Future scenarios for the relation between advanced tracking research and urban design and planning

8/8/2019 Future scenarios for the relation between advanced tracking research and urban design and planning

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Journal of Location Based Services

Vol. X, No. X, Month 200X, 000000

Future Scenarios for the Relation between Advanced Tracking Research and Urban

Design and Planning

Jeroen van Schaicka*

aFaculty of Architecture, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands

It is of prime importance for urban designers and planners to become aware of the real

ways in which people use physical urban environments so as to avoid obvious design

errors and to aim for high quality urban environments for the people that inhabit and

visit them. To inform the making of such urban designs and plans, it seems logical to use

- the currently rapidly developing - advanced tracking technologies. However, there are

several applicability problems that hinder the use of tracking research in an urban

design and planning context both general problems and particular ones for tracking

technologies. Applicability problems are, for a large part, a result of how researchers

formulate their research questions in fundamentally different ways than designers (or

planners) oriented towards analysis versus oriented towards synthesis. Thus, an

important element of understanding the potential of tracking technologies in the domain

of urban design and planning is the way in which research questions come to lightthrough the epistemological framing of research on activity and mobility behavior of

people. This paper links the frames held by experts using tracking technologies to

possible future scenarios for research using tracking technologies within the domain of

urban design and planning. The scenarios identified in this paper suggest that it will

remain highly problematic for designers to formulate synthesis-oriented research

questions for spatial scientists on the basis of the availability of advanced tracking

technologies. However, in terms of sensitizing designers to the ways in which people

behave in physical urban environments, tracking technologies might be helpful - as the

description of initial experimentation in the context of urban design and planning will

demonstrate.

Keywords: Urban design and planning, tracking technologies, future scenarios, applicability

gap, Urbanism On Track

*Email: [email protected]


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1. Introduction

Advanced tracking technologies are so rapidly becoming part of daily life that it is difficult to

grasp the possible implications for policy making and academic research. Advanced tracking

technologies, based on GPS-positioning or mobile phone positioning, collect and store data onthe time and location of tracking devices, and can so indirectly represent peoples activity

patterns; and they combine this with other data or information to create added value for users.

One example is the provision of location based and/or mobile services. Another example is

the visualization of time-space positioning data to gain insight in activity patterns of people.

The latter is of primary importance to the domain of urban design and planning. Urban design

and planning is the domain which concerns itself with the process of the physical

transformation cities both in terms of planning procedures and design proposals for physical

spatial organization - the spatial form of human settlement. From this perspective, two authors

demonstrate the necessity of understanding the potential behavior of people in space and time

for the making of urban designs and plans: Kevin Lynch and Francis Stuart Chapin Jr..

On the one hand, the seminal work of Kevin Lynch (1972, 1981) demonstrates how urban

design and planning, primarily in terms of design proposals, is about influencing the long-

term physical-spatial conditions for people to take part in activities and for people to move

between the places in which their lives take place. Lynchs work defines the relation between

physical urban form and peoples behavior in terms of performance dimensions for the

spatial form of cities: vitality, sense, fit, access and control. (Lynch, 1981, part II) The work

of Francis Stuart Chapin Jr., on the other hand, frames urban design and planning in terms of

systems theory, in which he defines the so-called activity system as a key land use system to

understand the overall development and planning of urban systems (Chapin and Kaiser,

1979). For Chapin, activity systems are constituted by the day-to-day behavior of people intime and space, constraint by, amongst other factors, the physical-spatial lay-out of urban

systems. Chapin goes to length in his work to set up a framework to collect empirical data on

activity and mobility patterns of people to inform mathematical models on that behavior for

planning purposes.

However, since the 1970s when Chapin developed his systems theory of planning, it proved

complex to apply empirically collected data on peoples behavior such as tracking data - in

an urban design and planning context. Moreover, the domain of knowledge utility studies has

shown that the use of empirical or model-based knowledge is a general problem in the making

of urban designs and plans (see Heide and Wijnbelt, 1996). Klaasen (2004, p.104) lists the

following potential problems, amounting to what can be called an applicability gap betweenknowledge derived from empirical research and the act of designing : (a) the tendency to

collect more knowledge on restricted parts of situations, burdening the synthesising capacities

of designers, (b) knowledge generated through empirical research not being geared towards

the information need of designers for example empirical researchers tending to

communicate verbally, while designers tend to communicate visually, (c) designers not

formulating synthesis-oriented research questions for spatial scientists. As such, this

applicability problem is not something new for tracking technologies but was already an issue

in applying research using activity diaries in urban design and planning (see Mey and Heide,

1997).

This paper starts by outlining the applicability problems of tracking technologies in the

domain of urban design and planning. The subsequent two sections explain how the framing


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of the role of tracking technologies in urban design and planning by researchers using the

technologies helps in outlining possible, probable and/or desirable future scenarios for the

application of tracking technologies in urban design and planning. The core of this paper is

formed by the outlining of such scenarios and hence answering the question how the scenarios

may deal with problems of applicability. A subsequent section exemplifies one of the

scenarios by a case study of the use of tracking technologies in an urban design setting. Thepaper is closed off by a scoring of the scenarios to their possibility, probability and

desirability as a starting point for a debate on the future of tracking technologies in the

domain of urban design and planning.

2. Applicability problems for tracking technologies

The previous section highlighted that the use of knowledge on activity and mobility patterns

of people in the domain of urban design and planning can be seen in terms of a more general

applicability gap. But there are several issues that are of particular concern for studies using

tracking technologies. To understand these it is important to distinguish different arenas inwhich tracking technologies are being developed. There are four main arenas that are central

to the current development of tracking technologies for which it is possible to identify

particular applicability problems from the viewpoint of urban design and planning: location-

based services, transportation science, geographic information science, and information

visualization.

