations and to acknowledge that play can be encouraged and incorporated into other cultural traditions.

The final article I will discuss is a gizmodo.com article that describes a Danish plan to convert parking garages into multi-functional spaces. By adding open space primarily on top of parking garages, Copenhagen will be able to use otherwise useless space and turn it into parks, workout zones, and gardens for its residents. While this idea is not necessarily weather-proof or adaptable, it is one way in which cities can revamp pre-existing structures into new, more aesthetically pleasing, and functional spaces.

 

835858468827093314Figure 2: A sketch of what the Copenhagen parking garage playspaces could look like.

 

Methodology:

Over a period of two months, I spent time exploring Portland and observing my surroundings. While at a café in the Arts District, Local Sprouts Cooperative, I realized that there was a significant population of children in Portland that I had not previously noticed. I visited Local Sprouts Cooperative on a cloudy Saturday morning in late October and found the café to be almost entirely populated by parents and their young children. Local Sprouts Cooperative seems to be a very kid-friendly café and even provides space in a corner of the café as a children’s play area. Seeing such a high density of children in a café made me wonder why they were playing there and not outdoors in a playspace. If the weather were accommodating and they play space were close by, might parents have preferred to be there with their kids instead of packed into a café’s children’s corner?

The next portion of my research was spent making observations throughout a neighborhood while on a transect walk. I chose to walk through East Bayside and Munjoy Hill and focused specifically on looking for examples of educational infrastructure. For the purpose of my walk, I wanted to look at where schools and their playgrounds were located among the neighborhoods. Prior to my walk, I made note of where schools were listed on Google Maps so that as I walked by them, I see whether they had playgrounds. Many of the schools listed on my map did not actually exist; further, there were very few playgrounds spread out through the two neighborhoods. While my fieldwork has been limited in locations of Portland as a whole, the lack of playgrounds in the downtown area makes me think that Portland is underserving its youth by not providing them with their “right to play” and their “right to the city.”

Having finished my physical fieldwork in Portland, I turned to my computer for the next portion of my research. Using QGIS Software, I mapped out locations of schools and playgrounds in Portland (Figure 3) to look at where schools were located, where their specific playgrounds were located, and where neighborhood playgrounds were located with respect to schools. Looking at this map, however, I realized that it was not enough to simply map out the locations of schools and playgrounds. While many students are able to go to playgrounds straight from school, students, in my experience, are more likely to play near their homes. For this, I needed to create another map detailing where playgrounds are with respect to where the majority of students live.

 

Figure 3: Location of Portland schools and playspaces on mainland Portland. Data from City of Portland data sets, kaboom.org.

In order to do this, I mapped data from the US Census against the locations of schools and playgrounds (Figure 4). Using the percentages of residents under 18, I was able to compare where children live in Portland to where schools and playspaces are. The darkest blue portions of the map are the highest percentages of under-18 residents, between 21.8% and 24.4%. The white portions are the lowest percentages of under-18 residents, between 6.21% and 12.22%. On both maps, I chose to omit island portions of Portland, as full census data was not always available and schools and playgrounds were few and far between.

 

Figure 4: Location of Portland schools and playspaces and percentage of residents under the age of 18. Data from City of Portland data sets, kaboom.org, US Census.

The final element of my research was to look at how playgrounds are being designed and used elsewhere as inspiration for my policy recommendations for Portland. For this, I turned to the internet and looked at a variety of sources, including academic, media, and news sources. Many of these sources were on the development of new, more imagination-inspired playgrounds (such as those mentioned in the Literature Review section); others were on the idea of play as a necessary part of children’s development.

 

Findings:

When I looked at both of my maps, I found that Figure 3 makes it seem as though there are quite a number of playspaces around Portland near all schools. However, with the addition of the US Census data, it became obvious to me that while there seems to be a larger concentration of playspaces in the downtown area of Portland, there are very few playspaces in regions where children actually live. The darkest blue portions of the map in Figure 4 are not only the regions with the highest portion of under-18 residents, but are also the regions with the fewest playspaces.

My online research led me to numerous playspace ideas that have not been widely developed yet, but sadly did not lead me to any already existing, physically adaptable, weather-proof playspace ideas. While many people are working towards new ideas of playspaces and trying to stay away from a classic model of swing set, ladder, and monkey bars, no one has gone past the imagination playground to create a playground model that is functional in different weather conditions.

 

Discussion:

My research has led me to the conclusion that Portland not only needs more playgrounds, but also needs weather-adaptable playgrounds so that children might have the ability to play outside throughout all four seasons. I also concluded that Portland is currently failing to provide access to parks or play space as proposed in its Comprehensive Plan. If it is recommended that people have some kind of park or play space within walking distance, or ½ mile, from their home, it is impossible that Portland’s youth have adequate access and ability to get to a park or playground. Portland is not living up to its own policy if it does not add playspaces in the areas of highest under-18 population density.

