City Data Interpretation
Seminar Faculty: Mar Santamaria & Pablo Martinez (300.000km/s)

Urban Big Data (citizens activity on social networks, traffic flows, etc.) enables us to make visible several aspects of the city functioning that will go unnoticed by relying upon traditional cartographic information (topography, plot division, usage and neighborhood level statistics). We propose to work on the intersection of these two ideas: where form could follow behavior.
During a two day seminar, we will seek to describe the landscape of a specific area of Barcelona (Poble Nou) both in its morphological and behavioral aspects. We will introduce the concept of mash-up by superimposing previously analysed information with Fran (Behaviour) on a new dataset (Urban Form) to obtain a synthesis cartography. This new material will serve as the starting point for the interpretation, consisting in a cross-reading of information to identify hierarchies and relevant values, patterns and exceptions.
Finally, we will transform data sets into meaningful urban stories by documenting on-site by means of photography the different pre identified situations. The verification between map and reality will enrich and modify the final materials.

Concepts:
– Mash-up and complementary data
– Spatial and temporal aggregation
– Mathematical analysis vs graphical analysis
– Decontextualizing the data
– Patterns vs exception
– On-site verification and reinterpretation