THE BALTIMORE CONFERENCE
TOWARDS A NATIONAL RESEARCH AGENDA: THE GROUP REPORTS
PARTICIPANTS' COMMENTS ON THE GROUP REPORTS
B THE RESEARCH NOTES
C CONFERENCE PROGRAM
A lot of people worked hard to make this conference possible.
The contributions of the members of the steering committee -
Ron Abler, Mike Batty, Ken Dueker, Susan Hanson, and Kingsley
Haynes - were substantial at all stages and are gratefully acknowledged.
Mike Batty, Ron Abler and Susan Hanson had been involved with
this project since its inception as a potential NCGIA Research
Initiative. Ron Abler also provided the first draft for the research
agenda in this report that was put together by the three discussion
groups.
I wish to thank LaNell Lucius, Sandi Glendinning, and Elan Sutton
of the Santa Barbara NCGIA office for their hard work dealing
with the logistics of the meeting. Chris Stebbins built a particularly
attractive Web site for us. Despite a few minor glitches, the
staff at the Lord Baltimore hotel helped make our stay enjoyable.
Thanks also to Tim Foresman and Dana Hinzman of the University
of Maryland, Baltimore County, for suggesting the Rusty Scupper
for the conference dinner, and for other on-site help.
The conference was funded by a grant by the National Science Foundation
(SBR-88-10917).
Background
The idea for this meeting originated in 1994 when Mike Batty and
Helen Couclelis (both geographers with a background in planning
and urban and regional modeling) decided to propose an NCGIA Research
Initiative on the role of GIS in the cities of the information
society. The Research Initiative, a structured set of meetings
and other research-related activities focusing on a specific theme
over a two-year period, is the main mechanism through which the
NCGIA carries out its research agenda. In the past each Initiative
has been directed by two or more co-leaders from NCGIA sites,
supported by a steering committee also primarily drawn from NCGIA
personnel. Batty and Couclelis put together a proposal for what
was tentatively designated as Initiative 18 and submitted it to
the NCGIA Board of Directors for review. While enthusiastic about
the theme of the proposal, the Board (which at the time included
Ron Abler and Susan Hanson as members) questioned the appropriateness
of the Initiative formula for an enterprise of such breadth in
scope. Indeed, all NCGIA Initatives thus far had focused on well-defined,
mostly technical topics; the only broadly formulated Initiative
to this day (Initiative 19: "GIS and Society") was subsequently
approved using a new, more open formula, i.e. with co-leaders
and a steering committee largely external to the NCGIA. Initiative
18 thus became the research conference entitled "Spatial
Technologies, Geographic Information, and the City".
The term "spatial technologies" was defined by Couclelis
(1994) as the complex of transportation, communication, and information
technologies that together modify spatial relations:
"We need a collective name for all these technologies
that modify spatial relations, because we need a new concept
that will allow us to explore the new geography they generate
together as an interdependent whole" (p. 143).
Thus spatial information technologies, of which GIS is
arguably the most important example, is a subset of spatial technologies:
geographic information systems both provide information about
spatial relations, and contribute to the modification of these
relations by affecting people's spatial behavior in multiple ways.
It is this peculiar role of GIS as both active cause and passive
observation platform for the changes taking place in the city
of the informational age that encouraged the NCGIA to include
this broad topic of spatial technologies in its research agenda.
The Call for Papers (see APPENDIX A) circulated in December of
1995 solicited contributions in the following three areas:
Thus the intended focus of the conference was primarily on the
changing conditions of urban accessibility under rapidly evolving
spatial technologies, the impact of these changes on specific
populations, and the contribution of geographic information science
and technology in helping us deal with these changes and impacts.
However, neither the research notes submitted, nor the discussions
at the meeting, nor the research agenda that was proposed were
limited to these questions. A number of participants were primarily
interested in the question of access (especially by disadvantaged
groups) to information technology in general, or to geographic
information in particular. Others saw the societal threats of
information technology, such as the issue of surveillance, as
the most pressing question (the improper or unethical access to
information, in a sense), along with the more general ones of
spatial and social justice and power. Obviously this is a topic
area of very broad import where people from substantially different
research perspectives can fruitfully work together.
Figure 1 shows the thematic distribution of the papers (research
notes) submitted by the conference participants relative to the
three original questions of the Call: (A) Changes in
urban accessibility; (B) Impacts on populations; and (C) Role
for GIS. Some of thesubmissions focused on only one of the three questions, some connected
two, and some all three. The research notes themselves are reproduced
in this report as APPENDIX B.
Figure 1 Distribution of the research
notes across the three main conference themes
The meeting
The Baltimore meeting was planned as a small "research conference"
or workshop along the lines of an NCGIA Initiative specialist
meeting. The immediate goal was to formulate a tentative national
research agenda in the areas of concern to the conference. The
research notes submitted by the participants had been circulated
earlier and with the exception of keynote lectures by the members
of the steering committee and T R Lakshmanan, no papers were presented
at the meeting. The working sessions alternated between breakout
group discussions and plenaries where the results of the group
discussions were reported, examined and synthesized.. The conference
program is included in this report as APPENDIX C.
The initial breakout groups were assigned to the three "bullet"
questions of the conference call roughly as shown in Figure 1.
While group reshuffling from session to session was encouraged,
most participants chose to remain with their original groups and
continue discussing the same issues in more depth. As a result
the discussions grew very intense and focused and by the last
morning the participants were ready to present their views on
what should constitute a national research agenda in the general
area of spatial technologies, geographic information, and the
city. The three group reports are reproduced below.
