Spirit of Place (continued)
Last week I wrote down some thoughts about how we interact with the spaces we move through everyday, and how technology is changing that. Or at least has the potential to change it. This week we happened to work with two different people who are building technologies that can change our spacial relationships.
This first was Esri. Esri is an amazing company that has created a GIS software for government and companies to start to leverage data and geography to better understand the changing world around us. We took a day to get comfortable with how to access the data and build a map, and then think of a problem to solve using these tools. The problem we came to was- it is hard to understand how a neighborhood or part of a city feels when you don’t live there yet. Many young professionals are in the process of applying to jobs and packing up their lives to move to a new place, how can we make that process easier for them. Finding a place you enjoy living, and can find your place in is a huge part when starting a life for yourself.
When thinking how we were going to convey this with the data, we had to think about what elements actually added up to creating the atmosphere of a city neighborhood. The historic, cultural, economic, and social context is all equally important when creating a sense of place. But what data collected can answer what the historic and cultural context actually is in that area? How do you know how walkable or bike-able that area is? Is the business down the street a coffee shop with early morning meet ups, or a nightclub that goes until 2am. Is the food available consist of dumpy grocery and corner stores, or is it vibrant with different cultural markets. Can you access local foods and goods or is everything shipped in to this area from far away. Will you be spending your whole paycheck on rent, or can you start saving and enjoying your free time? All of these in some shape start to make up the place you want to live. We still have not figured out how to leverage all of the data to answer our problem, but Esri opened a whole new world with the idea of geocoding and understanding the relationship between different data sets.
Fast forward a few days, and we are meeting with Jen Lewin Studio to get a tour of the interactive art she and her team have been working on. The way technology is used here is very different, but also has the power to change the way we interact and interpret the spaces around us. For Jen and her team it is more than just creating a pretty piece of art, but making sure that it is changing the way people see or interact with a space. Harnessing the power of art to give life to abandoned park, or to influence interactions between demographic differences, forever changes that place.
Last week I left with the thought that technology has the power to not only change the spirit of place, but possibly disrupt it as well. On the flip side, these technologies have the power to completely revitalize a space and bring positive interaction to what once might have been looked over. Balancing between these two is our biggest challenge, but I think when we have stability with both, the difference it can make will be momentous.
Current graduate student at BDW in Boulder, CO.
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