PLACELOGGING Mobile spatial annotation and its potential use to urban planners and designers by Rajesh Kottamasu Bachelor of Arts in Psychology Harvard College Cambridge, Massachusetts (2003) Submitted to the Department of Urban Studies and Planning in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master in City Planning at the MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY June 2007 © 2007 Rajesh Kottamasu. All rights reserved. The author hereby grants to MIT permission to reproduce and to distribute publicly paper and electronic copies of this thesis document in whole or in part. Signature of author: ...................................................................................................................................................................................................... Department of Urban Studies and Planning I May 24, 2007 Certified by: .................................................................................................................................................................................................................. Professor Lawrence J. Vale, Department of Urban Studies and Planning I Thesis Supervisor Accepted by: ................................................................................................................................................................................................................. Professor Langley Keyes I Chair, MCP Committee, Department of Urban Studies and Planning PLACELOGGING Mobile spatial annotation and its potential use to urban planners and designers by Rajesh Kottamasu Submitted to the Department of Urban Studies and Planning on May 24, 2007 in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master in City Planning Abstract is defined to analyze and compare trends in distribution, placement and content of annotations. Placelogs are found to distinguish With the rise of 'Mobile 2.0,' digital telecommunications themselves by annotating a wide range of public and private places, are beginning to provide deep resources of information to mobile identified as what Margaret Crawford calls the 'everyday space' of city dwellers. Particularly striking among recent applications is city residents, with predominantly subjective, first-person content, placelogging, defined here as the practice of digitally annotating which is described as marking 'everyday time.' physical places with user-generated text and media accessible onsite Participant interviews and research on related technologies to other mobile users. Placelogging presents potential as a means are used to support claims that placelogging could be used to of engaging citizens with each other and with their environment, as identify sites of shared meaning in the city as well as to foster well as distributing authority over defining what Kevin Lynch called place attachment, claim to space and social connections among "the image of the city." But as an emerging practice, its uniqueness participants. Uses in community development are considered as a mode of communication distinct from other forms of spatial through three cases of implementation: [murmur] in Toronto, annotation has not yet been proved. Yellow Arrow in Copenhagen and Proboscis' Urban Tapestries in To investigate the uniqueness of placelogging, the thesis London. Uses for revealed meanings are proposed in preservation, first establishes a taxonomy of spatial annotation through which identification of development priorities and sensitivity of response to consider the different forms, functions, and trends in official in urban development. Lynch's visual image of the city is revisited adoption of a wide range of annotating media. Next, annotations as a 'meaning image' that encourages design practices of 'interactive made through various media, including placelogging projects ethnography' and 'sometimes' urban design. Finally, unfamiliarity [murmur] and Yellow Arrow, are catalogued in two neighborhoods with and differential access to technology are considered in the each of Toronto and New York City. A preliminary methodology context of public uses for placelogging and its derived data. Thesis Supervisor: Lawrence J. Vale Title: Professor and Department Head, Department of Urban Studies and Planning Contents Introduction | The city that speaks 7 3 | The value(s) of placelogging 80 Case projects 9 Placelogs as indicators of shared meaning 80 Aim and structure of the thesis 18 Impact on participants 84 1 | Use and meaning of spatial annotation 21 4 | Implications for planners and designers 90 Monuments 23 Placelogging as community Graffiti 24 development tool 90 Signage 27 Placelogs as guides in meaning- In situ media 28 centered design and development 98 Walking tours 30 Politics of participation 106 Maps 31 Toward Place 2.0 109 Other narrative media 34 Back to placelogging 35 Appendices 2 | A survey of annotated places 39 A | Kensington Market annotation survey data 113 Methodology 39 Notes on the data 41 B | The Annex annotation survey data 123 Kensington Market, Toronto 46 C | Lower East Side annotation survey data 132 The Annex, Toronto 52 D | NoLIta/North Bowery annotation survey data 148 The Lower East Side, New York City 58 NoLIta/North Bowery, New York City 66 Places logged across neighborhoods 73 Bibliography 162 Content of placelog annotations across neighborhoods 75 Acknowledgments 169 INTRODUCTION The city that speaks A year ago, I made a regular evening stop in Inman Square they experienced something that amazed them—an image, a to pick up some dinner from Punjabi Dhaba, my favorite cheapo conversation, a memory. They could leave messages with the Indian take-out place in Cambridge. On my way in, a gloved hand answering service reporting on their amazements. Every evening, thrust a piece of folded-up paper in front of me. I assembled the day’s messages into a broadcast that was then “Would you like to buy a copy of Geogra-flight?” a thin available for a few hours, both on the hotline and on the web, to voice asked. Beside me stood an earnest-looking beanpole of a those neighbors who wanted to listen. man wearing a suit, a black trench coat and leather motorcycle gloves. Under one arm, he carried an umbrella and a small stack In the week and a half prior to this particular evening, the of pamphlets identical to the one he was offering me. I muttered Museum had received two messages about the man selling Geogra- a no-thank-you and pushed into the restaurant, but as I waited to flight: one from a woman sitting at 1369 Coffee Shop around the place my order, I couldn’t stop looking over my shoulder at him, corner from Punjabi Dhaba and marveling at the strange clothing— making the same offer to passers-by on the corner of Beacon and a motorcycle helmet, leather gloves and a suit—of a person Cambridge Streets. It wasn’t just the man’s peculiarity that struck handing out brochures on the corner; another from a man who me. It was my growing awareness that I’d been told about him had been so charmed by the word “Geogra-flight” that he had to before, by two independent strangers who had seen him on this buy a copy, even though it was dark and rainy, and the man selling block. the newsletter was rather suspiciously hanging around outside the At the time, I was operating a neighborhood art project neighborhood bars on Cambridge Street. The caller described the called The Daily Museum of Amazement.1 My neighbors, puzzling contents of the pamphlet once he got it home: articles and anyone who had passed through the neighborhood and that were, in fact, only ideas for articles; half-thoughts and musings; seen my posters, could call into a hotline during the day when gobbledegook. 7 The messages were not fresh in my mind that night, so as I primary medium. Some projects work like this: noticing a physical pieced together the identity of the man that I had seen, it came as marker in a given location, a mobile user can call or text message something like a revelation. Here was the same person that these the number or address given by the marker in order to receive a two strangers had reported on, and now my experience was tied to message uploaded by someone else. Depending on the project, their stories, which also happened on pretty much the same corner. the message might be text, a photo, audio or video. Users are I had only lived in the neighborhood for six months, and I didn’t free to tag other places with their own annotations in the same know my neighbors. But now, triangulated by this man, the reports way. Some projects don’t use physical markers but instead rely on of strangers, and the geography, I felt suddenly grounded, woven global positioning systems (GPS) to anchor content to geographical into a fabric of local experience. I quickly took out my cell phone coordinates; participants in these projects are usually required to and called into the Daily Museum to report on my amazement to the download software to their mobile device in order to be alerted others. when they are near placelog content. A number of projects also ***** have websites through which users can access and sometimes add The Daily Museum is how I became interested in what I annotations. call placelogging, a practice of using portable electronic devices to At least 40 placelogging projects have been initiated annotate the urban landscape in a public way that even strangers can worldwide since 2002 by a mix of artists, urbanists and technology process and share in. My experience with the man on the corner developers. The biggest surge