Urban Data Review Reades Et Al. (2007)

Urban Data Review

Reades et al. (2007) presented some interesting ideas about the use of data collection and its practical application in an urban setting. The authors discussed spatiotemporal data as a new object of desire for those wishing to control and understand human behavior in large city. The authors called for a synthesis of data information from all available sources, including telecommunications companies to assist in urban planning and understanding the complex and chaotic idea of urban dynamics.

This paper discussed this topic by explaining the details of a study conducted by MIT and Telecom Italia (TI), in Rome, Italy's largest city. TI supplied data that recognized bandwidth usage on mobile phones and classified them as Erlongs. The data was collected, synthesized and modeled to help paint a picture of how Rome operates and how people move about and communicate. Ultimately, the paper concluded that "Our preliminary findings suggest that signature analysis can provide an important new way of looking at the city as a holistic, dynamic system. In particular, the mobile phone network lets us develop a real-time representation of those dynamics at the city and city-region scale."

Section 2: Analysis

The article is somewhat verbose and not extremely useful in any of its revelations. While the use of mobile phone bandwidth in Rome, may be traceable, the purpose of tracking was never really revealed in this article. The vocabulary used by the authors suggested that they were trying to hide this obvious flaw within the paper. The graphics used in describing the locations of the phone users were colorful and helpful in delivering their point, but once again useless in the context of the larger scope of the issue.

While the experiment's models may have been reliable, the paper is essentially empty of real value. Urban dynamics is never described or defined in any manner, leaving a certain vagueness to the article. Additionally, the use of mobile bandwidth is assumed to be considered data, even though there is limited explanation about its purpose.