MikroAct: Designing to Mobilize Collective Urban Actions

MikroAct: Designing to Mobilize Collective Urban Action
Christo de Klerk, Nitin Sawhney, Ph.D., and Shriya Malhotra
The New School and Partizaning
International Conference: Using ICT, Social Media and Mobile Technologies to Foster Self-Organization in Urban
and Neighborhood Governance, Delft University, The Netherlands, May 16-17, 2013.
Abstract
The perceived difficulty in engaging communities to participate in urban planning processes often ignores
ways in which citizens already participate in unique and informal networks of problem solving and policy
advocacy. A significant challenge for community organizers and municipal institutions is to understand and
support emerging patterns of co-design and self-organizing within neighborhoods.
In our experience, engaging community actors for shared problem solving requires recognizing modes of
trust and diverse stakes, activating social capital and resources, while exploring out-of-the-box design
interventions or urban tactics. Based on fieldwork conducted with Partizaning1 in districts of Moscow, Russia,
and activists with the Occupy movement in New York City, we examine key challenges and lessons emerging.
We then discuss a pilot initiative and prototype online collaboration platform, MikroAct (www.mikroact.org),
being developed in conjunction with participatory modes of place-based community engagement, and a
network of mailboxes installed in neighborhoods to involve participants in the process of revealing problems,
resources and solutions.
Through ongoing fieldwork and co-design experience, we consider the possibilities of both localized and
scalable civic engagement to support community self-organization based on principles of DIY urbanism,
grassroots activism, collectivism, and participatory research. The MikroAct site is currently being devised and
piloted in the context of neighborhood sites in Moscow and New York City. We believe such cooperative
urban design initiatives can serve as a means for participatory research on neighborhood activism, and shift
the focus from municipal to citizen agency in improving the quality of urban life while potentially promoting
forms of sustained solidarity networks in the city.
Keywords: ICTs, Co-Design, Participatory Research, New Collectivism, Self-Organizing, DIY Urbanism,
Moscow, New York, MikroAct, Quality of Life, Solidarity Networks.
1
This research was conducted with the participation of an urban arts-activist collective, Partizaning, students from Strelka, an
urban design institute, and a cross-section of inter-generational members in the local community of Troperovo-Nikulino.
1
Introduction
In this paper we seek to examine the role of networked technology and place-based cooperative initiatives in
supporting neighborhood action; the goal is to engage informal and ad-hoc networks of individual and
collective actors in productively addressing critical conditions within their urban localities. Direct urban
action by citizens is perhaps the most relevant and sustainable means of urban re-planning, but is often
overlooked by planners and experts. We consider some of the ways in which technologies can be designed to
facilitate civic engagement, while interfacing publics and policy makers in communities over shared problems
and cooperative solutions. While many online tools seek to prompt individual citizens to act through problem
reporting, the agency for developing solutions is often left to municipal, governmental or private actors. How
can one inspire publics towards mobilizing for collective problem solving and documentation of urban
actions? How can this approach build a form of social solidarity and capacity for socio-political or civic agency
within such neighborhoods? We examine case studies, in the context of Moscow and New York City, which
undertake new modes of grassroots mobilization and participatory methods in supporting collective urban
action. Finally, we will introduce an emerging initiative and platform called MikroAct, developed to address
some of these challenges while exploring how to mobilize collective urban action over networked localities
through participatory research and co-design.
Our research seeks to understand how diverse modes of collective action can support new forms of DIY
urbanism, and the nature of technology platforms that can be designed to support them effectively. Key
challenges, principles and design criteria that have emerged through our fieldwork and workshops include:
•
Recognizing and supporting the role of ad-hoc networks for collective action; how must these
informal networks be nurtured and supported, despite diverse stakes, interests and needs?
•
Combining online technologies with place-based interventions to support hybrid platforms for
civic engagement within and across networked localities; often distinct technologies must be
designed or adapted for use among particular user demographics within the same settings
•
Understanding how urban actions, solutions and practices must be devised to be site-specific,
taking into account the social, political and urban constraints of the specific localities, while
replication of such actions elsewhere must be carefully deliberated
In this paper, we will revisit some of these themes through discussion, based around selected case studies,
fieldwork and exploratory co-design work.