I propose that Portland expand the number of playspaces predominantly in two areas, in zones where there are too few playspaces and a high density of the under-18 population, and in poverty zones. By placing new playspaces in these areas, they will hopefully be able to accomplish two goals. First, they will support the city’s goals to provide playspaces, and second, they may contribute to the revitalization of impoverished communities. I also believe that creating playspaces on top of already existing buildings such as parking lots (similar to the idea being implemented in Copenhagen) is a viable way to create playspace infrastructure in areas where there might not be already existing city-owned free space. Portland is not a city full of skyscrapers, so rooftop gardens and playgrounds in the downtown area would also allow many people a beautiful view of the waterfront.

Most interestingly in my mind, I propose that new and pre-existing playspaces be designed or redesigned in such a way that they are physically adaptable depending on weather conditions. Maine is known for its snowy conditions, and in the case of inclement weather, of which there is a significant amount during the winter, children are stuck inside to play. Playgrounds can be designed with automated moving parts, sensors, and computer connections to change their function based on current weather or weather forecasts. For example, a playground could have a portion that in rainy weather has a covered portion to keep segments of the playground dry and usable in the rain. Other structures can be built on inclines and designed in such a way that integrate scientific exploration in the summer vis-à-vis running water, which helps kids learn about creating and changing currents. Similarly, these structures could have a retractable cover that can then convert into speed controlled, toboggan-like apparatus creating safe snow play and allowing children to sled in more regions of Portland. Playground function would only adapt based on the current outdoor weather or the weather forecast, but seeing as Portland often has rainy or snowy weather, the playgrounds would never be too static in their function. To add to the idea of playspaces in paring garage space, playspace can be designed and built into the second to last level of a garage, providing views and air, but protection from snow and rain. Lastly, technology could also be used to identify materials that are ecologically safe and made of a material that is not slippery to gloves and mittens. So many young people, geared up in winter wear, would love to play outdoors, but cannot grip or safely maneuver play areas.

Technology can enhance a playground’s adaptability. By connecting directly to a weather forecast or Portland’s main weather system, playgrounds could be programmed to move parts prior to a change in weather. All this would take is a simple computer connection to a main database and, either automatically or at the push of a button from someone in Portland’s Recreation and Facilities Management Department, a playground would adapt its moving parts to best fit the weather circumstances. Playgrounds could also be outfitted with sensors near the entrances to gauge how many people are using them and at what times of the day and year they are most frequently using them; this data could be used for future analysis of locational placement of new playgrounds as well as reevaluation of existing playgrounds and their popularity.

New and renovated playgrounds placed in more locations around the city would impact a larger number of residents in Portland. By giving more people walking distance access to a playspace and the ability to use the playspace in all kinds of weather, more of the city’s population would be served for the better. The audience for playspaces would be primarily youth, but not only those of a high socioeconomic class. Statistically speaking, low-income students spend more time in front of a TV screen than their high-income peers and therefore are more likely to struggle with issues of obesity. Outdoor playspaces can act as a means by which to keep youth off the streets, but also limit their indoor screen time and keep them healthier.

Portland’s Comprehensive Plan, with detailed goals for recreational access for its residents, was drafted in 2002 with guidelines for a recreational plan published since 1995.

Now, almost 20 years later, it seems to me that Portland has still not met these goals for recreational space around the city. Not only does Portland’s official policy on the matter state that Portland will “develop a comprehensive management plan for the City’s park system… to meet the needs of Portland’s citizens” but it also states that Portland will “acquire and improve additional facilities in neighborhoods, which have been determined to have inadequate or insufficient open spaces and recreational resources.” I believe that Portland needs to amend its policy documents so that it can work towards giving more people the access to parks and playgrounds within walking distance of their homes and take measures to provide adequate recreational opportunities throughout all four seasons.

 

Conclusion:

The City of Portland is a thriving, cultural hub in northern New England. However, its play infrastructure is distributed inequitably and inadequately to its various neighborhoods. In order to provide its citizens with proper park and playspace infrastructure, Portland should amend its policy documents in order to provide more and improved playspaces throughout the city. Existing playspaces should be revamped and new ones should be created in order to give all of Portland’s youth adequate access to play. These playspaces should be designed to be technologically sound and versatile; if they are able to change their function throughout all four seasons of the year, then more youth will have access to them at all times, regardless of weather. As Carmen Harris, epidemiologist at the CDC, says, “As great as technology and engineering are, we have perhaps engineered ourselves out of physical activity.” Using technology to improve the quality of play and availability to it across all four seasons and to increase access to playspace for all of its citizens, independent of neighborhood, Portland can engineer itself back into giving more people the possibility of physical activity and show other cities the kind of technology pioneer that Portland can be.

 

Post #7: Individual Analysis of Transect Walk

Where are the playgrounds?

