On June 6, 2015, thousands of people from across the United States came together for National Day of Civic Hacking. The goal of National Day of Civic Hacking is for residents, community groups, and government to collaborate to make their communities stronger. Here in San Diego, the Placemaking Collective teamed up with Open San Diego to facilitate a workshop where people came together to create the ultimate smartphone app for people on bikes.
The creation of this smartphone app is an example of digital placemaking. According to Project for Public Spaces, digital placemaking is the “integration of social media into placemaking practices, which are community-centered, encouraging public participation, collaboration, and transparency.” Daniel Latorre of Project for Public Spaces, further elaborates, “People have embraced social media as a means to express their experiences within and knowledge about particular places, and researchers have continued to analyze these digital traces in order to better understand social activities within particular places.” The bike app seeks to do just that, provide people an opportunity to express their experience and knowledge about particular places and have City staff unwrap the digital traces in order to better understand behavior and patterns to help inform the decisions they make.
The app is being designed by community members and staff from the City of San Diego so that it best meets their needs. City staff expressed an interest in data that showed routes being taken, the actual number of riders, the time of day, trends over time, etc. Additionally, community members expressed an interest in being able to communicate with the City regarding where infrastructure improvements need to be made or where they would like a bike rack by uploading geocoded notes and pictures at the actual site. This can help inform the decisions that the City makes regarding where to put bike lanes and make improvements to infrastructure where they are needed most and where it is most utilized.
Placemaking is about building community, expressing identity and culture, and connecting with others. This can be done in the digital realm when it is tied to the built environment, community driven, and is culturally relevant. People were really interested in being able to build community by using the app to share some of their favorite hidden treasures (i.e., urban art in alley ways, secret stair cases, etc.) and be able to upload curated rides (i.e., best places to eat tacos, historic home tours, etc.). The people who participated in the workshop represented a diverse group of riders- from people who ride long distances in spandex, to people who commute to work in a dress, to people who bike as a way of life. There was an acknowledgement that the bike community is quite diverse and that it would be great to be able to use the app to better connect and be able to share identity and culture of biking amongst the various types of people on bikes. Therefore, some people are interested being able to connect with other people on bikes by having a community board and calendar in which people can post community bike rides that people could join or advocacy opportunities where governmental bodies would be discussing transportation infrastructure issues.
In addition to the placemaking aspects of the app, people highlighted the need for the app being able to have certain functions that are currently not available in any-one-given app, such as identifying steep topography and stress level and safety of routes (i.e., speed of traffic, where bike infrastructure is present and what kind, where it is safe to bike at night, etc.). There was also a focus on gamifying the app to encourage ridership and contributions to the app.
There were many creative ideas that were shared at this workshop (too many to mention in this blog post). The next steps for this project include working with a handful of talented volunteer coders who will be developing the app by incorporating as many of these ideas as possible. Then we plan to beta test it, improve it, and then do a proper launch for people who bike in San Diego. I’ll be sure to keep you posted!
**Are you a coder or designer and interested in getting involved? Shoot me an email atmonique.garcia.lopez@gmail.com and I’ll be sure to connect you with our coding team.