2
Acting for Common Good and Building Social Capital in Networked Localities
The rise of direct urban action and DIY urbanism
Cities worldwide are experiencing resurgence in ideas of bottom-up, DIY urbanism—also referred to as
tactical urbanism—and a renewed emphasis on participatory, people-centered urban planning. Direct citizen
action in the urban sphere is on the rise in realms usually given to government jurisdiction, which in some
cases becomes dialogue or commentary, as in the case of many urban interventions like billboard
takeovers2. These direct and DIY actions are disparate, individual attempts at addressing what is perceived
as the “common good” through individual actions in public urban spaces. In times of economic scarcity, urban
revitalization relies on inexpensive tactics, since quality of life issues are often the easiest to be overlooked.3
Many believe that DIY urbanism combined with civic engagement can lead to more vibrant, people-centered
urban spaces. Citizen participation is considered a basis for sustainable urbanism; residents are often
expected to know their own needs best and can potentially contribute to the success of urban developments.4
And so, “the cultivation of civic engagement and vibrant urban spaces is important. The irony of the current
blossoming of interest in urban civic space is that the same economic conditions that instigated this cultural
shift also curtail government spending. DIY urbanism can therefore indirectly promote citizen visions for
quality of life.”5 In a broader sense, instances of DIY and tactical urbanism leverage Information and
Communication Technologies (ICTs) as beneficiaries of the transnational social movement of contemporary
globalization, described by Peter Evans as ‘counter hegemonic globalization’—connecting localized struggles
and facilitating bottom-up social movements.6
2
It is important also to note the subtle difference in DIY action versus what is considered strategic or tactical. We argue that it
might best be understood as a continuum that begins with tactics which then promote an ethos of DIY and self-organizing i.e. not
waiting on government agencies or authorities, but taking the initiative to organize and just do - i.e. repair / fix / change or
improve once urban environments. The idea is not for people to entirely replace government agency or to act individually. A
great example to illustrate this is Seattle’s ‘polite’ guerilla urbanists, who strategically placed a bike path and left it to the
municipality to respond: http://www.seattlebikeblog.com/2013/04/04/guerrilla-road-safety-group-politely-installs-illegal-bikelane-protectors-on-cherry-street (accessed April 18, 2013). Another example could be placing bike racks or creating unsanctioned
cycling navigation - these single instance tactics then encourage mass DIY action - cycling, putting pressure on institutions to
then recognize them as official. Tactical provocation can lead to collective DIY actions, which ultimately need to become
institutional and systemic - getting the city and organization support or uptake. A recognized challenge therefore is how do you
move from provoking to doing something collective and get the city to take ownership?
3
Post by Andrew J. Faulkner on 7.21.2009, “Discovering Civic Engagement Through Guerilla Urbanism,” Exquisite Struggle,
http://exquisitestruggle.blogspot.ru/2009/07/discovering-civic-engagement-through.html (accessed April 1, 2013).
4
Ibid
5
Ibid
6
Peter Evans, “Counter-hegemonic Globalization: Transnational Social Movements in the Contemporary Global Political
Economy”, Handbook of Political Sociology: States, Civil Societies, and Globalization, Cambridge University Press, 2005.
3
Locality as cross-urban theme, electronically mediated
In times of crisis, communities will often network online and offline to take collective action. These actions
might have global resonance, building solidarity and gaining support through resource donations and the
formation of new collaborative networks. The Internet as an inexpensive information and communication
tool has the potential to help communities connect with each other and organize themselves in a way that
facilitates DIY and tactical urbanism: “rather than increasing or destroying community, the Internet can best
be seen transforming community such that it becomes integrated into rhythms of daily life, with life online
integrated with offline activities.”7 Online networks can thus allow connectivity and support self-organizing
that is not just location specific, but is also based on themes and issues of interest.
Open Data Solutionism: Mobilizing civic participation through apps and civic hacking?
“The explosive growth of the open-data movement has taught a generation of city-dwellers that they have a
right to peek behind the curtain of local government, to identify civic problems and help solve them, too,”
writes Emily Badger of Atlantic Cities. “But what happens when these newly engaged citizens want to have an
equally hands-on role with the physical space in our cities, with our streets and sidewalks and public parks?
Could cities make it just as easy to hack the physical world as the digital one?”8 For cities, this idea that
citizens could “hack the physical world” presents a problem concerning expertise and authority; and when
does it lead to a form of anarchy in citizen DIY urbanism in the extreme?