4 Comments

For my transect walk, I decided to walk around East Bayside/Munjoy Hill and look at the kinds of educational infrastructure in place around the neighborhoods. Before leaving on my walk, I made sure to look on Google Maps and see where there were schools, as I wanted to check areas around schools to see what I could find in terms of playgrounds and playspace for children and what I noticed about where children were playing. These were my findings:

  1. East End Community School (43.670622, -70.253396): The East End Community School has a gated playground area and sports fields. I’m curious to know whether this is for the school only, or whether the public has access at certain times, but I didn’t see any informative signs.
  2. Eastern Prom Location 1 (43.670853, -70.253569): The upper portion of the Eastern Prom has a few tennis courts and a baseball field, but no playspace for younger children.
  3. Eastern Prom Location 2 (43.670853, -70.253569 à close enough to Loc. 1 that coordinates are coming up as the same): The middle portion of the Eastern Prom has a dilapidated playground and a baseball field. The playground does not look like it as been renovated in many, many years.
  4. Emerson School (43.668339, -70.244983): The Emerson School had absolutely no playground infrastructure.
  5. Shailer School (43.667031, -70.250599): The Shailer School had no playground, but an open grassy park area next to the school. In front of the park was a sign about opening and closing times for the park and playground, but I could not see any playground. I drove around the school’s driveway to try and see if there was a hidden playground, but found nothing.

Many locations where I anticipated seeing some kind of school were just residential. It seems like the schools were converted into housing recently. On Google Maps, there were at least 3 schools with addresses that I passed that just did not exist.

I was greatly under-impressed with the amount of playgrounds and easily accessible playspaces for students after school. I saw no students walking outside, though this might have been I took my transect walk on a rainy day. I was not able to get to Portland in time for school dismissal, which I believe is much earlier than our general end of classes, but overall there were almost no public playgrounds that were accessible to kids. Even the playspaces on Eastern Prom are hard for students to access, as to get to the playgrounds, kids need to cross large streets with fast moving cars (and their parents may not let them do this by themselves).

As for the neighborhoods of Munjoy Hill and East Bayside, they are definitely more “gritty” neighborhoods as Sharon Zukin would say in “How Brooklyn Became Cool.”{1} It is hard to tell which areas are impoverished, as all the buildings are built in a similar New England brownstone-equivalent style, but some are less well-kept than others. Because of the weather, there were very few people out on the streets. It was not an uncomfortable experience to walk around, but I felt like it was not what I saw that was impressive in relation to school and playground infrastructure, but what I did not see. There is an incredible lack of playgrounds and open playspace for students in the Munjoy Hill/East Bayside area. The only relatively young people I saw seemed to be about late high school/college age and were smoking in front of a house in East Bayside.

I originally was looking more into transportation in Portland, but decided that I thought infrastructure as it relates to education would be more interesting. I think that from what I saw in Munjoy Hill and East Bayside, Portland definitely needs to improve on its education infrastructure. While I do not know what educational infrastructure exists in other neighborhoods of Portland, I was greatly disappointed by the lack of playgrounds and playspace for students. When I did my café ethnography, I was surrounded in the café by parents and their young children. To see such a vibrant community of young parents and their children was very exciting to me, but educational infrastructure in the city should be improved to support those children’s needs.

{1} Zukin, Sharon. “How Brooklyn Became Cool.” In Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. 35-62.

 

Post #6: Individual Analysis of Ethnography & Mental Maps

Varying Representations of Portland

4 Comments

My café ethnography notes showed me a lot about the different populations of Portland. I saw different waves of people depending on the time. Earlier, there were many more young families with children. As time went on, the crowd shifted to an older crowd. Overall, the café seemed to have a very relaxed environment. People did not seem to be worried about being too loud, especially because there was a large children’s section of the café where kids played with each other.

The mental maps I collected reflected very different understandings of Portland’s geography. The two residents of Portland had much more developed and detailed maps of Portland while the commuters were much more vague and more focused on streets than on attractions. They all had very different improvement ideas ranging from apps for racking up points at restaurants to improved public transportation. I was not able to interview people with children for the mental maps, but I think it would be interesting to see whether there is a correlation between characteristics of people and their ideas for improving Portland.

Café Ethnography Notes:

Saturday, October 4th, 2014.

11:00 – I walked into Local Sprouts to see almost no open tables. All the tables are different, different chairs, different sizes. There is a piano in the front that looks as though it is open for people to play. There is a large population of pregnant women as well as young mothers with kids. A section in the back of the café (where I a sitting as there are no open seats near the windows) is cornered off as a place space for kids with bean bag chairs, toys, books, stuffed animals, and small chairs.

11:10 – I hear two couples with kids on their laps and in strollers talking about the movie “Daddy Day Care” and talking about how they need something like that in their lives. Two young kids from another table run back and forth from their table to the play section; their moms don’t seem to have an issue with the fact that they are just running around the café themselves.

11:20 – At the café, you order at a counter and receive a ceramic planting pot with a label to bring to your table and receive your food. The café has multiple purposes; it is a café as well as a restaurant as well as a bar. I also see posters for music events at the café, including a weekly “Music Brunch” on Sundays.