With regard to location-based services (LBS) the length of the so-called value-chain is a

fundamental problem that is of direct influence on the applicability gap (see Ahas et al, 2008).

Ahas et al (2008) explain how any study using geo-positioning, i.e. tracking, data requires

researchers to attain competence thoughout the chain of adding value to raw data to make it

applicable. They define 7 steps in that chain, which particularly applies to mobile phone data,but are equally valid in the case of GPS where the database itself often needs setting-up

before starting the work: (1) to access the operators database; (2) to cope with the

peculiarities of mobile operators hardware and software; (3) to work with huge databases; (d)

to handle data security; (e) to be familiar with GIS, geographical data and statistics; (f) to

handle social sciences methods; and (g) to address the needs of end-users (academic or

applied). In addition, for purposes of application in the domain of urban design and planning,

but this is valid for many other design domains (cf. Zeisel, 2006), the last step comes with the

peculiarity that there is a gap between end-users in terms of data users and end-users in terms

of product-users in between which is often placed a research and/or design commissioner.

Still, the field of location-based services is a driving force because of its commercial

applications and thus in technological innovation of both hardware and software as well as intechnology application (e.g. Millonig and Schechtner, 2008; Lange, 2009).

Transportation science was one of the first areas where the potential of tracking technologies

was explored to add value to or even to aim for replacing more traditional research techniques

such as paper diaries (see e.g. Draijer et al., 1998; Batelle, 1997; Stopher et al., 2002; Wolf et

al., 2001). Applicability problems in this field, in addition to the ones that are primarily

identified from the viewpoint of LBS above, arise when linked to urban design and planning

processes. This linking is of importance because the co-development of transport

infrastructure and urban areas may help in creating the conditions for more sustainable

mobility patterns. Of particular concern are the different ways of working of transportation

planners - relying primarily on mathematical modeling of travel behavior - and urban

designers and planners - relying primarily on visual imagination of possible spatial lay-outs of


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urban areas. A major problem here is the difficulty of translating the quantitative data and

models of transportation planners into the qualitative, visual ways of knowledge generation of

urban planners (Brmmelstroet, 2010).

The third arena in which tracking technologies are strongly developed is the somewhat

hybrid domain of information visualization which exactly focuses on this translation fromquantitative data to visual information. Much of the importance of work in this field lies in

sensitising a wider audience to the potential of tracking technologies. De Waags Real Time

Amsterdam project(Waag Society, 2000) - as an early example of visualising GPS tracks - is

often considered an exemplar for later studies that aim at visualising tracking data. A second

work that proved a forerunner was that of the Senseable City lab at MIT coordinated by Carlo

Ratti, partially inspired by the Amsterdam Real Time project as well as by a research group in

Estonia that developed a social positioning method using mobile phone tracking (Ahas and

Mark, 2005). The Senseable City projects became particularly known after the Architecture

Biennale in Venice in 2006. There the research lab presented their Real Time Rome project

(Ratti et al., 2006) based on an earlier pilot in Graz (Ratti et al., 2005) and similar work in

Milan (Pulselli et al., 2006). In the strengths of these projects being highly compelling in theirdynamic visualisations, lies also their weakness, namely the relative low relevance of the data

sets for themselves in a context of urban design and planning. The main platform of this type

of work is in art exhibitions rather than in planning practice.

This brings us to a fourth and last domain which has been important in the development of

tracking technologies: geographic information science (GIS) and in particular the sub-

domains of time geographic analysis (Kwan, 2000), data mining (Wachowicz, 2000) and

visual analytics (Andrienko and Andrienko, 2007). The latter is an important area of interest

because it aims at making the patterns within large data sets - such as generated in tracking

research - more easily and quickly attainable for researchers in comparison to purely

quantitative analysis. However, visual analytics is a domain without a substantive agenda of

its own such as urban design and planning. It therefore largely focuses on technological

solutions that require highly technical skills of data users. Data mining is a domain that makes

it possible to handle the large data sets of, in particular, mobile phone providers. But data

mining is placed for the large part at the beginning of the value chain of positioning data and

has yet to go full length to the end-users. With time geographic analysis providing much of

the conceptual basis for studying activity and mobility behavior of people, this area of study

within geographic information science is also at the basis of handling, processing and

interpreting tracking data.

However, being positioned in the empirical sciences these four sub-domains in the field ofGIS do not provide answers to some of the fundamental problems regarding applicability of

tracking technologies in urban design and planning. Still, geographic information science -

working to develop the geographic information systems that can handle and visualize the

dynamic characteristics of tracking data - is crucial for bringing data collection and

knowledge application slightly closer to each other.

3. The aim and main line of inquiry of this paper

The use of tracking technologies for research purposes has shifted from technological proof-

of-concept studies in the final 1990s and early 2000s to more and more application-oriented

studies in the second half of the 2000s (see e.g. Bohte et al., 2008). Still, despite often

claiming relevance for the domain of urban design and planning, tracking studies generally


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focus on either technological novelties or empirical data collection in light of scientific rather

than application-oriented considerations. Since this body of work thus provides little foothold

to understand the application of tracking technologies within the domain of urban design and

planning, one alternative avenue of researching possible applications is the use of prospective

studies. However, hardly any studies on future directions of tracking research in relation to

urban design and planning or any related disciplines yet exist. A notable exception is the workby Janelle and Gillespie (2004). Based on a theoretical, conceptual approach, they develop an

overview of directions for research for modelling and managing the dynamics of activity and

mobility patterns of individuals, the dynamics of urban form (e.g. patterns of land use and

congestion relief) and the integration of transportation and ICT systems. However, in their

view on future research they neglect the problem of knowledge applicability. To overcome

this problem, this paper presents a different approach. The paper documents an explorative

and qualitative study on possible future directions of tracking-based research based on expert

opinions of researchers working with tracking technologies. Based on that exploration the

paper suggests a future research agenda for the use of tracking technologies within the domain

of urban design and planning.

