NYC x Colabs
What if smart city technology was incubated in the economic margins rather than the economic center of a city?
Junior design strategist for the Mayor’s Office of Technology and Innovation in partnership with the Center for Justice Innovation
How can existing stakeholders in an economically marginal neighborhood shape calls for innovation in their neighborhood?
At the time of Mayor de Blasio’s call to end the “tale of two cities” and create one New York for all city residents, the smart cities wave was at its peak. In order to respond to the convergence of these two vectors the Mayor’s Office of Technology & Innovation was given the green light to take action. Neighborhood Innovation Lab was founded, and the divested neighborhood with the highest profile at the time was selected as the first site for this initiative.
With the direction of the city’s first designer in residence, and the local leadership of the Brownsville Community Justice Center, we convened a group of stakeholders who were already working tirelessly in their community to address matters of safety, justice, housing, youth development, and the local economy. These leaders were already fielding calls from companies looking to capitalize on smart cities projects, and the stakeholders were ready to develop the knowledge they needed to respond wisely and together.
The known result, guided by a technologist from the Mayor’s Office, would be a set of criteria that city agencies could include in the Calls for Innovation that would be launched to invite bids on smart cities projects in the neighborhood.
The intention behind this criteria is to combine the potentials of smart cities with the existing needs of the neighborhood that exceed the typical scope of a smart cities project, and induce furthering the digital divide between economic centers and margins in urban areas.
We kicked off by setting expectations, defining the process and confirming eager engagement by all stakeholders. We did lose some interest parties, but what remained in the room after this vetting process were people who were knowledgeable of the issues, committed to the topic, and available to commit through the process.
We followed by inviting experts from around the city on a wide range of topics related to the internet of things and smart cities technology.
I was especially active in this step because of graduate school work in participatory media and technology infrastructures, as well as personal experience growing up in Silicon Valley and observing first hand the impact of fast change on diverse urban communities.
Once the foundations were set, we engaged in a knowledge exchange and synthesis series to surface the insights from the subject matter expertise of the stakeholders and collide it with the new knowledge developed in the room on the topic of smart cities. These workshops were compiled into a collection of qualitative data that was ready to be coded and synthesized.
What’s the process?
Erica Mateo made the whole thing possible by getting the right stakeholders in the room and keeping the organizing team informed about the real world conditions of the neighborhood.
Layman Lee kept the project realistic as a seasoned placemaking expert in the neighborhood.
Lindsey Paige McCloy was the throughput to the Calls for Innovation put out by city agencies.
Matt Mitchell and his project Crypto Harlem helped bring the stakeholders up to speed on data security and bias.
Sarah Lidgus, the first designer in residence for the City of New York
Noel Hidalgo, leading the public data movement in city government through Beta NYC, I worked with him to design Cards for Community, a tool for helping people without past experience working with data to derive insights from 311 public data sets.
What’s the outcome?
Once the scaffolding came down and the pivot to a clear deliverable was required, I ran an analysis of the data and drafted a sacrificial concept to be edited by the lead community organizer on the team. What resulted was a list that could be presented to the stakeholders for iteration and approval. Fortunately we got it right and the document was quickly approved and put into the pipeline as the Calls for Innovation were drafted.
I’m particularly proud of this project as we managed to keep the innovation team focused on the mission and not on our own individual agendas. We recovered from record scratch moments where the stakeholders were ready to walk away. We delivered an asset that was actually put into practice and to my knowledge is still in use today.