11:30 – Three kids around the age of 3 or 4 run over to the piano and all start banging on keys at the same time. No one seems to take any issue with it, as most café patrons are families. I do see the dad of at least one of the kids walk up to them all at the piano to try and make them stop, but they keep playing. After a minute, another one of the kids’ moms goes over to the piano to make them stop. The woman running the register walks over and covers the piano keys once the kids all scatter so that they can’t play anymore.

11:40 – A few of the moms have now left with their kids. It has gotten slightly quieter. The children playing in the kids’ section are jumping off a ledge onto big stuffed animals. I am a little confused as to why their parents are not watching them do this, as it looks like it could be a little dangerous.

11:50 – One of the girls jumping around in the kids’ section keeps jumping off and hitting her knees on the ground and yelling “ow!” but her parents still don’t turn around. She climbs onto another portion of a wall and falls off holding a large tic tac toe set. Her dad then gets up from his table to tell her and the other kids to try and tone it down a little bit.

12:00 – A baby starts crying across the room. A group of girls in their early 20s walk into the café to order lunch. It seems like the lunch crowd is starting to arrive as the families start to leave. I see a few older parents with older kids walk in as well as a few couples. It seems like most people are Portland residents, as their conversations involve many of the activities and events going on in Portland.

12:10 – The kids start arguing and yelling “no” back and forth at each other. The parents all get up and decide that it is time to go home and play more at home. They try and get the kids to clean up the play space, but they do not really listen and start to throw tantrums. The parents then pick up the toys for the kids and leave the café.

12:20 – Even more people come in for lunch. Seating is somewhat limited, so the people try and sit wherever they can fit. I cannot really see out of the windows, as they are pretty far away, but what I can see are just people walking by every few minutes. It is somewhat rainy out, so even though it is a Saturday, there are not that many people out. There are two buildings with commercial space for rent across the street as well as an art gallery, so they are not the “hottest” spots to hang out around at noon on a Saturday.

12:30 – A few adults in their late 20s/early30s are having a conversation about different kinds of root beer trying to decide which kinds of drinks to order. Two of them are engaged; I figure this out because a few of the older ones are talking about how “he’s gonna tear up when he sees her in her dress.” They all stand right near the main counter, not sitting yet. The café has quieted down a lot as almost all of the kids in the café are gone. Only one kid is still there, a young boy with long dreads with his parents (one of whom also has dreads).

12:40 – The large group of adults is sitting at a table right in front of me. I see one couple (not the original engaged couple) going through pictures on the woman’s phone. They pull up photos of a woman in a wedding dress who is most likely the same woman in the engaged couple. I also see an interaction between a man who cannot speak and the woman at the bar. She hands him a piece of paper and a pen so that he can write out what he is trying to say, as he is mute. It looks like the café gives him some of their recyclables so that he can take them to earn the bottle deposit money back.

12:50 – The table is still talking about weddings. Now they are talking more specifically about different ceremonies they have been to and the kinds of things included. One of them mentions that she is planning on having drinks before the ceremony itself so that people can all take drinks into the ceremony with them and the whole table cheers at the idea. It seems like one of the people is the mother of one of the girls and is treating all of them to lunch. They keep talking about the kinds of things people do at weddings and whether they will be giving speeches at their friends’ weddings or whether the mom will give a speech at her daughter’s wedding. Other than this table, the other people at the café all seem to be clearing out, as they have all finished their food.

1:00 – The café’s population is much older now. I see a few older men eating lunch together as well as a middle aged woman working on a computer in the opposite corner from me. The table in front of me is still talking about weddings, but now being slightly more profane about things that happen at weddings. I see many of the people sitting eating meals are checking their phones quite a lot. I still do not see anyone walking around outside, as it is still cloudy and damp out. The engaged woman is telling her fiancée that he cannot look at her iPhone photos. I think this is because she has pictures of her wedding dress on them and he cannot see the dress before the wedding.

1:10 – The table in front of me is still talking about weddings. The mom is talking about the emotions that she felt during someone’s wedding and one of the girls (possibly her daughter) is giving her sass about her emotions. A few more groups of people have walked in and the tables are almost all full. I have noticed different waves of people come into the café, there was definitely an earlier 11:00 group, 12:00 group, and now a 1:00 group of people.

1:20 – The people at the table in front of me are all leaving now. They are talking about how they are heading to the Holy Donut now. One of them tells another to not have the pomegranate flavored donuts as “those are the only ones that aren’t good.” There are more mentions of the wedding as they walk out the door. The other café patrons are all sitting around eating lunch or drinking hot drinks. I see one man across the café drinking a beer, but he seems to be the only one drinking alcohol.