An underlying question for this paper is to examine the extent to which so-called applicability

gap problems are represented in tracking research and the extent to which tracking

technologies, according to experts using tracking technologies in their work, might help in

bridging these gaps. The possible causes as identified by Klaasen (2004)(see introduction)

will help in answering that underlying question for this paper.

As the applicability gap is, for a large part, a result of how researchers and designers (or

planners) formulate their research questions, an important element of understanding the

potential of tracking technologies in the domain of urban design and planning is the way in

which these research questions come to light through the epistemological framing of

research on activity and mobility behavior of people. Frames are systems of meaning that

organize what we know (Healey, 2007: 25)(Schn and Rein, 1994). Being interested in

how tracking technologies may evolve in the context of the domain of urban design and

planning, it is interesting to identify possible future directions of research based on the frames

held by researchers using tracking technologies. This paper links such frames to possible

future scenarios for research using tracking technologies. These starting points lead to the

following leading research questions for this paper:

In what ways do researchers using tracking technologies frame the relevance of their work for

the domain of urban design and planning?

Based on those frames, what are both possible and viable ways forward for tracking-basedresearch within the domain of urban design and planning?

4. Criteria and approach to identify the framing of tracking research in urban design

and planning

Within the domain of urban design and planning many practitioners prefer to argue that ICT

is not to be taken seriously and [they are] consequently not dealt with professionally. (Drewe

2003, p.19). In light of Graham and Marvin (1996, p.5) stating that many accounts of city-

telecommunications relations amount to little more than poorly informed technological

forecasts, this may not be so strange.


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Still, in his essay ICT and urban form, extending on Graham and Marvin (1996), Drewe

(2003) states that the introduction of ICTs provides a challenge to mainstream paradigms in

urban design and planning. On the one hand, the introduction of ICTs provides a challenge of

the view of the procedural aspects of urban planning, policy and governance. On the other

hand, it provides the domain with the challenge to formulate new perspectives and concepts

on the physical form of cities, in addition to new perspectives on transport and infrastructure,the social and cultural life and the economy. The idea that ICTs are largely invisible

infrastructures in day-to-day life (Graham and Marvin, 1996, p.50) seems less of a problem

at least potentially - for advanced tracking technologies than for telecommunications in

general. After all, policy has taken up tracking technologies quite heavily in certain sectors,

for example in light of traffic pricing.

From this point of view, also taken in this paper, the domain of urban design and planning is

forced to rethink its own workings with the introduction of ICTs as it also had to throughout

its history with the introduction of other new communication and transport technologies. As

tracking technologies underlie many novel ICTs such as location based services (LBS), this

rethinking can be seen from the viewpoint of tracking technologies. The challenge with theintroduction of advanced tracking technologies is threefold and the following triad thus

provides the framework of criteria in this paper through which particular ways of framing the

role of tracking technologies in the domain of urban design and planning can be identified:

The introduction of advanced tracking technologies forces researchers to question the

suppositions on human spatial behavior, because it qualitatively - if not quantitively - changes

peoples activity behavior.

It changes the nature of urban research. It gives researchers the possibility to develop new

research questions in light of the accuracy and amounts of data; to adopt new research

techniques because of new data collection / generation / computation / combination

possibilities; and to communicate the outcomes of research in new ways because of the

visualization possibilities.

The context of urban research is continuously, rapidly changing. In the background, the

continuous development of new technologies for use in daily life means that there is no stable

or generalizable pattern of peoples behavior from which the reorientation of urban design

and planning towards advanced tracking technologies might take place. The confusion about

how cities are really affected by developments in telecommunications has remained since

Graham and Marvin (1996) signalled it.

The frames and related scenarios identified in this paper on the basis of the above triad

originate from the analysis of the debates and synthesizing presentations during the expertmeeting Urbanism On Track in January 2007 at Delft University of Technology. The expert

meeting consisted of expert contributions (see Schaick and Spek, 2007 & 2008), four round

table discussions and a plenary debate during the expert meeting Urbanism On Track in

January 2007. The group of ca. 50 mostly European participants consisted largely of

researchers from multiple disciplines using tracking technologies in academic research,

complemented by academics from the domain of urban design and planning. The topic was

introduced by Stefan van der Spek (Spek, 2008), Alexandra Millonig (Millonig and

Schechtner, 2008), Henrik Harder Hovgesen and Thomas Sick Nielsen (Hovgesen et al.,

2008), Geert Wets (Janssens et al., 2008) and Carlo Ratti and Andres Sevtsuk (Sevtsuk and

Ratti, 2008). Subsequently, the participants were asked to provide - through round table

discussion on specific themes led by the introductory speakers and members of the TU Delfturbanism department - a view on a future research agenda for tracking technologies in urban


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design and planning. The plenary debate looked at this question through the eyes of different

disciplines. The panel consisted of a geographer (Martin Dijst), an urban designer (Henco

Bekkering) and a spatial planner (Paul Gerretsen).

