Datamining the City I

From Yelp reviews directing people to preferred restaurants to Airbnb reprogramming homes into vacation rentals, the invisible code that powers a city’s use may have more drastic influence than any physical invention in the last century. This course focuses on encoding spatial analytical processes that enable designers to speculate creatively about the urban environment. Students develop a critical understanding of the social, economic, and political dynamics caused by these technologies as well as technical training in simulation, sorting, and visualization techniques. They hypothesize about the relationships of tools and space, as well as develop models and simulations so designers can gain a foothold in the changing landscape of a platform city.