The future
Unlike an NCGIA Initiative specialist meeting, the Baltimore conference
is not part of a sustained package of research activities of the
NCGIA. However, interest in the general area covered by the conference
is booming nationally and internationally. Several conferences
and workshops on related themes were announced within the past
couple of years. At the same time, several related major government
initiatives were taken, and some landmark publications on the
subject appeared. Prominent among these, but by no means unique,
were the U.S. Congress's report entitled "The Technological
Reshaping of Metropolitan America" (OTA-ETI-643); the book
"Telecommunications and the City" coauthored by one
of our conference participants (Stephen Graham); and the joint
NSF/ESF Transportation Workshop held 10/7/96 in Strasbourg, France.
That growing interest in the urban impacts of spatial technologies
bodes well for those seeking a new intellectually exciting area
to do research in, along with funding possibilities to help carry
out such research.
The NCGIA also plans to be part of these developments. At the
time of writing NSF funding is expected for the next three-year
phase of the Center, which will continue its activities around
a new three-part research agenda, the third area of which is entitled
"Geographies of the Information Society". The Baltimore
conference and the tentative research agenda it produced will
likely find a natural continuation within that environment.
References
Couclelis H, 1994, "Spatial technologies", Editorial,
Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 21(2),
142-143.
Graham S, and Marvin S, 1996, Telecommunications and the City:
Electronic Spaces, Urban Places, Routledge: London and New
York.
This section presents the edited versions of the three group reports
presented on the last two plenary sessions of the Baltimore meeting,
as these evolved following the general discussion and subsequent
feedback to the editor. The groups were asked to define their
special area of interest and provide a list of researchable questions
within it, along with one or more suggestions for specific research
projects addressing each question. The three-part report reflects
a fairly strong consensus among those present.. Additional views
on the research questions proposed and the themes of the meeting
in general are reported in the next section.
New research perspectives are required to study the effects of
modern spatial technologies on urban areas, in particular the
ongoing changes in accessibility conditions and their direct and
indirect impacts, both short-term and long-term. New approaches
to measuring and representing urban phenomena should facilitate
shifts of focus from macro- to micro-scales of analysis, from
static to dynamic views, from structures to processes, from material
to electronic flows, and from space to space-time. Theoretical
as well as empirical work is needed in these areas. Along with
new definitions of distance, interaction, and accessibility we
also urgently need studies on the questions outlined below. These
should be undertaken for a number of different metropolitan areas,
using comparable data and methods, cross-referencing existing
data bases and generating new data from surveys and other sources.
The creation of longitudinal data sets is particularly critical.
These data bases should seek to include disaggregate data and
should incorporate space-time diary studies on in-home as well
as out-of-home activities. In some areas ethnographic research
methods and data may be the most appropriate. Data collection
should also include temporal coding for businesses and services
(what goods and services are available when?). A literature review
of work in cognate disciplines is also a high priority, to establish
what is known and not known in each domain.
Priority Research Questions
A1 Explore/propose a typology appropriate for distinguishing
different levels of accessibility among individuals, households,
employment categories, and social and economic groups in time
and space.
Relevant questions include:
- What are the parameters of accessibility in urban areas under
expanding communication and information technologies?
- What geographic scales are appropriate for assessing accessibility
conditions for different groups under changing spatial technologies?
- What qualitative accessibility differentials are produced by
the new technologies among different urban population groups?
- Is there a useful operational distinction between accessibility
(potential reach) and access (actual use)?
Categories could be derived from the literature. Existing surveys
in Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle, and elsewhere could provide
data for exploratory data analysis. However, in the interest of
generalization, it is necessary to locally validate and appropriately
cross-reference the results of similar surveys. Qualitative studies
involving ethnographic methods may be needed to determine appropriate
measures, especially those that incorporate access to goods, services,
and places via information technologies (see also A7) .
Specific Project: Study of disparities in electronic
accessibility: geocode origin/destination flows of electronic
transaction data to examine patterns and distances; analyze these
patterns in relation to area demographics/ area type.
A2 We assume that the new technologies are encouraging a spreading
of activity over time as well as space. What is the evolving relationship
between work in space and work in time? How does this affect spatial
structure?
Time-budget research should be undertaken to unpack the temporal
dimension from data; it should attend specifically to the 'colonization
of time' , i.e., the spreading of activity into the late evening
and early morning hours. The research should also focus on different
age and gender groups and their activity patterns. Data collection
should be sensitive to multitasking, i.e., the reality that people
often are doing more than one thing at a time. European work
(e.g., by K.Achshausen and D. Elterna) assembling historical data
sets on activity patterns might be useful to US researchers.
Relevant questions include:
- Which traditional and new kinds of activities tend to spread
over time and space with the help of spatial technologies?
- Which social and occupational groups are most affected by such
spreading?
- In which parts of metropolitan areas (central cities, suburbs,
exurbs...) is such spreading most manifest?
- Which urban patterns tend to facilitate/inhibit discontinuous
activity patterns over time and space?
Specific Project: (1) Study the colonization of time in
the capital markets industry: A number of people have to work
at night, leading to more (support service) people having to also
work at night. (2) Study systems using support from different
time (and space) zones.
A3 What has been the effect of the telephone on urban growth
and spatial patterns?
The telephone has been around a long time and in many respects
its effects on human interaction have been comparable to those
of the more recent communication and information technologies.
Telephone infrastructure and use studies would help answer many
of the questions about future patterns that have arisen at the
meeting . We need microstudies of telephone penetration, in the
developing as well as the developed world. (Good source: Claude
Fisher's 'Calling America').
Relevant questions include:
- In what respects are the spatial impacts of the telephone similar
to/different than those of more recent communication and information
technologies (fax, Internet...)
- What has been the relationship between telephone calls and trips
in different settings (social, by socio-economic group; business
and government, service provision)
- How has telephone infrastructure affected urban growth patterns
in both the developed and the developing world?
- What is the evolving role of the telephone in the context of
the other spreading spatial technologies?