The round table workshops, preceding the debate, were theme-based and all reasoned from

the supposition that there is some kind of relation between tracking technologies and urbandesign and planning. The themes given beforehand - were:

Finding solutions for directly applying tracking technologies in urban planning processes

Basing physical designs directly on the results of tracking research

Raising the value and validity of data and data collection so as to increase relevance for urban

design and planning

Relating research into mobile navigation services and questions on route choice issues with

urban design questions

However, these themes did not provide ready-made agendas for future research in urban

design and planning. The immediate results of the expert meeting were fragmentary,

overlapping, of different orders and unevenly biased towards a positive approach to newtechnologies. The subsequent section deals with this problem by construing scenarios for the

future of advanced tracking technologies in the context of urban design and planning. These

scenarios are based on distinguishable coherent argumentations rather than on a weighted

importance of possible developments. Additionally, there are several other advantages of a

scenario-based approach. For one, there is the risk of falling in the trap of simplicity that

underlies poorly informed technological forecasts, which may be overcome using scenario

thinking. An additional reason for using scenarios is the uncertainty as a result of the complex

interaction between the rapid development of ICTs in day-to-day life, the use of ICTs in

academic research and the effects of the introduction of ICTs on cities organization.

Scenarios can be formulated for (im)probable, (im)possible and (un)desirable futures.

Desirable futures can be probable or improbable, as well as possible or impossible (see Figure

1). The scenarios can be judged to be probable as to the degree its stance is utopist or realist.

It may be attained that a scenario describes a possible future if its principles have already been

at the basis of pilot studies. As to desirability, this may only be judged with reference to a

particular context. The degree to which privacy is respected may be a general indicator as far

as the context from which the researchers in this study is concerned (Europe and USA).

Figure 1 The conceptual relations between possible, probable and desirable scenarios. Source: (Jong, 1992: 9)


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5. Scenarios on the future use of tracking technologies in urban design and planning

The ways in which experts assert the relevance and applicability of tracking technologies in

urban design and planning can be viewed in terms of them framing research using tracking

technologies. In Table 1, the frames and related scenarios for the future development of

tracking technologies in urban design and planning have been organized in order of theprominence given to advanced tracking technologies in urban design and planning research,

distinguishing four levels from top to bottom. Reflecting on the threefold challenge for urban

design and planning in light of advanced tracking technologies, formulated above, the

scenarios based on expert opinions in light of the trends and starting points above - have

been elaborated along the following lines (see Table 1):

the level to which it supposes peoples behavior to be influenced by ICTs, in particular

tracking technologies (undermining suppositions by urban designers and planners)

the level to which it regards scientific urban research and its basic hypotheses to be changing

under the influence of ICTs (changing the nature of scientific research in urban design and

planning)

the level to which it supposes the spatial-physical conditions of peoples behavior to bechanging, either by the introduction of ICTs or other factors (changing the subject of urban

design and planning)

Firstly, it can be concluded that the extreme scenarios (bottom) still lean quite heavily on

utopian visions of ICTs in cities, predicting quite heavy trend breaks in both daily life and

planning. Secondly, the major part of the scenarios is quite pragmatic and very much linked to

current practices in activity behavior research and urban planning. In these scenarios,

keywords are scale (in terms of number of tracking devices), compatibility (of research results

of different order and in terms of comparability) and cross-disciplinarity (both in research

teams and in translating results between disciplines). Scenario 1 reflects one of the major

hurdles though still one that may be overcome quite quickly - for tracking research in urbandesign and planning. Namely, the fact remains that to go beyond the pilot stage, the necessary

practical skills to collect, store, process and combine tracking data are relatively specialized.

This seems to lead to a situation in which reinventing the wheel several times is

unavoidable.

The scenarios do not provide an either/or choice for the future of advanced tracking

technologies in urban design and planning. Several scenarios could play out on both short

term and long term simultaneously. The scenarios show that it is quite a burden for urban

design and planning to incorporate advanced tracking technologies in their research.

Moreover, that it is questionable if the domain of urban design and planning can play a

leading role in steering research questions. Although scenarios 1, 2a, 2b and 3 suggest

strategies to cope with advanced tracking technologies for specific purposes in urban design

and planning, research in advanced tracking technologies does seem to follow its own logic. It

implies its own level of specialization. It is rather tending toward providing Location Based

Services and urban management possibilities, than providing knowledge for making urban

designs. On the bottom part of the table this leads to urban design and planning not being able

to do more than just tagging along with the developments in the ICT sector, rather than being

able to formulate and execute its own research agenda using advanced tracking technologies.

This remains a large risk to structurally embedding thinking about ICTs in urban design and

planning throughout all scenarios.


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The underlying question for developing the scenarios in this paper concerned the extent to

which the problems of applying data are present in tracking research and the extent to which

tracking technologies might help in bridging these gaps. With the scenarios in hand, this

question can now be answered based on the criteria derived from Klaasen (2004). The

scenarios show that advanced tracking technologies can have a significant impact on the

relation between urban design and planning and urban research. This is ranging from raisingawareness about peoples behavior with the introduction of ICTs in urban design and

planning, to fundamentally rethinking the role of urban design and planning in relation to

urban management.

Still, do advanced tracking technologies provide new possibilities to bridge a number of

applicability gaps that are inherent to applying empirical research in urban design and

planning? Is it not that the 0-scenario will prevail in the end, because they can not? The first

criterion for viability of advanced tracking technologies in urban design and planning is the

extent to which research using advanced tracking technologies can provide counterweight to

the tendency to collect more knowledge on restricted parts of situations - burdening the

synthesizing capacities of designers. Paradoxically it can be concluded that scenarios that aimfor large scale research projects, do not necessarily provide this. For example, studies that try

to develop better mathematical models of travel behavior in certain regions, on the basis of

large amounts of tracking data, might provide more accurate information in simulating travel

behavior. However, using these models in urban design and planning still requires another

step of translating knowledge to a design context. In contrast, several scenarios (1, 2b and 4a)

suggest investing specifically in this translation component in one way or another. This would

suggest that advanced tracking technologies do not have the inherent capability for bridging

this applicability gap, but they do provide a tantalizing challenge and visual communication

instrument on which this translation can converge for alliances between multiple disciplines

and between academics, commercial parties and planning practice.

