Friday, 24 September 2004

Social Tapestries bodystorming event

Yesterday I took part in a bodystorming session as part of a Social Tapestries experiment. Social Tapestries is a Proboscis research project developing experimental uses of public authoring to demonstrate the social and cultural benefits of local knowledge sharing enabled by new mobile technologies.

Bodystorming_8
So there we were, tip-toeing over parts of London - much discussion about different kinds of map - trying to think-through everyday life scenarios in which mobile technologies might play a role. As long as you understood from the outset that this was a solution trying to get to grips with its problem, it kind of fell into place, if I can put it like that. I really value the Proboscis metaphor of social networks as tapestry, it helps to see how different threads exist between people, get broken, tangled, frayed, renewed, and so forth. I was in a group working through neighbourhood problems to do with contested use of a community space: others were developing connections based on arts, culture, regeneration and education. Check the Social Tapestries site for updates in due course.

24 Sep 2004 21:14:40 | Mobility and change

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Gated communities: debate still awaited At today's Safer neighbourhoods conference in London, there was scheduled a debate on the theme of gated communities, with presentations from Bill Smith Bowers (University of Westminster, LRFG) and author and journalist Anna Minton. Basically Bill was saying 'why not?' and Anna was saying 'it's a manifestation of polarisation.' But the debate never really got going. It was all a bit underwhelming and I left feeling a bit concerned at how little thinking had been done. First, the conference appeared to be to some extent a celebration of the 'Secured by Design' approach to the local built environment. So the audience was primed with a rational and thoroughly-grounded appreciation of the case for distinguishing private space from public. Fine. But midway through the afternoon seemed a bit late when, in discussion, some people seemed surprised when the possibility arose that by designing out crime one could inadvertently design out sociability. What's worrying is the sense I got that a roomful of advocates of gating, fencing and locking should not have done much thinking about the potential effects of their measures on social interaction. On today's evidence, and with one or two distinguished exceptions (such as Groundwork's Jim McManus) the impulse to focus narrowly on security measures on the basis of crime and the fear of crime holds powerful sway. New urbanism? What new urbanism? So in that context, it was weird to hear an academic, invited to join the panel, referring to London's Barbican area as a gated community without a gate. Well it seems to me, even if you overlook the possibility that on most days of the year there may be more visitors in the Barbican than residents, it's still the case that a gated community without gates isn't a gated community. It is the closed gate that is an emphatic symbol of exclusion. What concerns me is that we might not have made much progress on understanding why so many people have an instinctive resistance to gated communities. In my view it could be because that symbol is so emphatic and non-negotiable, it represents a profound challenge to pluralism and the public realm. And maybe the problem is that our appreciation of the public realm is so impoverished, and we place so little value on the spatial experience of democracy, that we don't have a response to gated communities ready in our, er, lockers. Most recent post on this theme.
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Challenging hate crime Community Safety Advisory Service is holding a 'Co-working on Community Safety' conference looking at 'Challenging hate crime in your local community,' on 5 October 2004 at the St. Albans Centre, Holborn, London. The conference aims to: • Raise the profile of hate crime issues • Identify solutions to challenge hate crime • Encourage partnership working on hate crime issues across London.

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