Specific Project: Within specific metropolitan area(s),
study place-to-place variations in telephone infrastructure at
the micro level and personal access to the telephone: Find areas
with little telephone penetration and compare with 'similar' areas
with well-developed telephone infrastructure. Distinguish between
availability and use.
A4 What is the effect of mobile communications on urban growth,
travel, and spatial patterns? Does greater penetration contribute
to greater
dispersion activity and/or more efficient trip patterns?
Research should focus as much on the social market as on economic/business
uses of mobile telephones and pagers, and on time series analyses.
Disaggregate data on mobile communications have existed for over
a decade and may be used to track locational changes for places
of employment and households.
Relevant questions include:
- How are the spatio-temporal patterns of mobile communications
different from those of fixed communications?
- In what percentage of such interactions are both ends of a communication
mobile?
- How does use break down by occupational, socioeconomic, etc.,
class?
- In which parts of a metropolitan area, and which times of day,
are such communications most heavily concentrated?
- What is the effect of pricing on the different categories of
use and users?
- What are the patterns of penetration of non-telephone mobile
communications (pagers, portable e-mail...)?
- How are such technologies impacting the activity spaces of people
with disabilities?
Specific Projects: (1) Individual activity space analysis:
map and explain relationship between mobile telephone use and
extent of activity spaces for different age groups (e.g., children
and teenagers); compare activity spaces for adopters and non-adopters;
for city/suburban/exurban areas. (2) Map and explain relationship
between mobile telephone use and driving/commuting behavior, especially
in congested urban settings..
A5 To what extent is there substitution between travel and
communications, and to what extent are they complementary or synergistic
(and increase each other's efficiency)?
Attend specifically to telecommuting within metropolitan regions
over time. This is a specific aspect of the broader questions
of technology and adaptation. A considerable literature on both
telework and telecommuting exists (e.g., Nillis, Salomon (?),
Mokhtarian), going back to the 1970s. We need to determine what
is known and not known about the topic. Research on this topic
is amenable to investigation using participant-observer methods
as well as aggregate analysis and simulation (e.g., the Stough/Paelinck
simulation model).
Specific questions include:
- Why are people not making more use of telecommuting?
- How is people's choice of a new home influenced by the possibility
to telecommute?
- What differences in activity spaces are there between partial
and total telecommuters/teleworkers?
- How are the effects of telework on urban and business organization
different from (and more important than) those of telecommuting?
- What literature is there on neighborhood work centers? What
have we learned?
- What measures matter for assessing urban impacts of telecommuting
(and telework )?
- What are the effects of different levels of service (cost,
bandwidth, reliability...) on the relation between travel and
telecommunications?
Specific Projects: (1) Set up a multi-university virtual
seminar on this topic: a case of telework - the seminar can study
itself!
(2) Correlate travel and information flows: compare work trip
flows within urban areas at tract level with telecommunications
traffic; compare business travel with Internet flows at intercity
level.
(3) Develop a ZIP-level data base, to include: distance matrix,
travel time matrix by mode, traffic flows by vehicle type and
trip type, telecommunication flows by medium (phone, fax, Internet...).
A6 How do changing conditions of employment alter patterns
of individual behavior and affect urban spatial structure?
Research addressing this questions should attend to changes in
temporal work ordering including flextime, shared jobs, shift
work, and uncertainty of employment location; also to temporary
workers and those with changing work locations (itinerant workers).
Data on the proportion of the labor force and of various industries
and occupations engaging in such work would be helpful. We also
need micro-level studies of these workers to assess the impacts
of the new work patterns on households and on the city. Some
data bases already exist (e.g., a Phoenix, AZ data set) that
provide information on individual employee work start and stop
times and weekly schedule choices, and can contribute greatly
to this effort.
Relevant questions include:
- How are information technologies used to create flexibility
in work patterns?
- Do urban areas with a strong informational base differ in their
spatiotemporal work patterns from other areas?
Specific Projects: (1) Compare rush hour traffic in areas
with and without a high percentage of information-based industries.
(2) Compare spatiotemporal activity patterns for IT itinerants
and blue-collar itinerants (e. g., roofers, plumbers) ; compare
IT itinerants and more conventional white-collar itinerants such
as visiting nurses and piano tuners. Study changes in the work
patterns of traditional itinerants following the adoption of IT.
A7 We need new measures of accessibility that capture both
the distance-transcending effects of information technologies
and the new dimensions of spatio-temporal diversity in human activities
and roles.
Traditional distance-based measures of accessibility are inadequate
in their current forms for addressing the effects of technologies
that transcend distance. Also, traditional measures have assumed
that both the accessor and the accessed are fixed in space (and
time). This is no longer true at a time when society appears
to be moving more and more from place-based towards person-based
activity patterns. The notion of role-group diversity may be
relevant in this context. Space-time activity options across
role groups display a range from low diversity (specialization
or little variation in activities in time and space) to high diversity.
To study and plan for the high-diversity role groups in particular,
new definitions and measures of accessibility are needed.
Relevant questions include:
- How can traditional measures of accessibility be adapted to
the new realities?
- What fundamentally new conceptualizations of accessibility would
be practically useful?
- How could concepts of entropy and utility, or a Shannon-Weaver
measure of diversity be applied to time-space activity data to
help reveal the diversity spectrum in group roles?
Specific projects: (1) Expand traditional accessibility
measures to include time and the effects of IT: Assume accessibility
is a relation between person or group x and resource (person,
group, good or service) y at time z.. Then the XYZ matrix represents
accessibility for a set of social groups X to a set of resources
Y over a period of Z hours/days/weeks. (A difference with traditional
measures is that neither X nor Y need to be fixed in space) .
