I. FRAMING THE RESEARCH
- Social Infrastructure: ‘the physical places and organizations that shape the way people interact and determine whether social capital develops.’ Klinenberg, E. (2018). Palaces for People
- Social Capital: ‘features of social organization such as networks, norms, and social trust that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit.’ Putnam, R. (1995). Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital
Jan Gehl’s Types of Interactions (graphic adapted from Gehl’s Life Between Buildings)
II. RESEARCH CONTEXT: La Mina Neighborhood
La Mina: a Well-Connected, Well-Located Neighborhood with Much to Offer
Stigmatization through the Perpetration of an Exaggerated Negative Image in Media
History of the Creation of La Mina
La Mina Transformation Plan: 2000 – Ongoing
Mapping Housing Disparity
Mapping Social Infrastructure
III. EXPLORING SOLUTIONS
Role Vision
Hypothesis:
If we engage communities in mapping and understanding social infrastructure and the spaces that foster social collaboration:
- we will be able to quantify the relationship between social infrastructure design and social collaboration
- design better social infrastructure that serves those needs
- extend and facilitate communal engagement in the digital realm, in a way which has the potential to be reflected in physical realm
Preliminary Proposal:
Digital platform designed to support the existing informal “exchange economy” and mutual support networks present in La Mina by expanding them to the digital realm, while also spatially mapping those exchanges with the goal of quantifying the correlations between social cooperation and spatial design.
Methodology:
- Residents list services or skills or goods they can share (tutoring, repairs, childcare, extra food, tools, etc.) and skills or goods they need.
- Algorithm matches those who need help with those that can help them.
- Residents have the option of conducting these exchanges online or in-person.
- Residents mark the spaces where these exchanges happen (shops offering delayed payments, homes where childcare occurs, libraries with homework help).
- AI model employed to recognize patterns and identify spaces where social cooperation is strongest and where it is weaker, and classify the different types of interactions.
- Analyze data to provide insights on the relationship between social cooperation and spatial design, including any correlations with demographic data collected from user inputs. This can be used to inform design decisions of social infrastructure of La Mina.
