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INFORMATION
Contact: Sarah Williams
DESCRIPTION
Interaction with digital information has become part of daily life. We leave traces of data about ourselves everywhere we go. When we swipe our subway card - information is left about our travel patterns. When we use our cell phones, information is keep about where we used the phone, for how long, and at what time of day. When we connect to internet hubs, the volume of our use as well as what we visited is recorded. Mapping these data traces allows us to visualize the dynamic ways that people interact with the urban environment.
A database of unique traces has been made available to the lab for spatial analysis -- 311 call complaints. New York City established the 311 call system for non-emergency and governmental calls. That means if New York citizens have a complaint, instead of calling 911, they call 311. Calls that require some kind of service are logged by location and time. Calls come in about everything from dead birds and potholes to juvenile loitering and noise control. Mapping these complaints tells us about a certain status of current conditions in the city – albeit a biased one. Upon spatial analysis, however, the biased complaints can be checked against other sources: for example high numbers of rat complaints are strongly correlated when overlaid onto a health code violations map.
This study maps New York City’s noise complaints. Noise complaints in Manhattan are typically found in neighborhoods that have a variety of commercial, residential, and retail uses. Neighborhoods in transition also tend to have higher noise complaints - as new uses begin to clash with the old and vice versa. A great example of this is the Alphabet City in Manhattan Lower East side. Over the last 10 years this neighborhood has had a radical transformation. Once considered a blighted neighborhood, Alphabet City is now a prime location for trendy restaurants and bars. The contours on the map show noise levels in December 2004. The graph on the left illustrates the number of people living in the area next to the level of complaints. The information is recorded as if you were walking down Avenue A - one of Alphabet City’s main commercial streets.
The lab has used this dataset both in teaching spatial analysis to Urban Design students, and to further our research and development of tools, representational techniques, and communication strategies for the mapping of spatial data.
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