The cells of the matrix can be vectors representing how accessible
resource y is to group x at time z by each of a number of appropriate
media (car, bus, telephone, pager, Internet...) Do pilot study
with small number of groups and concrete set of resources.
(2) In specific urban areas where a significant amount of IT-based
access takes place, compare the performance of a series of traditional
place-based and individual -based measures of accessibility: are
any of them satisfactory with or without modification?
Research in this realm should focus on relationships between information
technologies and the restructuring of cities, with specific attention
to in-home and out-of-home activities, highly portable information
technologies, and space-creating technologies. Issues of social
justice, ideology and power underlie many of these evolving relationships,
and need to be closely examined next to the more visible structural
and behavioral impacts.
B1 What spatial, temporal, behavioral, social, economic, and
political dimensions of these technological developments exist,
and what are their implications for cities? Who benefits from
these changes?
Information technologies have the potential to restructure in-home
and out-of-home activities (including work, shopping, recreation,
and socializing) and in turn they may be changed themselves.
Similarly, the electronic delivery of services has the potential
to restructure public and private enterprises and household activities
and to co-evolve with physical changes. (On the other hand, some
media have been around for decades with few discernible effects
on cities). Research on this topic should be merged with question
B5 on the economic geographies of the information economy. Banks
and health services should offer fertile ground for this kind
of research. The iconography of such services should not be ignored;
it reveals what traditional functions are being altered.
Specific Projects: (1) Study the impact of electronic
banking (including ATM use and on-line services) on banking behavior
of consumers (time, length, frequency, duration of trips to the
bank; shifts in banking service use within households; choice
of bank; effect on single-purpose and multi-purpose trips).
(2) Compare enterprises that do/do not use IT heavily. Examine
how they make locational decisions; how has IT affected their
real estate holdings. Need to examine multisite organizations
for insights. (e.g., Bank of America).
B2 What are the implications of highly portable information
technologies for individuals and specific groups, for the separation
of public and private realms, and for changes in the use of time
and activity patterns?
Wearable (highly portable) technologies are becoming more prevalent
and could either liberate or constrain individuals. Investigating
activity spaces in relation to highly portable technologies would
be one way to begin. Relationships between portability and surveillance
should not be neglected. (This topic should be subsumed under
a general Mobile Communications heading: see also question A4).
Specific Project: How do people use the mobile telephone?
How dependent do people become on these phones? How does mobile
telephone use affect spatial decisions and behavior? Study especially
people with physical disabilities or other groups with constrained
mobility.
B3 What are the geographies of surveillance technologies in
the city and how is this changing over time? What are the implications
and consequences of these technologies?
Emerging surveillance technologies offer promise for improved
data acquisition and increased security, but they also raise questions
about privacy, exclusion, and social control. This research could
examine surveillance technologies in connection with highway networks
and traffic flows, shopping malls, or gated communities.
Specific Project: Map closed-circuit television surveillance
areas in cities and measure
their effects on the behavior and well-being of both insiders
and outsiders.
B4 What consequences result from the commodification of information?
Differential access to the information market place could exacerbate
social (and eventually also locational) differences. Customizing
information may provide efficient matches between consumer needs
and wants and supply, but may also leave out those who cannot
pay and lead to more social and political fragmentation. Marketing
uses of information technology - especially consumer profiles
and targeted advertising, may affect peoples lives, actions, identities,
and perceptions of others. Social and spatial isolation can be
measured and compared with increasing or decreasing commodification
of information. Geodemographics research offers an entry point
into these questions: one could begin by determining who is using
'pay-per' services, and whether lack of access to such commercially
provided services means lack of access to similar services altogether.
Specific Project: Document the roles of intermediaries
that provide geographic
information to community groups, and their effectiveness: what
are the effects of the beliefs and ideologies of these intermediaries
on outcomes?
B5 What are the economic geographies of information technology
industries? What is the spatial structure of cities whose primary
economic base is information? What are the implications in terms
of location, scale, and spatial distribution in such places?
How do places emerge as information nodes? Where are they located?
How do we measure 'information intensity' in an urban area? At
what geographic scales is the phenomenon of an informational node
most salient in its effects on people's lives? How does spatial
structure reflect these new functions, and how does the tradition-bound
construction industry adapt to new needs? How are socioeconomic
and demographic profiles different in these areas? How do unskilled,
lower-income people fare in these areas?
Specific Project: For any of the questions above, determine
critical measures and methods of study, and compare a range of
information-based cities with others.
B6 Who creates and controls information technology, and for
whose benefit?
What kinds of political and regulatory systems for the control
of information technology exist, and what issues do they raise?
What ideologies, discourses, biases, geographic representations,
and metaphors are embedded in information technologies and in
the institutions that implement them? How do these institutions
vary with culture and country? How might institutions be restructured
to create a more robust, just, and equitable means of accessing
and controlling information technologies within cities?
Specific Project: Measure the diversity and extent of
information concerning services exchanged within specific social
groups. Inventory some of the on-line services available to these
groups and contrast publicly provided services with those offered
by commercial networks such as CompuServe. What is the role of
trust, personal contact, and word-of-mouth information in the
adoption of on-line services by communities?
B7 What methodological issues need to be addressed in designing
research on spatial technologies and cities?
What mix of quantitative and qualitative methods are appropriate
for investigating spatial technologies and cities? What kinds
of data are needed? How can they be collected or obtained, and
by whom? What scales of analysis are appropriate for various
research questions? What are the time frames of causes and effects?
How can sequences of causes and effects (including nth-order
effects) be exposed? How can comparative research be used? The
absence of information on information flows hampers research:
much is known about the flows of commodities, but virtually nothing
about information flows: how can information flows be mapped?
Can the World Wide Web be used to study its own functions and
effects? What new research methods should be invented to help
deal with the impacts of the new media?