1:30 – The café crowd has now changed from lunch to afternoon snacks and drinks. The tables are all entirely full. The only conversation I can overhear is between two parents and their daughter. She is telling them about a semester she spent on a farm and the educational experience she had living on this farm. There are now two kids playing in the play space who are here with their parents, two boys (around ages 4 and 3) who are playing with the tic tac toe board and the giant gorilla stuffed animal. They’re throwing toys around the floor and whacking each other with stuffed animals.

Mental Maps:

Reed:

19 years old, male, student, has lived in Portland (and Maine) for 19 years in the Back Cove. One improvement: have restaurants band together and if you are a frequent Portland diner then you can get points on an app that will allow you to get free meals/gelato/discounts.

Reed

Doris:

42 years old, female, professor, has lived in Portland for 7 years, Maine for 9 years, lives in the West End.

Doris

Kyle:

24 years old, male, Trader Joes crew member, has commuted to Portland for 2 years, has lived in ME for two years, lives in Saco. One improvement: one main entrance into the city of Portland to lead tourists directly to the tourist area.

Kyle

Dave:

58 years old, male, training associate at Panera Bread, has commuted to Portland for 7 years, has lived in ME for 7 years, lives in Old Orchard Beach. One improvement: more public transportation and more access times because buses run so infrequently. Also – find some way to go electric/solar with the buses. Just for fun: have Tesla build all the buses!

Dave

Post #5: Infrastructure Reflections, Uncategorized

Creating Positive Infrastructural Change

The idea of open source technology struck me as an interesting one in terms of infrastructure. As of now, city infrastructure is typically designed and implemented by city councilmen or policymakers. However, how can the digital age we have entered affect all of this? Not only have we been introduced to types of intangible forms of infrastructure through the internet and smartphone applications, but we have also entered a time where more people than just a few policymakers can influence and affect the ways that infrastructural changes are made in cities. Infrastructure has typically consisted of the kinds of things in city that provide the “structure” of the city, i.e. roads, sidewalks, transportation. With the kind of power that the internet provides for us, these traditional definitions of infrastructure can be expanded. For example, the Inteligencias Colectivas project described by Jiménez in the article “The right to infrastructure: a prototype for open source urbanism” allows users to participate in a backwards design process, giving users the final project, and having users come up with the process and specs for the objects.{1} This project is one way to have people participate in creating things that could be counted as infrastructure, as it lets people all work on a similar end project but vary their methods and processes. Inteligencias Colectivas reminded me of a website that I have been on before, Thingiverse.com. Thingiverse.com is a website dedicated to 3D printing plans and allows people to share plans and ideas about 3D printing with each other to make 3D printing more accessible.{2} Projects like these are beneficial in that they allow more people to affect how things are designed or executed. More people putting their input on projects could lead to better-designed projects.

2014-03-23_21.32.43_preview_featured
This is a drone built by a user on Thingiverse.com. All plastic parts were built with a 3D printer.{3}

While I thought that the ideas presented by Simone in “People as Infrastructure” were fascinating, I do not think they are highly applicable to Portland as a city. Young discussed the idea of “people as infrastructure” in the context of marginalized people creating their own sort of infrastructure with others similar to them.{4} In Johannesburg, residents in poorer neighborhoods and slums were able to create their own economies, housing, etc. in order to survive while more wealthy neighborhoods were created with typical infrastructure of cities.{5} I do not see this being applicable to Portland, however, as Portland as a whole does not have that same dichotomy between rich and poor. There are rich and poor regions of Portland, but the nature of the economy in Portland and in the United States does not allow for the same kind of economy creation. Poorer residents of Portland could be incorporated into the general Portland economy, but because of city organization cannot necessarily create their own.

While Maine does happen to be the whitest state in America, Portland has a very diverse population. Portland should use this as a strength and have a goal of creating infrastructural change that would benefit all kinds of people. In “Introduction: Traffic in Democracy,” Sorkin states that “modern city planning is structured around an armature of such conflict avoidance.”{6} Portland is structured in a similar way; for example, the way in which Portland is avoiding conflicts by creating walkways and roads for different kinds of things (i.e. people and cars/bicycles). If Portland were to go against this idea of conflict avoidance with certain kinds of infrastructure, different kinds of people could and would be forced to meet each other, integrating the population of Portland to a higher degree. Going off of a more expansive definition of infrastructure, this could even be through things like tech meetups or surveys to not only get the input of more residents on what Portland needs, but also have people influence how policymakers actually create infrastructural change in the city. Portland also needs a better transportation system to allow residents of Portland and nearby cities to access all parts of the city regardless of weather.

 

 

{1} Jiménez, Alberto Corsí­n. “The right to infrastructure: a prototype for open source urbanism.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 32 (2014): 342-362.

{2} “Thingiverse.” Thingiverse. http://www.thingiverse.com/ (accessed October 6, 2014).

{3} “Stick Drone.” Thingiverse. http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:267008 (accessed October 7, 2014).

{4} Simone, AbdouMaliq. “People as Infrastructure.” In The People, Place, and Space Reader, edited by Jen Jack Gieseking, et al, New York: Routledge, 2014. 241-246.