The second criterion is to what extent knowledge generated through advanced tracking

technologies is being geared towards the information need of designers. Again, the scenarios

in which visualization plays an important role come out positively in this regard. Scenario 3 is

the most hopeful and pragmatic in this respect. It focuses on project-based applications of

advanced tracking technologies in urban design and planning. Critical factors are measuring

the right things in the right surroundings on the right scale for urban designers and the

compatibility of research results with the visual design instruments of urban design and

planning. The question remains if research using advanced tracking technologies can be

developed as a versatile instrument for design and planning, so that it can stand its ground in

relation to the wide range of types of knowledge input in urban designs and plans.

The last criterion with regard to bridging the applicability gap between empirical research and

urban design and planning is the extent to which designers would be able to formulate

synthesis-oriented research questions for spatial scientists on the basis of advanced tracking

technologies. Mainly due to the dominance of reasoning from the point-of-view of the

technology, the scenarios are not able to provide a direct answer to this. This will remain

highly problematic without a reconceptualization, in future research, of the relationship

between ICTs, cities and urban planning. At this stage, the way in which advanced tracking

technologies have been applied is still as if we are trying to build steel buildings as if we are

using wood, as a participant of Urbanism On Track put it. In this light the two utopian

oriented scenarios 4a and 4b might apply, which suggest just this focus on developing newconcepts.


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The different scenarios demonstrate that the nature of urban design and planning offers points

of departure for tracking technologies to be adopted as an instrument for scientific research on

human behavior in that context. However, the relation between urban design and planning and

tracking research is not without problems. This is why the following points of departure are

complemented by their particular problems.

First, the localized character of tracking data in space particularly - offers the possibility to

produce maps of activity patterns. Since the language through which urban design and

planning communicate plans is also visual, there is an intuitive affiliation. However, maps in

urban design and planning are generally maps of the - relatively durable - physical and

functional layout of cities. In contrast, activity patterns of people are more dynamic and

flexible especially with the introduction of ICTs - and might change within the same

physical context due to other factors. This might deliver mismatches in trying to understand

relations between these different kinds of maps.

Secondly, urban design and planning traditionally use visual diagnostics for analyzing asituation. Tracking technologies might offer an alternative or additional method to visual

observation. However, urban designs and plans are not primarily about understanding a

certain situation. They specifically display possible and/or desirable futures of the layout of

physical space. In contrast, maps that are produced based on tracking data display the actual

pattern of movement either in the past or real-time in a certain physical context. For the

domain of urban design and planning, the potential future activity patterns of people in a new

physical context are of particular interest. Still, urban design and planning is about

synthesizing a physical-spatial solution for a wide array of problems. This means that tracking

technologies can by no means be the only diagnostic tool for urban design and planning. It is

necessary to combine it with other types of analysis used in urban design and planning.

Thirdly, urban design and planning tends to give room to mobility issues both motorized

and non-motorized - in cities. Although often hindered by a functionalistic view on mobility,

this offers room to look at issues related to the use of urban spaces. Prominent areas where

this has come into play have been traffic modeling and transportation planning with regard to

logistics and traffic management. In addition, studies on public space exist in which low-tech

techniques have been used to bring user aspects forward (e.g. Gehl and Soholt, 2002)

The following section shows how these points of departure play out in a pilot case on the use

of tracking technologies in urban design and planning. The pilot is an example of a scenario-1

case. The case description also highlights the spin-off in an educational setting as the use oftracking technologies by novice urban designers exemplifies several important bottlenecks as

well as opportunities.

5. A scenario-1 example and its spin-off in urban design education

Scenario 1 is one of the more modest scenarios with regard to the relevance and possible

applicability of tracking technologies in the domain of urban design and planning. It is

therefore no surprise that first attempts at using tracking technologies within the domain focus

on this scenario. This section describes a first pilot the Spatial Metro project at Delft

University of Technology (TUDelft) with tracking technologies from within a setting in

which the domain of urban design and planning was central rather than technological


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concerns regarding tracking technologies (see Hoeven et al., 2008, Spek et al., 2009 for more

extensive documentation of the case).

The aim of the INTERREG IIIB Spatial Metro project was to make investments in public

space happen in small to medium-sized European cities in North-Western Europe; in

particular to improve the city centres for pedestrians. Each city involved in this study has ahistorical centre and functions as a regional attractor serving a large hinterland. Concerned

about future retail developments, the administrations of these cities struggle to keep up the

vitality of their urban core as the central shopping district and in particular as an attractive

place for living. The role of the TUDelft team was to develop tools to evaluate the effects of

the investments in, for example, city beautification, street furniture, street lighting and

information systems. TUDelft developed and used two tools: (1) street interviews to collect

information about the experiences of visitors (used in 2005 and 2006) and tracking

technologies (GPS tracking) to collect data on actual movement and routing (used in 2007).

Using the GPS devices, in total 1,300 pedestrians were tracked and interviewed. On average

60% of the data was valid. The remaining 40% was not usable due to problems with fixation,batteries, blur (clouds of points) and fragmentation. The data set consists of track logs of one-

time visits by people who come to town by car for a limited period of time on one day. As

such it contains only a limited number of the total visits to the selected town centres. The

reason for this was reducing the risk of the loss of devices in light of the high price of

replacement - as people tend to return to their cars at the end of a visit to town for which route

and duration is logged by the GPS device. Nevertheless, a substantial amount of data

remained to map significantly diversified patterns of pedestrian route choice and duration of

stay as well as data on differentiation within the aggregated patterns for different personal

characteristics of participants and based on characteristics of the trips undertaken while

carrying the device.

