Urban Technology at University of Michigan week -07
Noticings from a walk around Detroit
This week we officially closed our first admissions season and ended up with slightly more students than we expected to have. I think of what we’re building as a portal through which students step into the world more so than a “degree program,” which sounds so dry. In that sense, it’s very real now that we have not just the abstract idea of a new degree program but a set of names and faces. People with expectations—and high ones! Welcome, folks. Welcome to the portal.
Let’s celebrate with a walk around Detroit.
Hello! I’m Bryan Boyer, Director of the Urban Technology degree at University of Michigan that will welcome its first students in the 2021-2022 academic year. If you’re new here, try this 90 second video introduction. While we launch the program, we’re using this venue to explore themes and ideas related to our studies. Thanks for reading. Have questions about any of this? Hit reply and let us know.
👀 Noticings
Links
🔜 Planning notices are a specific kind of wayfinding in cities. They point us toward the future and solicit input. But they’re also usually quite dreadfully designed and poorly suited to the task. FutureGov in the UK are trying to reinvent planning notices for the digital era.
👮♀️ Philip Atiba Goff of the Center for Policing Equity is ✨ in this interview on how to stop racism by focusing on behavior.
📶 Panel discussion on a “Tech New Deal” for Black America to address inequities in access to the internet and other issues. Features Detroit’s own Joshua Edmonds, Director of Digital Inclusion, and Lt. Governor Garlin Gilchrist II (an alum of UM).
🏡 Thirteen Google.org fellows will help the city of Detroit build a search tool for affordable housing. Would like to know the breakdown of product, engineering, and design folks on this team.
🪵 This sentence is pretty wild: A 400-year old Japanese company is developing wooden satellites that burn up when they fall out of orbit instead of remaining as space junk. h/t Geoff Manaugh
This week: Admissions debrief so we know how to improve next year. Website and comms review, getting ready for the next admissions seasons (yes, already). Coffee with Arash to learn about his robotic construction work. Anya. Scoping out a research project with a local company for the summer; assembling a team of hackers with Anthony to experiment with computer vision; reviewing early progress with Christopher on our drone sounds simulation project. Suddenly there are all of these little projects sprouting up. That’s promising. 🌱 🏃♂️