{5} ibid.

{6} Sorkin, Michael. “Introduction: Traffic in Democracy.” In The People, Place and Space Reader, edited by Jen Jack Gieseking, et al, New York: Routledge, 2014. 411-415.

Post #4: Housing Reflections

Affordable Smart Housing

In a smart city, housing needs to be designed in a way so that it is affordable and inclusive. Currently, smart technology is not available in most places because of the costs of implementation and the difficulties in adding the technology into older buildings. {1} We have discussed in class how smart technology is not accessible for the vast majority of people, but if we want people of all socioeconomic classes to be able to have access to smart technology or even live in prototypes of smart cities, then they need to be able to afford the technology or housing itself. Looking back at history of housing in the cities, things like redlining and blockbusting were exploitative and led to larger issues of segregation in cities. When cities are highly racially or socioeconomically segregated, it is difficult to implement things like smart technology into them, as certain neighborhoods can financially support the technology and certain cannot.

In cities, there is an incredibly large gap between housing for the rich and housing for the poor. While a large portion of this is due to practices that have now been deemed illegal, the real estate market accounts for a lot of it as well. The practices of rental housing and the manipulation of markets for financial benefit discussed in the Fields and Uffer reading are simply not beneficial on a large scale. {2} For example, the ways in which landlords will not always renovate apartments in rent-stabilized units because it is not financially beneficial to them is something that prevents a neighborhood from revitalization. This goes against the 1991 Tompkins Square Park concert and then riot/movement idea that “housing is a human right,” as it not only prevents residents from living in appropriate housing, but also devalues neighborhoods. {3} Smart technology needs to be implemented in housing of all kinds so that neighborhoods do not become even more socioeconomically stratified than they already are today.

One way in which smart technology could be implemented into housing in all cities as well as in Portland is through more affordable smart housing. Lower socioeconomic neighborhoods are the major barrier to technology changes in cities, so implementing technology into affordable housing would not only make smart housing more accessible, but would also rejuvenate neighborhoods that are currently thought of as dangerous or more generally “bad” because of their residents. One way in which I think this could be implemented in Portland is through foundations that provide low-income or homeless housing. One of the programs that Preble Street runs is a program called Logan Place. Logan Place is a housing complex that houses 30 continuously homeless adults with 24-hour onsite help to assist them in the transition back to more conventional lives. {4} I believe that this program can already be considered a program with some sort of smart technology, as the 24-hour assistance allows residents to get help in whatever ways they need. This reminds me of the way in which the experiment in “Leveraging Social Media and IoT to Bootstrap Smart Environments” used Twitter as a means to communicate with people to have them perform tasks such as turning off the lights to conserve energy. {5} Having 24-hour on-call support is similar to this, as it allows residents to learn or relearn how to live stable lives through communication and aid.

 

{1} Crowley, David N., Edward Curry, and John G. Breslin. “Leveraging Social Media and IoT to Bootstrap Smart Environments.” In Big Data and Internet of Things: A Roadmap for Smart Environments. Switzerland: Spring International Publishing, 2014. 379-399.

{2} Fields, Desiree, and Sabina Uffer. “The financialisation of rental housing: A comparative analysis of New York City and Berlin.” Urban Studies July (2014): 1-17. usj.sagepub.com (accessed October 3, 2014).

{3} Smith, Neil. “Class Struggle on Avenue B: The Lower East Side as Wild Wild West.” In The People, Place, and Space Reader, edited by Jen Jack Gieseking, et al, New York: Routledge, 2014. 314-319.

{4} “Logan Place.” Preble Street. http://www.preblestreet.org/logan_place.php (accessed October 5, 2014).

{5} Crowley.

Post #3: Public Space Reflections

Multipurpose, Collaborative Public Spaces

Much of the opposition against smart cities is opposition to the ways in which idealized versions of the smart city are automated and controlled in what seem like extreme ways. In class, we have discussed how prototype smart cities around the world are all sparsely inhabited. Personally, I would not enjoy living in an entirely automated smart city. As futuristic as they seem, they lack an attractive human aspect that is present in current day cities. In my mind, this is linked to Lefebvre’s phrase, “the right to the city,” discussed in Mitchell’s essay “To Go Again to Hyde Park.” {1} In many ways, I believe cities are defined by the people who live in them. People have a certain right to their cities that disappears when cities are entirely automated for efficiency. For example, I do not think New York would be such a cultural hub of the country or even of the world if it did not have such a diverse population of residents. In a similar way, Berlin is often known for its street art and graffiti and was even honored as a UNESCO City of Design for its design achievements. {2} Mitchell also writes that “any city should be structured toward meeting” and that cities should allow people to interact. {3} If smart technology is to impact our futures and the futures of cities, then smart cities need to be designed in such a way that people want to explore their public spaces and share them with others.