Next to these methodological issues, there are deeper theoretical
questions regarding the changing nature of spatiality and temporality
in the informational city. There is a need to re-conceptualize
urban space, time and process so as to deal with the phenomenon
of 'community without propinquity' and the 'death of distance'
already widely proclaimed by the media.
Specific Project: No specific project is proposed here
as these are cross-cutting questions underlying many of the other
projects mentioned.
Discussion within Group C, which focused on the operational aspects
of the issues raised at the conference, evolved in two parallel
directions. The first was guided by the premise that a very decentralized
information infrastructure was both desirable and possible; the
group went on to propose some ideas about how a community-level
spatial data infrastructure might be put together. The second
focus of the group's discussion was the broader question of how
to develop tools to support the substantive research proposed
by Groups A and B.
C1 What is the appropriate level for a spatial data infrastructure
from the public's point of view, what needs should such an infrastructure
meet, and what should be its characteristics?
There is an urgent need to attend to spatial data infrastructure,
but not at the level of the NSDI (National Spatial Data Infrastructure).
Focus should be on the community level and in particular on community-based
organizations (CBO's) but not limited to them, nor limited to
user-friendly access as the problem. The perspective of the users
should be emphasized in a two-way framework in which communities
contribute as well as receive relevant data using new kinds of
flexible tools..
Relevant questions include:
- What kinds of data do communities need most, in what format,
and for what purposes?
- What kinds of data can communities usefully contribute to a
spatial data infrastructure primarily geared to community-level
use?
- What are the most fruitful scales and perspectives for studies
in this area: should urban systems, community-based organizations,
government program evaluation, or human geography issues be emphasized?
- Do the Internet outreach schemes of libraries, schools, churches,
social services, etc. have different requirements in terms of
spatial data infrastructure? How can privacy, security, and credibility
be addressed in each of these contexts?
- Uses of the information infrastructure involve problem formulation
and interpretation and design as well as answers to specific queries:
what are relevant research questions regarding language, visualization,
tools, and networking suitable for different contexts and audiences?
- What neighborhood indicators would be most useful to communities
for different purposes - how can we avoid such indicators being
seen as too distilled an 'us- versus-them' view?
Specific Project: Within particular communities, examine
how the three main kinds of functions of GIS as viewed from a
non-technical user group's perspective (information provision,
problem analysis, and group communication) are used . (May be
combined with project outlined under B6).
C2 What novel system design principles need to be developed
in order to provide the appropriate technical support to the requirements
established under C1?
It appears that current information systems are neither flexible
nor decentralized enough to serve many local user needs. The market
is unlikely to build and maintain the needed infrastructure. The
notion of a simple, coherent, multipurpose, cadastre-type spatial
data infrastructure is too narrow, inflexible, and hierarchical
to be helpful. In the technical realm, new tools for data access
and synthesis can play major roles in shortening the pipeline
from raw data to analyses, answers, and cross-referencing. The
notions of 'user self-service' and 'just-in-time data access'
are proposed to address the need for timely, flexible data access
using existing widely distributed databases.
Relevant questions include:
-What interoperability characteristics and metadata would facilitate
user 'self-service' in that process?
- Can administrative and operational data and tools be applied
to existing data to avoid costly, separate analytic data bases?
- What data models (e.g., dynamic segmentation) allow just-in-time
cross-referencing? Can scales be chosen or tools be built to
facilitate data aggregation and synthesis as needed?
- How can geographic information systems be better linked with
recent developments in information technology, and in particular
the Internet?
Specific Project: Within a particular community-level application,
explore the idea of 'user self-service' or 'just-in-time data
access', where users can synthesize the information needed on
an ad hoc basis out of existing data bases. What are the
patterns of behavior likely among users of such systems? What
are the technical, administrative, and conceptual obstacles to
implementing these ideas? What levels of data quality are required
for community uses, and what levels are technically possible under
such highly decentralized conditions?
C3 A Framework to Support Research
Most research projects suggested by Groups A and B will require
at some point GIS-based tools for analyzing spatial and temporal
information. The group discussed a framework suggesting how different
aspects of these research projects could be linked with GIS data
models, functions and operations. Some of these already are available
in current systems, but others will need to be substantially modified
or designed from scratch. The framework proposed is a matrix
with different aspects of GIS use (e.g., information provision,
data modeling and analysis, graphic communication...) as the rows,
and questions A1-B7 as the columns. Each cell of the matrix represents
the GIS-related research issues that may need to be addressed
in order to help implement the kind of research proposed in the
substantive question. The matrix may thus be seen as a systematic
tabulation of research topics in GIS relevant to the general question
of spatial technologies and the city.
OVERARCHING THEMES
The general discussion that followed the presentation of the three
group reports identified the following issues as being of very
high priority for research.
There was further general agreement that a comprehensive bibliography
should be put together, perhaps as part of an ongoing virtual
seminar to grow out of this meeting.
The edited draft of the research agenda was circulated to the
participants after the meeting and several responded with extensive
comments. Most were suggestions of an editorial nature and were
incorporated in the final draft reproduced here. Others were
elaboration's on issues briefly raised in the group reports, personal
reflections on what was (or was not) accomplished, or opinions
on what could have been done or said more effectively or differently.
A couple make some fundamental points about cities, communication,
access, and social justice. Because of their interest these comments
are reported here verbatim, in alphabetical order by their authors'
name.
Stuart Aitken, on the social implications of information
technologies (IT):
I have two points I'd like to add to the soup:
First, one theme that may be missing in your conclusion relates
to surveillance and power structures around the control and abuse
of IT. We kept coming back to this in Group B and although it
is subsumed within a couple of the other themes, perhaps it warrant
a place of its own. Here's how I might word if it were to become
an overarching theme:
"The need to critically analyze the ways that information
technology is used to undermine spatial justice in the city."