Most insight gained from the experiment resulted from the spatial-temporal data adding

another layer of information to the interview data and to the spatial analysis of morphology

and functional structure of the town centres, providing in particular more insight in daily

processes in the city (see Figure 2). The combination with information exogenous to the GPS

data, such as morphological maps, provides a technique to discover anomalies within the

tracking data set and to draw conclusions about qualities of public space. Density analyses

within GIS offer a tool to discover hotspots of use in the city based on actual movement, not

on perception and post-hoc questionnaires. Of particular interest is the use of dynamic maps

for data visualization which offers temporal diagrams of spatial patterns of use. Such

visualizations show not only trajectories, but also directions and flows of movement. Bothstatic and dynamic ways of visualization offer much intuitive insight in pedestrian behaviour

that cannot be derived from only quantitative analysis. Such insights concern differences in

urban quality between places in light of hotspot analyses and about opportunities for

improving the local situation based on insight in route choices.

These types of insight have proven helpful to some degree to inform and enlighten planning

practitioners within the project about their own city. However, despite the practice-based brief

for the empirical studies, there were several mismatches between the tool that was developed

and the plans for improvement of public space. The major mismatch was the difference in

timing of the study and the timing of interventions. In light of the research brief it would have

been necessary to execute an ex-ante and an ex-post study as well as comparing a beforesituation with an after situation. However, the initial study has until now not been followed


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up yet. Another mismatch concerns the limited generalizability of the dataset in light of the

practical limitations of deploying the data set. A major lesson is that goal and study can be

better matched in future projects. Still, the type of data that was collected in this project would

have not been reasonably feasible in a combination of other types of research set-ups.

Moreover, as this project provided a pilot for capacity and technological-skill building within

the academic team, the spin-off of this project must not be underestimated, though lies notprimarily within planning practice. One of the spin-offs is the embedding of the use of these

technologies in an educational setting.

Figure 2

Visualization of one week of data collection from deployment locations in Koblenz. All track points are logged

at 5 seconds frequency on devices carried by pedestrians who on the same day access the city centre from the car

park and return to their car.

(left) GPS tracking from Lhrcenter (parking 1,400 cars) and from Gorresplatz (parking 386 cars) in Koblenz

(middle) GPS tracking from Lhrcenter in Koblenz (parking 1,400 cars) superimposed on location of

commercial functions.

(right) GPS tracking from Gorresplatz in Koblenz (parking 386 cars) superimposed on location of touristic

attractions

Source (Spek et al., 2009)

The methodology developed in the Spatial Metro project provided the basis for an elective

course on MSc level. The course formally consisting of 3 sub courses is called Urban

Design with the subthemes People, Pedestrians and Public Spaces, Mobility and

Networks and New Metropolis (academic year 2009/2010). The pilot for the educational

project Tracking Delft- took place from November 2009 to January 2010. The description

here is based on the students group report (Baltus et al., 2010) and personal attendance to

presentations by students. The theoretical setting for the work is for a large part provided by

the work of Jan Gehl (inter alia Gehl and Soholt, 2002). In line with those frameworks, the

project task setting for the students views visitor experiences and urban quality for pedestrians

as being central to the analytical task and the subsequent design tasks which were defined by

the students themselves on the basis of their analysis.

Though the GPS data collected during four days of field work was at the heart of the students

analysis (also in terms of time burden for data processing), the analysis was more extensive

than only GPS data. The GPS data was combined by functional-spatial analyses (shop types,

land use, 3-step analysis (cf. Bois, 2009), isovist analysis (cf. Turner et al., 2001), analysis of

existing and recent development plans as well as morphological analysis, in part using space

syntax techniques (cf. Hillier and Hanson, 1984). Although much can be said about the way

students dealt with the analytical phase important to note is that the unfamiliarity with the

technology provided the students with an above expected work load - it is more interesting to

shortly describe here some of the design interventions proposed by students based on their

analyses.


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Due to the subdivision of the course in three smaller courses, not the entire group who worked

on the analytical part developed a design proposal. Five proposals are documented in (Baltus

et al., 2010) (Table 2). The projects varied in spatial scale as well as type of interventions

proposed. Still, as a range of analytical techniques is used it is difficult to isolate the effect

which the use of tracking technologies has had on the proposed interventions. Statements that

can be inferred to have been at least partially influenced by the GPS analysis are, for example,it seems that despite the fact that east and west have functions as shops and horeca not many

people visit these areas. And the north part of the Burgwal is situated in the central area of

the inner city. However, based on the tracks we collected, few people choose this road.

(see Table 2)

Table 2 Design proposals within the Tracking Delftproject. Page numbers refer to (Baltus et al., 2010)

Design proposal Inferred relation of proposed

intervention to GPS analysis

Framing of the design problem and solution

IMaster plan Delft

centre

the city of Delft is a well known andpopular destination for people who live

in the region (p.110)

It seems that despite the fact that east

and west have functions as shops and

horeca not many people visit these

areas. (p.110)

By the proposed expansion [of the centre

function within the historic centre] a cross

appears which connects the Grote Markt from

every possible direction in Delft. Each of these

four axes can hold different types of facilities

to accommodate the needs of the city and its

visitors. (p. 111)

II East-West connection

the Peperstraat and the

Koornmarkt have the potential of a

higher intensity compared to the

current situation. (p. 112)

The developments of the Central station and

the Koepoort are a great opportunity to create

a more dynamic east - west connection.

