This presentation, based on research completed while at the University of Washington, was presented 19 February 2010 at the American Geographical Society Library at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

1. Coding community: Geographic information technologies and mappings of the city street Matthew W. Wilson, PhD Assistant Professor of Geography Emerging Media Fellow Ball State University [email_address] 19 February 2010 University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

7. Areas of geographic research Political Urban GIScience

8. Areas of geographic research Political Urban GIScience urban competitiveness and quality-of-life indicators

9. Areas of geographic research Political Urban GIScience urban spatial strategies to discipline bodies and practices

10. Areas of geographic research Political Urban GIScience spaces constituted by technological innovation

11. Areas of geographic research Political Urban GIScience interfaces between the urban and the technological

18. How do these technologies constitute space in the marking of the city street?

19. How do these practices around ‘data’ motivate certain discourses, and thereby constitute subjects of those discourses?

21. The argument Geographic information technologies are not simply convenient, passive tools of new forms of governance. Instead they are active agents in subject formation.

22. Feature-conditions

23. Coding bodies as ‘deficits’

24. Coding bodies as ‘assets’

25. And further modifications…

27. Information flow “ It’s all about the stuff you see. Your feeling is that the city is not working right. It’s a cue! …” “ We needed to create data the communities and government could trust. …” “ Communities have to learn the language of government.” (Ruth Olson, 2008, The Fund for the City of New York) (Sustainable Seattle 2006)

29. Data matters “ Hard data, where it may or may not be as important to the community members, is extremely important to policy makers and funders, who would then give resources towards the particular issues that came up.” Sandy Weng, Department of Neighborhoods, City of Seattle

30. Counting Sunders: “I remember a person on our group was so compulsive, and would count everything! And I was getting really tired, it was cold, rainy, and they kept counting every little thing , absolutely. And so it was very subjective about how compulsive the person was. It’s a little hard to compare, because it wasn't like a general sense of how much graffiti there is, there was a counting of every little piece of it .” Graves: “Yeah and I mean, data is always interesting in that way, and [I’m] just reiterating that my projected concern is that that particular item is going to get a lot of attention , and there are so many other street-level components that are, you know, [important], and you know, maybe, some graffiti rangers program could have developed out of this, beyond the one we already have, and we could get more money. So I’m just super worried about that deal…”

31. Symptoms Graves: “One of my theories is that graffiti, and occurrence of graffiti, is directly proportional to youth habitat and whether there is youth habitat or not, and so somehow I want to be able to … use [this data] as a tool to get youth habitat and provisions…” Griffin: “… So if you can’t—if you don't articulate that kind of concept … then the standard practice is this is a sign of disorder, this is a sign of a problem, as opposed to this is a habitat for teens. It's a different problem, this [graffiti] is a symptom of a problem.”

36. photos in presentation courtesy of Sustainable Seattle