Second, there was some discussion in Group B and in our general
discussions (I know Mel Webber raised this several times) of the
use of ethnographic methods to study the uses and abuses of IT.
In the introductory paragraph of the report, you mention disaggregate
data and space-time diaries should be included in "common
data bases" but I'd like to see that taken a little further
to include in-depth interviews and ethnographic data. The wealth
of information garnered from these methods are not amenable to
"measures of accessibility" (first overarching theme)
but they have been found to be
incredibly useful in unpacking social, cultural and power structures
in urban settings. I notice in your report of A1 that discussion
revolves around using qualitative methods to determine appropriate
measures, but I think several of us at the conference believe
that they have significant worth in and of themselves.
Elizabeth Burns, on data sets:
My few comments are offered in the spirit of clarification on
discussion in Group A.
First, you note in the introductory paragraph the need for comparative
studies using common databases that result from cross-referencing
existing ones. Our discussions emphasized the value of longitudinal
datasets. Existing data may include only recent information rather
than studies done ten, twenty or more years ago when communications
conditions were truly different. Existing datasets may be based
on surveys conducted for specific purposes that did not require
the complete in-home and out-of-home information we would like
to examine. As an example, the Phoenix data covers individual
employees, but has a relatively short time span beginning in 1990
with survey questions focused on the journey to work. Under question
A6 you note how research should attend to changes in temporal
work. The Phoenix dataset can contribute some activity information
on individual employee work start and stop times and weekly schedule
choices. Perhaps our virtual seminar could include discussion
that articulates the desirable common qualities of these existing
databases and surveys and addresses ways to extract the maximum
information from databases not designed for our purposes.
Amy Helling, on accessibility measures:
I am concerned with reinforcing the (obvious, but not emphasized
in the current draft) point that measures of accessibility, to
be valuable, must have (empirically demonstrable) relevance.
The interest we express in more sophisticated measures is conditional
upon being able to demonstrate that they are useful in prediction
or explanation. In my work
so far I have tried to use accessibility measures to predict residential
density and, more recently, travel (number of trips and minutes
spent in travel). The gravity measures I have experimented with
are clearly able to do this, though they leave a lot of variation
unexplained. Presumably any new variant would be worth pursuing
if it did a better job, or perhaps did a better job for a subset
of the population. Our narrative sometimes made it sound like
constructing new measures was a worthwhile end in itself. I wouldn't
agree with that.
Incidentally, since our meeting, a colleague and I have decided
to seek funds to expand our last summer's telecommuting survey
(over 300 responses in Atlanta) over time, questioning the same
people who participated in the first survey one or more times
in the future (depending on funding). This is the first step
toward the conference's expressed
interest in a longitudinal look at telecommuting in a single metro
area.
Kingsley Haynes, on the scope of the conference theme:
Particularly important is an assessment of how access to these
technologies affect access to other economic and social opportunities
- education, employment, retailing, information, cultural opportunities,
and how this in turn affects class and social consciousness.
(On transport uses)
With information technologies real time control of urban/metro
traffic flows is increasingly possible. However, the comparative
statics point-to-point urban traffic flow forecasting models are
no longer adequate for guidance on systems intervention in real
time. Traffic flows are nonlinear, dynamic, self organizing feedback
systems. What new models and data is needed to support such management
activity even at the theoretical level is very unclear. Basic
research is needed in this area. further it is unclear - in a
behavioral sense - how people will react to such information if
it is supplied to them.
Don Janelle, on the discussions at the meeting
(On the "accessibility" discussions:)
Positive Outcomes:
Active accessibility researchers (e.g., Amy and Michael) and GIS
scholars (Betsy) departed with new ideas on how to incorporate
representations of information technologies in their measures
and information systems. I had a distinct sense that the younger
scholars (David, Lauren, Laxmi, Matt, and Yongmei) were excited
by the proceedings and appreciated an opportunity to interact
with senior researchers.
I was pleased that people took seriously the notions that accessibility
measures and assessments of the effects of information technologies
should incorporate the temporal
conditions of employment and the timing of spaces. We never did
discuss the formal map representation of accessibility, but we
had enough other things to focus on.
Controversy:
Ken Hillis mentioned a tension between those focused on empirical
analysis and positivist science and those concerned with critical
analysis. Specific issues were empowerment and the commodification
of information, and the ideologies embedded in IT. Personally,
I see this as an opportunity for a new synthesis of ideas and
approaches. Groups B and C could explore this to link theoretical
and applied aspects. The tension is a healthy one and is inevitable
with such a broad topic of discourse.
Neglected Areas:
Susan's presentation on "trust" and personal contact
through social networks needed more discussion -- this is both
an accessibility issue and IT implementation issue.
While Groups A and B were able to establish some common linkages,
Group C's focus was more internal to the issues of introducing
information technologies into communities (the empowerment issue).
Maybe this can be tied more clearly to questions of accessibility
and access. Linkage to Susan's and Ron's presentations and to
Reg's and Steve's papers need emphasis.
Questions raised by Aharon Kellerman on spatiality and temporality
did not receive much attention, though they did share common ground
with some of the ideas of Ken, Matt, Stuart, and Steve.
While the matter was discussed, the idea of instituting a broad
general space-time survey (diaries) in metropolitan areas was
apparently deemed impractical -- too bad.
(On measuring space-time diversity:)
The question of measuring the space-time diversity of urban environments
needs clarification. It relates to the dynamic nature of accessibility
and to the fact that every situational change in person/group,
time, place, or activity alters the set of possible options. Diversity
measures (e.g., the Shannon-Weaver Information Statistic) might
provided a partial answer. It is hypothesized that role group
diversity is increasing and that
space-time activity options across role groups display a range
from low diversity (specialization or little variation in activities
in time and space) to high diversity. Role groups could be defined
a-priori based on the existing literature or be derived from empirical
analysis to incorporate indicators responsibility (family, job),
constraint (income, education, mobility), social network, etc.