Smart cities should have public spaces that can be used for multiple purposes. While parks seem like a simple solution, they should be adaptable to things like weather to allow people to use them in all different seasons. This could be as simple as the way in which the main quad at Bowdoin is grassy during the spring, summer, and fall, but is converted into an ice rink during the winter. However, with more funding, parks could be changed more drastically by season. They could be more weatherproof during winter to allow people to continue using the park, or even have specific features such as fountains or devices that spray mist during the summer to cool off park-goers. I also believe that parks are one way in which to preserve history of cities through dedications on park benches or trees. This reminded me of the recommendations made by 8th graders on what to put at Ground Zero in the Setha Low reading. The 8th graders all had different ideas, but what tied all of their ideas together was a desire to commemorate the events of 9/11 and allow people to share the location for healing and remembrance. {4} Parks in smart cities could be used for similar kinds of memorials or history to acknowledge the past, allowing the cities to be “smart” while still allowing park-goers to feel connected to the park and to one another in a human way.

Portland strikes me as needing two kinds of public spaces. The most obvious is the need for parks. For example, Lincoln Park is an absolutely dismal park that happens to be located in downtown Portland, but no one ever goes there. Congress Square Park is very similar in its central location, but also is rarely populated. I believe that Portland needs to both increase the amount of park space in the city and rework the existing park space to make the parks more attractive to visitors and residents. I also believe that Portland is capable of creating some kind of winter function for outdoor public space that would make Portland a more enticing city for winter tourism. The other kind of public space that Portland needs is indoor collaborative space. While Portland does have a coworking space at Think Tank, it needs public space that is more collaborative, inviting, and functional than a space like a library. While many cities have coworking places like Think Tank, most cities do not have free coworking spaces or more interactive, dynamic workspace options. I think that the year-round residential population of Portland is in an age range that would benefit greatly from something like this, especially in the winter months. Cafes get crowded and coworking spaces can get expensive, so collaborative indoor space would be greatly beneficial to Portland.

1. Gieseking, Jen Jack. “To Go Again to Hyde Park: Public Space, Rights, and Social Justice.” In The People, Place, and Space Reader. New York: Routledge, 2014. 193.
2. “Creative Cities Network.” United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization. http://www.unesco.org/new/en/culture/themes/creativity/creative-cities-network/design/berlin/ (accessed September 30, 2014).
3. Mitchell, 193.
4. Sorkin, Michael, and Sharon Zukin. “Spaces of Reflection, Recovery, and Resistance: Reimagining the Postindustrial Plaza.” In After the World Trade Center: Rethinking New York City. New York: Routledge, 2002. 163-172.

Infrastructure, Post #2: From Policy to Recommendation

Improving Public Transportation and Access

5 Comments

5 Recommendations for the City of Portland relevant to infrastructure:

1. The parking situation in downtown Portland is not great, especially during the winter when snow removal blocks off portions of streets. Could we come up with a way to improve upon parking?

2. The public transportation system stinks; the buses run sporadically and there is little to no signage or mention of how the system works.

3. Can we create some kind of infrastructure (combined with tourist attractions) that will make tourism in winter more accessible?

4. There seems to be a large divide between the local suburbs (or even just more residential areas of the actual city of Portland) and the downtown area. Can we adjust the transportation system between these areas to help link them to downtown Portland?

5. Maps placed around Portland would be very helpful to orient tourists (and even residents) to Portland geography. There are very few maps around the downtown area and the ones that exist are specifically in Old Port; maps placed in areas of Portland would be beneficial to people navigating the city by foot or bike who do not have GPS access.

When I walked around downtown Portland last Sunday for the field trip, the most surprising lack of infrastructure to me was the absence of a practical public transportation system. We walked around Portland for approximately 3 hours and saw so few buses pass by that we did not realize there was a public transportation system. Professor Gieseking even gave us an example of how spotty the bus service is in Portland; she explained how the bus is supposed to run every 30 minutes to the airport, but often is late or does not show up at all. While I do believe that Portland is quite a walkable city, the lack of a functional public transportation system makes it difficult for residents and visitors to access different parts of the city. I also believe that a better transportation system in downtown Portland as well as the greater Portland area would, to a certain degree, alleviate issues with seasonal access to Portland.

If Portland were more accessible to people without cars, I believe it would become a larger tourism hub in New England. I realized this from my experiences in Portland as a Bowdoin student last year; I found it difficult to go to Portland without using Bowdoin’s shuttle/taxi agreement because I did not have a car on campus. The Amtrak Downeaster and the Concord Coach Lines bus do not stop in downtown Portland, making it very difficult for people to access the city without either having a car or spending exorbitant amounts of money on taxis. I believe that if there were more ways for people to access the downtown area from neighboring suburbs or even from farther away, Portland would have less of an issue with seasonal tourism.

