Uploaded on 2016-05-07 by alanfigot

The city is “man’s most consistent and on the whole, his most successful attempt to remake the world he lives in more after his heart’s desire. But, if the city is the world which man created, it is the world in which he is henceforth condemned to live. Thus, indirectly, and without any clear sense of the nature of his task, in making the city man has remade himself.” - Robert Park ‘Invisible information’ that can be extracted from the visible: 1. Population’s interests in relation to location within the city 2. Purchasing power in relation to location within the city This picture was taken out onto the street from inside a bookstore. Whilst there I realized that just as one person’s purchases might serve as a glimpse into his interests, if aggregated to a bigger picture of the population could be formed. Bookstores, libraries and even newspaper stands could be mapped out and their sales analyzed in order to identify trends of interests within different areas. These could then be understood in relation to recent events and/or collective desires for the future. Hypothetically (but not so far away from reality in Mexico City), if it was discovered that a significant number of people were looking into the subject of renewable energy and the environment, it would point the local/state/national discussion towards those subjects in order to contribute to the planning of a more liveable urban space in ‘democratic’-big data sense. * I realize that books, newspapers and magazines are not by themselves an indicator and would probably have to be put together with variables of data/information obtained from other sources such as blogs or discussion forums. [1]: https://edxuploads.s3.amazonaws.com/14626519971403572.jpg