Activity options could be derived
from the time-budget literature and be based on space-time diaries.
(On transportation:)
A general observation: Transportation, per se, is not given specific
recognition in this report, reflecting the focus of discussion
in Baltimore on information technologies and GIS. The discussion
in Baltimore did touch on behavioral aspects of transportation
and A5 (3) does mention data requirements. Yet, as a major facilitator
of interaction and as a principal force in structuring space-time
patterns, it is not given sufficient attention. Some of the papers
did have a transportation focus (Burns, Helling, Janelle). But,
excited as we were to embrace consideration of the newer forms
of accessibility, we neglected the persistent importance of transportation.
(On the tension between materiality and immateriality:)
The continuing material basis of human life (regardless of trends
towards dematerialization) assures that human interactance will
always be constrained by transportation resources. The mediation
of communication and information technologies in reducing this
constraint needs research, but so does the constraint of transport
on the possible applications of IT and on its role in contributing
to differential patterns of accessibility.
Seymour Mandelbaum, on the structure of the research agenda:
There is a breathless quality to the report that might be alleviated
if you divided the two major themes that engaged us and were more
expansive in introducing them.
Theme One: Representing Cities
The ways in which we variously represent cities are shaped by
our sense of salient issues and the technologies at hand. The
premise in this first theme is that we are still largely bound
into a representational mode that describes the clustering of
populations within spatial zones and the travel time or distance
between zones. The central metaphor of that mode is that of "mass"
and "gravity."
Even when it is applied to nineteenth century cities, that representational
mode loses information and serves some purposes better than others.
(Cities characteristically appear, for example, as settings and
instruments rather than as moral objects or agents.) The urgency
expressed in the proposal is grounded in a sense that the development
of communications has increased the information loss (e.g. we
know less than we use to about interaction patterns when we simply
observe trips and travel times) and reduced the usefulness of
our representational tools and metaphors.
The first theme at the conference was the importance of using
the new information technologies to create and cultivate an amended
set of representational modes and tropes.
Theme Two: Access
The second theme isn't addressed with the same clarity and authority
as the first. There are two competing versions of this theme.
One is devoted to the attempt to understand the impact of communication
and information systems -- a-spatial technologies -- upon urban
form; the second to shaping access to those systems.
The first version has a long and (as Ron Abler suggested at the
Tuesday afternoon plenary session) rather dismal history: for
almost every contention about the impact of telecommunications
on concentration or centralization there is an equally compelling
case
for its obverse. We cannot entirely avoid all of the conceptual
difficulties of this theme but we need not bang our head deliberately
against a stone wall. (The title of the conference
butts against that wall by trying to distinguish a set of "spatial
technologies" that are independent of the concept of "city.")
Listening to the Tuesday talk and reading the research notes,
I think we would come closer to the essential interests of the
group if we focused on the second version of this theme. Here
are all these new communication and information systems. We are
interested in understanding who has access to these systems, who
uses them, and how and in what ways they are useful to individuals
and collectivities. ("Access" and "accessibility"
seem to me both to point to a possibility: the relevant contrasts
are between access, use and utility. So, for example, I know
how to use the machine on which I am writing this memorandum to
send messages across the Internet -- that is, I have access to
the Internet -- but that fact doesn't tell you how I use that
access or its utility.)
There are two sorts of issues presented by this theme. The first
engages the measurement of access, use and utility over time.
(Consider the sense of urgency that pervades accounts of the superhighway
and the implicit insistence that we cannot afford to replicate
the diffusion rate of the telephone.) The second deals with the
relations between the three dimensions, the appearance of bottlenecks,
and the design of diffusion campaigns. (You will recognize that
second set of issues in "The Intelligence of Citizens.")
Laxmi Ramasubramanian, on the discussions in Group C:
As a member of Group C, my personal interpretation was that there
was a certain creative tension between the folks who were advocating
the spatial data infrastructure and interoperability solutions
(the data perspective) and those who were more concerned about
operationalizing the issues from the users' perspective. Related
to this was the discussion about the expected abilities of the
"user" and the need to clarify the kind of user we were
thinking of.
While I am happy that there is mention of community-based organizations
(CBO's) as the focus of research, it is not clear why community-based
organizations were chosen and if or whether other aggregations
or units of analysis were even considered. I remember Seymour
making a case for religious groups and some discussion about what
we meant by CBO's in the first place.
I must reiterate that as a junior scholar, it was incredibly useful
to me to read the ideas of the senior scholars and to hear them
and to have the opportunity to talk with them in an informal setting.
Thanks to you and the other organizers for giving me and the
other young scholars this opportunity.
Mel Webber, on the normative aspects of accessibility
measures.
[Re: A1 and A7] A major rationale for an accessibility index
is its normative utility. We need such a measure for evaluating
alternative metropolitan spatial structures and other spatial
arrangements. We've always appraised urban forms against preconceptions
of density and building types. Far more important are the functional
consequences of spatial patterns, not their static morphologies.
If we could compare NY and LA in the language of accessibility,
rather than that of density, I suspect we'd find them to be very
similar. City planners and others have typically judged the merits
of one urban form over another on quite different criteria than
their comparative levels of accessibility, but it's accessibility
that's important, not shape.
Further, accessibility levels vary widely among demographic groups.
It would be extremely helpful in seeking to improve welfare to
know how much variance there is. An accessibility index could
become something like a surrogate index of well-being for different
population groups. This is to say, we need such indices for more
than their scientific interest, for more than their values as
descriptors. We need them for normative policy purposes, as bases
for evaluation.
