Milgram, S. Environmental Psychology: People and Their Physical Settings, 2nd ed. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, USA, 1976, ch. Psychological Maps of Paris, pp. 104–124.

In this paper, Milgram describe a psychological study he conducted with habitants of Paris, to study their mental representation of their city. (1) The first principle he explain is that reality and image are imperfectly linked. The main problem he encountered is how to render this image observable.

Many of the concepts people have about cities are nonverbal, spatial ideas. They are not easily translated into words.

(2) The second principle is that one can readily fuse private and public aspects of life through the network of streets and landmarks.

(3) The third principle is that some properties of the mentalised places may be changed (e.g, they deviate from their true spatial coordinates but they do preserve a topological sequence.

Several cognitive processes take place on the mental map: selectivity; emphasis; distortion; projections of lifestyle. Neither the city nor the map are just agglomeration of objects: they are structures. It is a feature of the structure that displacement of one element is not an isolated event. Rather has consequences for the other elements with which is linked.

In addition to these points, a city is a social fact. Therefore the perception of the city is a social fact, and as such it need to be studied in its collective and in its individual aspects.

Milgram analysed a certain number of mental maps and noticed the emergence of common elements. The boundaries and the rivers (Lynch’s LIMIT), the landmarks of Paris, the links (Lynch’s PATHS).

Milgram’s analysis extended on using several different techniques such as “the last walk”, “the meeting point”, “the free associations”. Using these systems he produced several different visual image of the city that unveiled interesting phenomena, such as that whereas the psychological center of Chigago or any big american city is constantly changing position, the psychological center of Paris is always the same rooted on the cultural simbols of France.

There are already several research project going in the direction of City interactions, grouping and portable devices. The best contribution are represented by the Geograffiti project and the activity of Antony Townsend. In addition, the JavaGPS gorup is building the same stuff we are planning to do. In this sense, a new dimension into the field may only be added looking for the specific field I targeted, which is the understanding of the cities.

What can really make the difference is to design a service which make usage of this particular cognitive context to add something to human communication.

Today our group has received the first GPS unit. We will soon start developing location-awareness applications for the projects we have in place. At 11.45 we ran the first test at epfl and we received the first coordinates:
N 46,31 E 6,34. Wicked!

From the description on their internet site:

To demonstrate the concept of waypoint sharing we have been developing a number of waypoint sharing applications for the project we call Geograffiti. Using the GPSter database, these applications access the waypoint lists for retrieval and storage of waypoint data and other accessory information, such as text, images, audio, video, or links to other information. Running on location-aware and wireless-enabled portable devices, the applications can retreive waypoint lists based on context (search keywords), or location, or both. Typical use would include showing all waypoints in a wide geographic region, as a mapping overlay, or showing waypoints in a specific location that the user is presently in. The latter is the Geographiti concept: leaving location-dependent messages or media to be accessed by others not by a URL, but by the real location itself.

According to my point of view, this project is the closest to what I have in mind. The only difference I can see is that my focus concentrated in grasping urban structures rather that just annotating the world. In this sense more emphasis should be devoted to finding the cognitive tasks that are under the understanding of space and the construction of the mental map rather that on the annotation option.

GRASS GIS (Geographic Resources Analysis Support System) is a Free Software Geographical Information System (GIS) with raster, topological vector, image processing, and graphics production functionality that operates on various platforms through a graphical user interface and shell in X-Windows.

I am planning to use GRASS as the core of the MapTribe software. This engine should provide a good basis for building the map of the city and to enable the landmarking of the urban tissue.

http://grass.itc.it/index.html

The freeGIS project provides information on free on-line resources for building a GIS (Geographical Information System). These resources are available for the research community mainly following the GPL (General Purpose Licence).

freegis.org

Reading the blogs about urban planning I tried to cathegorise them in groups according to similar aspect of the text. Finally I have got 5 catagories:
– development: understanding the development of the urban tissue;
– fear: finding the hidden zones of the city is often related to the psychological perception of a certain part of the city, if we perceive a zone as dangerous we will usually avoid it, subsequently, that part will became non-existing;
– change of perception: some readings point in the direction of the cognitive shift we register about a particular part of the city, a hole, for instance, may become an architectural important object in certain contexts;
– interpretation: we tend to give meaning to certain part of the city following the signs we observe the the physical place;
– orientation: we perceive the city as a series of obstacles between us and our goals, hence we can highlight functional problems or features of the urban tissue.

Da una lettera di sarah …
Il mio intento è quello di scovare i luoghi
abbandonati in primis, poi raccontare dei non-luoghi, e catturare, infine,
immagini e impressioni della città in genere. Vorrei arrivare a disegnare il
negativo della piantina di Milano, segnalando tutti quei luoghi che vengono
solitamente ignorati dal comune cittadino.
…

Cosa sono i non-luoghi? Cosa sono i luoghi abbandonati, i luoghi invisibili?

Di una citta’ no codi le sette o le settantasett meraviglie, ma la risposta che da a una tua domanda.

As children, on foot and with imagination, a group of people try to learn a place and spatial relationships. Their preferred method consists in: embodying their exploration; making their way between different places to appreciate aspect of the place we are not used to see any more in our society.

http://www.walkinginplace.org/