What I find very interesting about public transportation in Portland is that it is not an issue discussed in City Council meetings. I have browsed all of the minutes and agendas from meetings in the last three months, and none has mentioned public transportation. The July meetings mentioned the “Portland Area Transportation System,” but on closer look, the discussions in this category were only about funding for road repair and traffic lights {1}. It seems slightly ridiculous to me that representatives in Portland can be unhappy about things like the lack of winter tourism when they have not figured out ways to make the city more accessible at all times of the year. I do not think Portland is necessarily ready to become a “smart” city along the lines of cities discussed in Adam Greenfield’s “Against the smart city” because it not only lacks the financial support to overhaul its technology but it also has a certain New England charm that could and most likely would be compromised by large-scale changes. While Portland could probably use a transportation app and a new bus map (see below) to help residents and tourists with transportation around Portland, I am not sure if Portland could benefit from a major change in transportation infrastructure, as a major change could potentially reshape the city and people’s perceptions of Portland. This made me think about how even though I am in support of certain aspects of smart infrastructure, I do agree with some of Greenfield’s points. Greenfield discusses how implementing smart technology in cities is often assuming that “there is one and only one universal and transcendently correct solution to each identified individual or collective human need” {2}. Humans are not perfect and cannot live in an entirely regulated world. I believe that drastically changing something like the public transportation system in Portland into a specific, technologically smart system would be trying to achieve a robotic, futuristic perfection that does not exist in the culture of Portland. However, I do think that creating tangible change through a transportation app and a phased-in reworking of the transportation system would be highly beneficial to residents and visitors of Portland.

While from the map it seems that Portland has a wide-reaching bus system, maps are nowhere to be found around downtown Portland and buses are rarely seen passing by {3}.

{1} Portland City Council. “Regular City Council Meeting Agenda.” Portland City Agenda Center. http://portlandmaine.gov/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Agenda/07212014-479?html=true (accessed September 24, 2014).

{2} Greenfield, Adam. Against the smart city. New York City: Do projects, 2013. Kindle loc. 432.

{3} “Main Map.” Greater Portland Transit District. http://gpmetrobus.net/index.php/main-map (accessed September 24, 2014).

Post #1: Research Topic & Group

Technological Change and the Preservation of Cities

For our research projects, I would like to study infrastructure of cities and the technological developments that make up smart infrastructure. I believe that technology has become such a crucial part of modern society (primarily in thoroughly developed regions of the world) and that it will continue to be an integral part of our lives for years to come. Studying the expansion of smart infrastructure and its fluid place in our society seems to be very cutting edge research; we are at such a point of concentrated change and progress that being able to track or follow that change is essential. In cities such as NYC, things such as the iPhone have revolutionized the ways in which residents interact with their surroundings. For example, apps like Seamless allow residents to order food from hundreds of restaurants to be delivered to their apartments. Rather than flip through physical menus or even browse online menus and then make a phone call to order, users can simply press a few buttons and access a massive database of restaurants willing to deliver to their apartments. Being able to look at the ways in which smartphone applications have transformed the way people interact with their cities over a relatively short period of time is just one example of how technology is redefining the ways in which we interact with everything around us.

The idea of looking at social history through the context of urban spaces (as explained in the Hayden reading) made me think about the pros and cons of technology development in cities {1}. Preserving cities’ histories may seem like an easy task through technology, but aspects of cities could hypothetically be lost when parts of cities are demolished to build new “smarter” neighborhoods. As Anthony Townsend said, taking a “meat axe” to cities to rework them does sound harsh and often unnecessary, as it destroys any space that previously existed {2}. To me, being able to look at the development of technology in cities and smarter infrastructure while still taking into account repercussions that this development could have seems to be a critical factor to consider. Finding a balance between future development and history seems to be an important part of protecting spaces.

Having lived in a suburb of NYC almost all my life, I have been very fortunate to grow up in a way such that I was introduced to NYC at a very young age and have always had the city and everything it has to offer easily accessible to me. I attended a private school in the Bronx from grades 7-12, so I had many friends that lived all over the city. Over the years, I have loved making trips into the city. When I was younger, I used to take the Metro-North train into Manhattan to go to work with my dad; now that I am older, I either take the train in to visit friends or drive (depending on where my final destination is). Because I do not truly qualify as a New Yorker, I think I have an unusual appreciation for NYC. I am capable of looking at the city from the eyes of a resident, walking the streets quickly, never stopping to talk to strangers, but I can also look at the city as an outsider, looking at the ways in which the cityscape has changed over the years. I have also traveled to many cities all over the world and have always been fascinated by the different ways cities are set up, even down to the way that citizens most commonly travel from place to place. Between public space, housing, and infrastructure, I think that looking at infrastructure would allow me to look at how cities and their defining characteristics and history influence not only how the cities are arranged but also the kinds of technological change that are most feasible and helpful to their residents.

{1} Hayden, Dolores. “Urban Landscape History: The Sense of Place and the Politics of Space.” In The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1995. 14-43.

{2} Townsend, Anthony. “Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia.” YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1evCV6_e8Q&feature=youtube_gdata_player (accessed September 11, 2014).