However, there are some issues that have to be

solved before the east - west connection canfunction to its full potential. (p. 113)

III Library area

This intervention is based on the

[analysis] of pedestrian movements

and the places pedestrians stop for a

short stay. We interpret those places as

functions people use. Out of the

research we discovered that the area

around the old library does not

function. (p.114)

The proposal we introduce consist of a

programmatic intervention and a logistic [i.e.

pedestrianisation & cycle route] intervention.

(p. 115)

IV City improvement

The points of departure for the

interventions are based on the

outcomes of the GPS tracking research

and three different analysis (p.120)

Action points can be found in different cityscales, from a large to a small scale; (1)

Improving connections / barriers (2)

Improving socio-spatial (programmatic)

patterns (3) Improving the quality of the

urban space (p.121-127)

V Burgwal

The north part of the Burgwal is

situated in the central area of the inner

city. .. However, based on the tracks

we collected, few people choose this

road. (p. 128)

To improve this situation, there are two main

problems that need to be solved:

- Lack of active functions.

- No clear visual indication at the cross corner

(p. 128)


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Still, students that claim that the intervention is directly based on the tracking study have not

necessarily done so more than those students who are less explicit. What can be concluded

from this small selection of projects is that there are roughly three models of how students

deal with the information delivered by tracking studies (although this goes for the analysis in

general). A first model suggests a structure of argument as we found A, A is a problem, so

we have to intervene to change A to B (projects III and IV). A second model suggests alarger focus on potential: location B is not visited much, while other analyses show great

potential for B, what interventions may make B live up to its potential (projects I and II and

V). A third model, less easily identifiable in these projects, suggests the prioritisation of one

analysis over the other: we found X in one analysis and Y in another, Y is more important so

I will solve the problem of Y (Projects I, III and IV show elements of this model).

So what conclusions may be drawn from this set of projects? Firstly, it demonstrates that for

novices there are several risks as well as advantages in empirical data collection on activity

and mobility behaviour using tracking technologies. One risk concerns an empirical lock-in

where students only see the truth provided by the data and base their whole problem framing

on it. This risk gets stronger if there is little awareness of the limitations of the collected dataset which are partially hidden by the data visualization. Another risk is lock-in in seeing the

design task primarily as a problem-solving task while designing is inherently (also) a

possibility-searching task. Still, it is clear from the problem framing by students that other

analyses within the projects would have not sensitised students to several issues of routing

and network structure as GPS tracking has.

Tracking in particular helps students in triangulating space syntax analyses and observations

in-situ while providing a type of data that could not be delivered by physical-morphological

analysis. Still, there is one other risk in how tracking data influences problem framing by

students. The type of pattern visualisation that is used easily suggests that presence of

people is always a positive thing, while absence of people is always negative. Such

simplistic dualist representation of the problem is strengthened when there is a little

awareness in the student that the data set only represents the presence or absence of the

group of people that was included in the data set. In this case that excluded for example

people coming to the centre by foot, by bike or by public transport, hence leaving a severe

omission to draw general conclusions. This can be, and has in this case been mediated by

supervision. But it could also be affected by triangulating different types of research by

subgroups of students (cf. Millonig and Gartner, 2008). However, particular educational

settings and group size do not always allow this.

Still, despite such drawbacks, the greatest advantage of using tracking technology in aneducational setting is the building of a combination of awareness as well as skill in students to

take account of peoples behaviour in proposing problem-solution sets. An additional

advantage lies in the introduction of students to GIS tools in an educational setting where

these are hardly used. A similar advantage is related to the development of empirical research

skills in a setting where the teaching of design skill dominates, widening the scope of

students.

6. Conclusion and discussion

This paper aimed to provide insight into the different ways in which researchers usingtracking technologies frame the relevance of their work for the domain of urban design and

planning. In addition, it aimed to identify possible and viable ways forward for tracking-based


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research within the domain of urban design and planning. Based on the expert meeting

Urbanism on Track, the paper demonstrated that tracking technologies opens many different

avenues of application within the domain of urban design and planning. This sets it

fundamentally apart from traditional research on activity and mobility patterns of people

which has gotten stuck in the problematic relation between transportation science and urban

design and planning as identified at the start of this paper. But the degree to which thedifferent scenarios are probable, possible and/or desirable remains to be seen now.

Table 3 provides a scoring of each of the scenarios for representing a possible (piloted or not),

probable (realist-utopist) and/or desirable future. First and foremost, it needs to stated that it is

very possible that tracking technologies will remain playing a marginal role in urban design

and planning, because of the skepticism towards ICTs (see earlier this paper) as well as due to

the fact that mainstream urban design and planning, for a large part led by architectural design

concerns, is still mainly concerned with the physical transformation process in cities rather

than the use of cities.

Table 3 Scoring of the scenarios for probability, possibility and desirability

Frames Possible Probable Desirable

Scenario 0The results of studies using advanced tracking

technologies are useless to urban design and

planning

++ + +/-

Scenario 1

It is not going to be that dramatic a change,

but as designers - we need to become aware

of activity behavior in general and ATT is a

good tool for that

+ + ++

Scenario 2aThe more data the better our models the

better we can plan+ +/- +

Scenario 2bAdvanced tracking technologies provide a

great instrument to get experts from different

disciplines on one table

+ +/- ++

Scenario 3Behavior is changing, so we need new

physical conditions+/- +/- +

Scenario 4aIn time, physical interventions will become

second to real-time urban management+ +/- -

Scenario 4b

The availability of advanced tracking

technologies will lead to empowerment of civil

society groups in urban development and

management

++ +/- ++

Three of the scenarios score high on desirability. Each highlights a different aspect of the

desirability of having tracking technologies play a role in urban design and planning. The

first, scenario 1, highlights the capability of tracking studies to sensitize urban designers and

planners to the ways in which people use the urban environment. Key to this sensitizing, also

demonstrated in the pilot presented above based on this scenario, is the visualization of

tracking data in relation to data exogenous to the raw tracking data as well as to other types of

analyses. There is much to gain here in switching from static visualizations to dynamic

visualizations of tracking data as well is in compiling more complete GIS environments

which can combine multiple data sources. Such developments are likely to happen as the case

in this paper has tried to demonstrate, though there are some hurdles to overcome, mainly


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with regard to computational skill development within the domain of urban design and

planning.

