Urban Technology at University of Michigan week 182
Stargazing and Citygazing + Urban Technology Playlist
Expect a little more introspection this season on the urban technology newsletter. We’re now in the third year of teaching this degree program and so our experiences in the classroom are providing regular sources of reflection. The program’s culture is also developing now, with a student organization off and running as a sign of success and cause for celebration. This week we have two things for you: rumination from the Saudi desert while here on a work trip getting to know the urban regeneration of AlUla and the urban tech student org’s CITY PLAYLIST! (In all caps because students making their own playlist is among the most important of KPIs.)
💬 Hello! This is the newsletter of the Urban Technology program at University of Michigan, in which we explore the ways that data, connectivity, computation, and automation can be harnessed to nurture and improve urban life. If you’re new here, try this short video of current students describing urban technology in their own words.
🌌 Skies over Gharameel
An hour north of the oasis of AlUla, in the west of Saudi Arabia, I found myself last night surrounded by limestone fingers reaching up from the ground. In this unique landscape, a product of erosion on a geological timescale, our rawi (storyteller and guide) described the night sky as the “iPhone of ancient Arabs.” Spot the North Star (or Southern Cross) and you can use the body’s arms and hands as measuring devices to locate yourself in time and space. “Map, calendar, clock,” she chanted.
While listening to the rawi’s cosmic poetry I was reminded of something we’re teaching in the program right now: the usefulness and difficulty of finding the right simplifier. In UT 230 - Design & Urban Inquiries, led by Elisa Ngan and Matthew Wizinsky this semester, students are learning methods of observation, modeling (of data and information), and visualization so that they may be better empowered to make sense of urban challenges. Through this methodological teaching we’re giving them ways to make the permanent complexity of the world temporarily legible and memorable. Simplified, but usefully.
How you see the world informs how you shape (or reshape) it: so we have to be nimble at developing and “trying on” perspectives because addressing urban challenges in a thoughtful way requires new ways of seeing or “framing” the challenges around us. In the Design & Urban Inquiries course students combine existing data with their own proprietary data that they’ve collected by hand into new and exploratory visualizations. They research systems such as the energy and water grids and abstract those intricate apparatuses into diagrams. While doing so, they develop their own taxonomies or data models to describe the relationships and facets of what they’re observing. Students practice a loop from observe → record → structure → visualize.
The knowledge of the night sky conveyed to me last night in Gharameel was received by the guide and her ancestors as poetry that was passed up through generations reaching back to ancient Arabian astronomers. Poetry packaged the critical knowledge of navigation so that it could be carried in one’s own memory and conveyed across generations more easily. Last night, chilled to the bone in the desert, I realized that what we’re doing in the Design & Urban Inquiries course resonates: Good projects in this class help the individual student understand the city around them in new depth. Great projects in the same class help the student’s peers share an understanding. Perhaps next year poetry should be assigned as one of the visualization methods.
🎶 Urban Technology Student Playlist
On the topic of capturing the infinite specificity of the world in memorable simplifications, how about some music?
This year I am proud to welcome the Urban Technology Student Organization (UTSO), founded by five students in their junior year (and first cohort of the program): Aakash Narayan, Audrey Tang, Jenna Li, Odiso Obiora, and Ting Fong Chen. At their first event UTSO created a collaborative playlist of city songs on Spotify, featuring some real classics.
Now all we need are some songs addressing the other aspects of our curriculum, design and technology. If I had to pick a song for the UT230 course described above, it might be Radiohead’s Everything in its Right Place. A theme of course is “rightness” and honing the judgement of what’s provisionally appropriate (in apprehending the world and in making visuals). The anthem for UT 210, a course on ethnographic research methods, would definitely be Bjork’s Human Behavior: “If you ever get close to a human / And human behaviour / Be ready, be ready, be ready to get confused.”
Also on my list would be Ann Arbor’s own Iggy & The Stooges singing “Look out, honey, 'cause I'm using technology / Ain't got time to make no apology” in Search & Destroy. Daft Punk’s Technologic is an easy winner. Or digging up my own college playlist (yes, on minidisc), I would be remiss in not putting forward Figurine’s IMPossible for how it captured the tension of a digital life:
Twelve point text cannot replace
Five minutes with you face to face
Geneva is such a cold cold font
I'm sorry if this comes out wrong
But I met someone new today
Long distance love is not my thing
So, internet, what songs would be on your urban technology playlist?
🏋️ Are you hiring for summer 2024? Reply to this email if you’re interested in urban technology student interns. They have skills in UX design, service design, python, javascript and a zeal for urban challenges.
These weeks: Things are in full swing after a busy start to the semester. UTSO launch, studio photoshoot, employer outreach. Starting to think about our spring travel. Cultivating an Urban Technology culture. 🏃
Love it! Seems like a lively fun group. Would love to see some pictures of your minidiscs - I've kept some around from the 1990s (recorded while living in Japan, natch) for use in a class on standards and technology transitions. 🤓