Mapping the Digital City Audit fieldwork data

Martin Dodge(m.dodge@ucl.ac.uk)

Practical 6, Friday 19th November 2004

http://www.casa.ucl.ac.uk/cyberspace

3011: Geographies of Cyberspace

Assessment of DCA• based on the performance of the group and your individual

activity in the group

• fieldwork attendance : 10%• practical attendance : 5%• practical attendance : 5%• website and presentation : 40%• individual report : 40%

---------------------------------------------------• total : 100%

• you will all write an individual report summarising the work of your group. maximum 1,500 words

• submission of this report is Wed. 12th January 2005

Time schedule of the DCA

• Friday 29th Oct.: DCA intro• Friday 5th Nov.: DCA fieldwork• Friday 19th Nov.: DCA mapping• [Friday 26th Nov.: CCTV control room

visit]• Friday 3rd Dec.: DCA web site• Friday 12th Dec.: presentation your DCA

websites

Aims of this practical

• working in your group you need to make a high quality digital map for the Digital City Audit project

• the actual map design is up to you

• you will put this map into a web page in practical 8

Making your map• an image of the detailed OS base map for your survey

area can be downloaded from • www.casa.ucl.ac.uk/cyberspace/digital_city/• this is in PNG image file format• you need to map out the location and type of digital

infrastructure you found from the street survey• think carefully on the best way to do this - what symbols,

letters, labels and colours to use• I would suggest you make the map in Powerpoint• you might want to cut the map into smaller tiles first,

using Photoshop. for example you could divide your survey area into 4 tiles

• first load the map image file into a blank slide in Powerpoint

• to do this: Insert - > Picture -> From file

• on a second blank slide, you can create a palette of suitable symbols for different infrastructure types

• Powerpoint has various simple shapes (like stars and triangles). you can make these different colours of course. you can also draw your own shapes

• you can also add text labels to the map• remember you can simply copy and paste the

symbols from the palette onto the map

Making symbols• a useful function in

Powerpoint is the Autoshapes tool, where you can quickly draw stars, triangles, arrows, etc

• on the Draw menu bar, theRotate or Flip options are useful for changing direction of symbols

A quick (made-up) exampleCCTV camera, fixed

CCTV camera, swivel

Bank ATM

Iconic symbols • you might want to use small icons or logos as

symbols (e.g. a phone box, satellite dish etc)• there are lots of website with free clip art, logos and

icons• these can easily be loaded into Powerpoint as

graphics and copies and positioned on your map• Powerpoint itself comes with a range of its own clip

art

(e.g. www.iconbazaar.com)

A reminder on what you have audited• 1. phone boxes (ordinary boxes, broken ones, new broadband/email phone boxes, info kiosks)

• 2. bank ATMs• 3. CCTV cameras of various types• 4. speeding / red-light cameras• 5. satellite dishes (small Sky ones on side of buildings, also bigger

white telecommunications dishes on roofs)• 6. microwave dishes on roofs• 7. mobile phone antennas on roofs• 8. digital bus information screens• + the type of street (retail, residential, commercial?)

• note, you may well not have all 8 types in your survey area

CCTV camera mapping• how can you show the different types of cameras

and ownership clearly on your map?

• survey 4 key criteria :– position (x,y location, plus height)– type (fixed, movable, dome, with light)– purpose (door way monitor, car park, street)– ownership (according to the type building they are

mounted on)

– plus any evidence of warning signs? what do the signs say?

Urban environmental context• think about the the type of streets • is it retail, residential, commercial• what is the traffic level (vehicle, pedestrian)?• does it feel safe? any signs of graffiti / vandalism?• any ‘high tech’ buildings, any businesses offer wifi

access

Ethnography of technology use• focus on mobile phone use• try to note the types people and where they are• are they waiting, on the move. alone or in a group• also, do you see anyone using a phone box?

How might you represent this data on your map?

Other mapping projects

• for some ideas before you start, check out– Rob Kitchin’s disability mapping project for the

town of Newbridge– the New York camera sketch maps– the legends from 3011 groups last year

• look particularly at the different symbols used and the structure of legends

• think about how effective they at communicating spatial patterns clearly

Disability access mappingwww.may.ie/staff/rkitchin/newbridge.ht

m

a good exampleof detailed mappingon the web

check out the keythat they use and clickable links tophotos

they cut the mapinto tiles, linked byarrows

Disability access mapping

this is the symbolset for the disability map. It was made inPowerpoint and might give you some ideas

Sketch maps by NY Surveillance Camera Players

(www.notbored.org)

Legends from previous students