ten things i learned building a virtual city information repository
After around five years of researching on the city, over several projects, a volume of city information sources has accumulated across various locations digital content gets stored. Not being in a position to directly erase these and mostly because several of the projects are still reaching its final state of being mumbaiopendata.org is a method to organize these various exercises in hoarding.
To acknowledge this aspect of the project at its very onset is to locate it among other ongoing projects/ sites of similar visions [approximately four to an another fifth possibility] aspired which too share hopes of an all inclusive city resource center. Generated both as personal and institutional projects they are to a degree personal information dumps of the city. To state all inclusivity of an information archive is naivety on the part of the publishing agency has been the first lesson.
Most of the materials in the repository have been available via public access for a given period of time before the site has been taken down or a particular piece of information removed. This leads us to the temporarily of urban information as made available on-line. During the period of this phase of the research three significantly large places, mumbaikar.com, timeout mumbai and mumbaiboss closed down leading to substantial inaccessibility of cultural data they have generated over time of operation. This is to state is the second lesson.
Those which have shut down have been businesses. Projects have had better luck with [theory.tifr.res.in/bombay/](theory.tifr.res.in/bombay/), www.mumbainet.com/ & www.karmayog.org/mumbai/ still being around. A brutal conclusion simply on this observation is to state that there is no money, if this deduction is indeed true, business of information if built on the city may not be successful. Even though there is a potential to be tapped urban information as a commodity has a very low transaction value. Third.
Fourth. The city as a muse is a definitive state. Owing to this view physical world capitalizes it via news, stories, city guides and academic projects. Somehow due to this most of the content produced about the city is locked away off-line. This categorically works for those who are got this aspect worked out, but information is therefore controlled from within sources of production creating a constricted view of how the city is and to be perceived.
Data publishing events by MMR Heritage Conservation Society and MCGM Development Plan 2014 - ‘34 have been instrumental in disseminating project data by making available its commissioned reports and plans. As government agencies at the time of their subsequent releases, they were able to make available a sizable information set via their portals. Lesson five here is to test the open data definition to check if the content made available falls within its framework.
Features of openness as defined by the open data handbook, are availability & access, reuse & redistribution, and universal participation. Data when made available, is accessed without limitations, be able to be reused and redistributed while facilitating edits or modification to it and finally be able to use it across fields without restrictions. That said material published from the agency sites are still limited though one can take comfort in just their availability for the moment.
mumbaiopendata.org inclines more towards an information repository unlike similar models such as data.gov.in/ or even data.ny.gov/. Data here is one of the categories under which the various layers of found city information is structured against. Learning six, there is a series of services which each of these layers can built as, but for this edition the model frames a recognition of these.
Seventh attribute learned is the city is built/ generated as understood, is a result of information about it both from off-line and on-line sources. Both of these networks in relation with each other assemble the city but looking at only one creates a slight level of disjunct in this perceived urban knowledge of sorts. Therefore in a virtual archive it is safe to admit of information stored as limiting in principle but adequate enough based on circumstances of an inquiry.
Projects such as archive.org/ or en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mumbai do store city information but are limited to frameworks set out by its own project requirements. To curate from these sources and other city projects may become the core task of the exercise. An aggregator dedicated to informing about the city then is the role this site will find recognition as. Primary data on the site will be submitted directly by its collaborators or its partners. Lesson eight.
Nine. Architecture, urban design, and urban planning are three distinct fields of knowledge. As the proposed project is a city repository, its material most directly will aim to engage urban planning tasks. Design jobs of buildings and urban areas can find assistance in execution from the materials stored. In principle what the repository executes is with its collection acknowledges a specific city culture which requires an informed method of design engagement.
And finally not all pragmatics of content publishing can be solved within a single release. This is mainly because methods of collection of content for the site has been varied a result of distinct projects which have fueled the repository. Off-the-shelf platforms have limited functionality of what possibilities hold. Edition01 therefore, is a sum total of a group of findings. If a single objective is laid out it would be to map broadly the landscape of city information production, learnings from which builds subsequent iterations of the repository.