Mapping ethnic diversity

Eric Fisher is at it again - this time he's made some maps to illustrate ethnic diversity in 40 U.S. cities. Here's Seattle:

image from Eric Fisher; used under Creative commons license

Each dot represents 25 people - Red is White, Blue is Black, Green is Asian, and Orange is Hispanic. The categories themselves come from the census, because that's the best available data. If you know Seattle reasonably well, there won't be any big surprises in this, but it's a very effective way to visualise the data and it can be interesting comparing other cities.

What tourists see vs what locals see

Following up on the Geotaggers' World Atlas, Eric Fisher has dug deeper into the data to try to distinguish photos taken by tourists from those taken by locals. It illustrates the point about the difference between a relatively superficial tourists'-eye-view of a city and the real workings of it from the point of view of locals even better than the previous maps did, as you can see in the Seattle one:

image from Eric Fisher; used under Creative commons license

Tourists (those whose photos are all from within a month of each other) show up in red, locals in blue, and those who the algorithm couldn't place in yellow. The locals' photos still show a distinct concentration on the prettier parts of town, but they're dramatically wider ranging than the tourists'.

I am particularly conscious of this right now, because I am in London, a city where I'm halfway between a tourist and a local because I grew up here and come back to visit family and friends, but haven't lived here since I moved away for university. I've been collecting observations of the city from that perspective, and I'll write a few up over the next couple of weeks.

The Geotaggers' World Atlas

Here's an interesting way of visualising part of the activity of a city: The Geotaggers' World Atlas by Eric Fisher. Eric has taken publicly available street maps of major cities, and overlaid them with traces of the locations from which people have taken geotagged photos. The result is a rather beautiful trace of the picture-taking activity through a city, which seems like a reasonable proxy for "where is open to the public and visually interesting".

image from Eric Fisher; used under Creative commons license

Looking at where is missing from these maps is also rather striking. For instance, Seattle has a river running through it, and that river is both an important industrial site and a tragic pollution dump. It's only a weak trace on the map because it isn't a scenic destination, but it's an important part of the story of Seattle. In the same way, in most of the mapped cities the majority of residences are off the photographed track. Looking at these maps, I'm painfully aware that in each of these cities that I have visited, excepting the two I've lived in (Seattle and London), I myself have barely left the heavily-tracked areas.

I don't have a huge point to make here, just that really knowing a city requires more than a tourist's-eye-view, because every city has important places that are not necessarily notable or tourist-inviting.

Creating a "third place" in commercial space

Today, I had the great pleasure of meeting the Interfaith Amigos, who will hopefully give a talk in our brownbag series later this year. The meeting was also a pleasure for a secondary reason, which is that they had me come to their 'office'. They don't have a private office - they meet at the Third Place Commons in Lake Forest Park. Third Place Commons is a big common space in a mall, distinguished from the typical mall food court by being expressly intended to be a comfortable gathering space that the community can use as their "third place" - one that is neither home nor the office.

I had seen a similarly convivial space in the Crossroads Mall in Bellevue before (turns out they are backed by the same developer), and I loved the idea but found myself a bit skeptical. Shopping malls are private spaces conditionally open to the public, and typically so tightly controlled and intensely devoted to the act of selling stuff that it was hard to imagine them really working as worthwhile gathering places for anything else. My abiding suspicion that the loveliness of the Bellevue and Lake Forest Park third places was an illusion was finally put to rest when the Amigos told me that they had coauthored a book, using Third Place Commons as their main office through the whole process. That's a serious commitment of time, effort and concentration, and if the venue worked for that then it really does succeed as a third place.

This left me wondering why so few mall food courts serve this purpose. In terms of its basic functional components, there's not much difference between these deliberate third places and the typical food court: a central open area with chairs and tables, with food and drink vending at its edges, and shops to either side of it. So why is it that so few are inviting, comfortable places to meet someone, or to spend countless hours working together on a project?

Clearly intent matters in itself—because these are designated as common areas, we know we aren't going to get shooed away or snarked at for not spending enough money—but there are also some design decisions that anyone trying to emulate these places could learn from:

• The food & drink vending isn't as heavily intertwined with the seating as in most malls, so you can sit in the middle without bathing in the neon lights of a fast food outlet.
• There's some open space that can be used as a stage with minimal planning.
• Both places have a giant chess set, which serves as a highly visible sign that noncommercial uses are welcome.
• The presence of the mall as an organisation—manifested in signs and uniformed personnel—is lighter in these places than the rest of the mall.
• I don't recall this being true at Crossroads, but at the Third Place Commons the furniture feels quite different. It's made of wood, and it doesn't have the uniformity of typical chain-commercial furniture.
• Both places are connected directly to the outside. At Crossroads it's possible to walk into the mall and go straight to the gathering area, without walking past more than one shop. At Third Place Commons that isn't possible, because it's upstairs, but there are big windows facing outside.

Alone, none of these are magic bullets—in fact, I think I can find a sterile, hostile food court with each of these features—but collectively they do help reinforce the impression that these are authentic, welcoming gathering spaces, carved out of the usually much less welcoming commercial space of the mall.

Mr. Nickels goes to Copenhagen

Thank you to Mayor of Seattle, Greg Nickels. We hope he found satisfaction this past week at the Climate Summit for Mayors in Copenhagen. Largely insulated from the realpolitik and deal-making of their national-level counterparts, he and 49 other mayors from around the globe had the chance to tout programs and accomplishments, exchange ideas, and collaborate as one might hope at a climate summit.

For a taste, check out Evergreen Film's report:

On Nickels

We think it’s worth noting just a few of the mayor’s achievements before he leaves us:

• Added light rail to Seattle’s public transportation portfolio
• Launched the U.S. Mayors' Climate Protection Agreement, now joined by over 1,000 mayors!
  
• Committed Seattle to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 7% below 1990 levels by 2012 (we’re already there) and by 80% below 1990 levels by 2050
• Created City of Seattle's Office of Sustainability and the Environment
  
• Created the Green Building Task Force with the aim of increasing new and existing buildings’ efficiency by 20%

On Disappointment in Copenhagen

Perhaps there’s a silver lining in the propagation and legitimizing of successes at the city-scale. If cities move the status quo, nations will follow. Thank you Mayor Nickels!

A tale of two Sustainable Wallingfords

A recent article in the Ballard Journal by Katherine Luck titled "Sustainable Wallingford's British connection: Grassroots Seattle group partners with U.K. counterparts in climate change survey" shows how is really is possible to think globally but act locally. The two Sustainable Wallingfords (Sustainable Wallingford - UK and Sustainable Wallingford - USA) found each other online and it's been a successful match ever since. Both organizations have missions around community level sustainability and both view climate change as one of their key issues. Here at Sustainable Seattle we've seen a lot of sustainability efforts move from high level connections to more local level initiatives so maybe its time for the idea of 'sustainable Sister Cities' to move over and make way for 'innovative namesake neighborhoods'. Photo via Ballard Journal