Scenario 2b highlights the desirability of multidisciplinary work as it is very likely that

tracking studies gain much value by working with multiple disciplines to tackle the length of

the value chain (see above) rather than to attempt at going through the whole value chainwithin a single discipline. Moreover, tracking studies in which researchers do not work

multidisciplinary will remain of little value to urban design and planning. However, despite

the increased networking of researchers using tracking technologies from multiple disciplines,

the probability of really succeeding is not very high. This is deemed so, because there seems

to emerge rather a new discipline than a true multidisciplinary field of work on tracking

technologies. Much effort is needed to overcome this problem. More work from a

transdisciplinary point of view - seeking the research question outside the scientific domains

in the real world might provide a new avenue here.

The third scenario deemed desirable is scenario 4b which focuses on the empowerment of

civil society groups. It is seen as desirable because such a development fits an increaseddemocratization of the planning domain away from technocratic and bureaucratic ways of

working. There is some exemplary work from this point of view, notably the work by

Christian Nold (Nold, 2009) amongst others, and it is as such deemed very possible that this

scenario will play some role in relating tracking technologies to urban design and planning.

However, the probability of this scenario to enter mainstream tracking research or mainstream

urban design and planning may not be so high. To some degree it is, by intention, too utopist

to develop in that direction. But it may play an important role in sensitizing designers and

planners to lesser obvious groups of users of urban environments or to new items for the

agenda of urban design and planning. The suggestion by scoring it both desirable and

possible, but not very probable is that much more effort should be put into this type of

research. The issues of data visualization and multidisicplinarity as deemed important to the

other two highly desirable scenarios are fundamental conditions to do so.

It is interesting to end this paper with a discussion of a scenario that has been scored most

negative for desirability. Where does this scenario 4b come from? Firstly, it suggest that

tracking technologies will play an increasingly bigger role in our daily lives. This is based on

the idea that increasingly more people and more goods are carrying tracking technologies

such as GPS, RFID or other technologies which can continuously position them in space and

time. Moreover, that information - often with added qualitative information - will be made

available to others in an information system in ways in which several mobile and online

applications already operate.

This scenario speculates on the possibilities this opens up in extremis for public planning. It is

important to note that the scenario is associated with a highly optimistic view of

democratizing information availability on what people are doing from day to day or even

minute to minute in urban settings based on geo-positioning. Exemplary for the basic idea is

the wiki-city project by the Senseable City lab, which proposes the development of cities as

real time control systems (Calabrese et al., 2007). According to the wiki-city project a real

time control system is characterized by: (a) an entity to be controlled in an environment

characterized by uncertainty; (b) sensors able to acquire information about the entitys state in

real-time; (3) intelligence capable of evaluating system performance against desired

outcomes; (4) physical actuators able to act upon the system to realize the control strategy. In


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fact the wiki-city concept is thus a hyperbolic of the cybernetic systems concepts which was

popular in the 1950s and 1960s (cf. Wiener, 1948).

Despite the optimistic view of tracking technologies from the viewpoint of the person who

wants to use the information provided by such a system, the concept underlying scenario 4b

neglects the severe issues of privacy and the possibilities for undesirable state and commercialcontrol over the data volunteered to the system. In the combination of risk of severe damage

to the privacy of personal positioning data and the undesirable control over every aspect of

personal information lies the negative score for the desirability of this scenario. This

highlights that the distinctive ethical implications of using tracking technologies have not

been a guiding issue for thinking about the future of urban design and planning in most of the

scenarios; future research should put privacy back on the agenda. Still, one may note that this

scenario is scored highly possible in the table. With the sharp increase in the numbers of

CCTV cameras and the slowly increasing positioning-based pricing systems for car use as

well as for public transport chip cards, pervasive tracking systems are becoming a reality in

day-to-day life. But the fact that tracking is possible, should not make it so that everything

should be tracked. Also researchers should be always questioning if this highly pervasiveresearch technique may not be replaced by others and if it not helps creating increasingly

undesirable function creep for traceable devices such as mobile phones.

But this last scenario is an extreme scenario. All in all, one can be positive about the

development of pragmatic, project-based as well as more activist applications of advanced

tracking technologies in urban design and planning. Still, a fundamental integration of

advanced tracking technologies in urban design and planning would require major effort from

both specialists in advanced tracking technologies as well as urban designers and planners.

7. Acknowledgements

The research projects under the banner of Urbanism On Track were developed within the

Delft Centre for Sustainable Urban Areas and the INTERREG IIIB project Spatial Metro. The

Urbanism On Track meeting has been funded by the Delft School of Design (DSD) at the

Faculty of Architecture of Delft University of Technology. First and foremost, due

acknowledgement needs to go to the project coordinator for Spatial Metro and the urban

design studio, Stefan van der Spek, for sharing the project data. Further, I extend my regards

to all contributors at the 2007 Urbanism On Track meeting. Lastly, I extend my regards to the

useful comments to earlier versions of the paper by the contributors to the SPM2008 meeting

as well as the anonymous reviewers.

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Documents

Future scenarios for the relation between advanced tracking research and urban design and planning