[Re: A8] The most egregious externality of the auto highway
system is not air pollution, fuel consumption, congestion, and
perhaps not even accidents. It's the loss of transit service
among carless persons -- folks too young, too old, too handicapped,
or to poor to drive. They've lost access to all sorts of opportunities,
directly because the automobile has been such a successful and
effective transport mode. So we need to find a new way of supplying
transportation services to transit dependents. It can no longer
be trains, or buses. They're too big and so can't match the small
numbers of persons with the same origins, destinations, and schedules.
We need to exploit the new telecommunications and new computing
technologies to create a new kind of transit service that uses
automobiles as transit vehicles.
Spatial Technologies, Geographic Information,
and the City
Spatial technologies, that is, the complex of new transportation,
communication, and information technologies, are rapidly changing
spatial relations in today's cities. The appearance of "Edge
Cities" on the periphery of metropolitan areas, and the
experiments with Intelligent Transportation Systems, have already
captured a lot of public attention. But spatial technologies also
affect accessibility conditions for different activities and population
groups, as well as the urban structure itself, in ways that are
not as visible and often very difficult to gauge. The conference
will explore the ways in which these technologies are both transforming
our cities and, in the case of information technologies in particular,
also expanding our ability to plan for these changes. A specific
focus will be on the role of geographic information technologies
in enabling us to deal with changing conditions of accessibility,
distance, and spatial interaction in urban environments. This
is a critical but as yet little researched area. We will review
the current state of knowledge on these issues, chart potential
research directions, and focus on the ways in which planners and
policy-makers might respond to these new developments. We see
geographic information science and technology playing a significant
role in bringing together those working in this complex area,
in particular, experts in urban geography and planning, urban
transportation and telecommunications, urban sociology and service
provision, and GIS. To this end, the conference will address
the following broad questions:
Within these broad themes, the following more specific questions
may be addressed :
Relating to changing conditions of urban accessibility and
their impacts:
- What empirical evidence is available to support the widely
conjectured changes in urban accessibility brought about by the
increasingly widespread use of communication and information technologies?
- How are urban land use and structure, at different geographic
scales, responding to the changes in access brought about by modern
spatial technologies?
- How can land use and transportation models be adapted to reflect
the substitutive, complementary, or synergistic effects of new
spatial technologies?
- What empirical work is available documenting how access (and
lack of access) to information and opportunities is practically
experienced by traditionally disadvantaged
urban populations (inner city residents, the aged, working mothers,
etc.)?
- How will advanced spatial technologies, especially electronic
information networks, change conditions of access to employment
opportunities for geographically localized, disadvantaged urban
populations?
- In the context of urban service delivery, to what extent will
the new spatial technologies be substitutive, complementary, or
synergistic relative to one another and to the more traditional
ways of bringing information and services to urban populations?
- What are the trends in the electronic delivery and use of retail,
library, and other services, and what are the positive (e.g.,
improved access) and negative (e.g., further competitive disadvantages,
job losses) impacts on urban populations?
Relating to the role of geographic information science and
technology:
- What new conceptual or formal models need to be developed to
capture changing notions of distance and access, and how can these
be most usefully implemented in GIS?
- What kinds of data will be needed to implement the necessary
concepts and models, how will these be collected, and how will
they be accessed and synthesized?
- How can GIS-based systems handling aspects of the urban access
issue be fruitfully interfaced with other relevant technologies
(especially the National Information Infrastructure), as well
as with the informal, socially-based information networks?
- What current uses of GIS in urban planning and transportation,
policy making, and management are relevant to the access issue?
Which are the institutional structures, agencies and stages within
the urban policy process where GIS can make the most positive
contribution to the problem of access?
- Who will be the main users and managers of GIS-based systems
intended to contribute to the improvement of urban access conditions
for disadvantaged populations? What are the user needs, professional
and managerial as well as among the public at large, with respect
to such technologies?
The Conference will be sponsored by the National Center for Geographic
Information and Analysis (NCGIA). We are planning for a meeting
of 25-30 scholars who will contribute research notes to be circulated
to all participants prior to the meeting. The conference itself
will include both plenary and small-group discussion sessions,
and hands-on workshops. Its goal is two-fold: (a) to prepare
for the formulation of a research agenda identifying major themes
and funding opportunities for concerted research efforts, and
(b), to plan for an edited book summarizing the state of knowledge
and outlining the major issues in the general subject area of
the conference.
Research notes of about 2,000 words, presenting empirical or theoretical
work or reviewing the state of knowledge in the areas of interest
to the conference, should be sent to the following address by
March 31, 1996 , in both hard-copy and electronic (e-mail) formats.
Notification of acceptance will be issued on May 15. An important
selection criterion will be the degree to which submissions integrate
the three thematic dimensions of urban accessibility, impact on
populations, and geographic information. Research notes should
be accompanied by a brief resume and statement of the applicant's
research interests beyond those directly reflected in the note.
A number of fellowships of up to $500 ($750 for West Coast and
overseas applicants) will be available from the National Center
for Geographic Information and Analysis towards accommodation
and reasonable travel costs. Applications for funding must be
included with the research note submissions, along with a mention
of any other sources from which additional funding may be obtained.
Please quote lowest available economy fare. Overseas fellowship
recipients must use US air carriers.
For further information please contact
Dr. Helen Couclelis
NCGIA and Department of Geography, Phone: (805) 893 2196
University of California, Fax: (805) 893 8617
Santa Barbara, CA 93106 email: cook@ geog.ucsb.edu
Conference steering committee:
Ron Abler (AAG), Mike Batty (University College, London), Helen
Couclelis (NCGIA/University of California, Santa Barbara), Ken
Dueker (Portland State University), Susan Hanson (Clark University),
Kingsley Haynes (George Mason University).