Open data represents a layer of information access, rather than an interface for public-government
interaction. And the availability of this data relates to direct and DIY actions and could potentially facilitate
the formation of networked communities online. Open data supports and reveals inefficiencies and can also
engage citizen in supporting government actions through open / transparent web platforms (which we will
discuss in a following section). Richard Sennet describes this as a throwback to an earlier period of scientific
planning, in the 1930s when architects could plan new cities without a legacy of lived neighborhoods to shape
them. At that time, the emphasis of engineering was on infrastructure; today it is on information processing,
says Sennet: “the danger now is that this information-rich city may do nothing to help people think for
themselves or communicate well with one another.”9 In part, the representation of localities using city data is
an incomplete, top-down model of the city.
7
Wellman, B., Boase, J., Chen, W. “The Networked Nature of Community: Online and Offline” IT & Society 1 (1), 2002. pp.
151-165.
8
Emily Badger, “The Street Hacker Officially Embraced,” The Atlantic Cities, published on May 7, 2012,
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/neighborhoods/2012/05/street-hacker-officially-embraced/1921 (accessed April 2, 2013).
9
Sennett, Richard. “No One Likes a City That’s Too Smart.” The Guardian, December 4, 2012, sec. Comment is free.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/04/smart-city-rio-songdo-masdar.
4
The space of self-organized action: micro-environments with global span
In 2001, Saskia Sassen wrote about using ICTs to enact local change with global significance. She spoke of ICT
as reframing the local to have as its environment, its condition, its context both the global and globalization.
"[M]uch of what we experience and represent as the local turns out to be a micro-environment with global
span," said Sassen. It "cuts across borders and connects a variety of points on the globe." The very concept of
the local, for Sassen, would be reconfigured to span distances. Cycling proponents, environmental activists,
foreclosure resistance, would redraw the map to network actors across distances. "Through the Internet,
local initiatives become part of a global network of activism without losing the focus on specific local
struggles," says Sassen. The local is renewed. It becomes a hybrid base, both local and global, from which to
act. The local takes on global significance. Sassen typified this hybrid base as on the one hand about citycentered action whose actors network globally, and on the other hand digital network-based action that
doesn't "converge on an actual terrain for activism."10
Disruptive technologies and the Micropolitics of civic engagement
That was 2001, when several commentators including Sassen and Geert Lovink were starting to talk about
the local uses of global networks. Since then, so-called "disruptive" web-based technologies have been
heralded as radical ways to transform established, inefficient civic systems through networked efficiencies.
More recently, Evegeny Morozov is among those who have brought a critical lens to cyber-utopianism and
neo-liberalism of disruptive technologies, arguing that they primarily seek to replace existing monopolies and
not transform the landscape for truly competitive marketplaces.11 Yet, while disruptive technologies might
represent actors effecting change in the digital realm to transform systems of city governance and operation
(in domains such as transportation, health rating, voting), tactical urbanism reflects the sets of individual,
grassroots practices that transform urban spaces. These practices, although very uniquely devised in their
physical and cultural contexts, are considered highly replicable, as Mike Lydon, urban planner and author of
the Tactical Urbanism guidebooks points out12, but does it lead to sustained civic engagement?
Thomas Ehrlich explains civic engagement as “working to make a difference in the civic life of our
communities and developing the combination of knowledge, skills, values and motivation to make that
difference. It means promoting the quality of life in a community, through both political and non-political
processes.”13 The most basic civic engagement is through simple, everyday acts of change, sometimes
referred to as micropolitics, which “‘create an ethos of permanent becoming revolutionary’ an ethos not
10
Sassen, Saskia. “Impacts of Information Technologies on Urban Economic and Politics.” International Journal of Urban and
Regional Research 25, no. 2 (2001): 411–418. doi:10.1111/1468-2427.00319.
11
Morozov, Evgeny. “Imprisoned by Innovation.” The New York Times, March 23, 2013, sec. Opinion / Sunday Review.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/24/opinion/sunday/morozov-imprisoned-by-innovation.html.
12
Nate Berg, “The Official Guide to Tactical Urbanism,” The Atlantic Cities, March 2. 2012,
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/neighborhoods/2012/03/guide-tactical-urbanism/1387
13
Thomas Ehrlich, ed, “Preface,” Civic Responsibility and Higher Education, Oryx Press: 2000, p vi.
5
constrained by a politics predicated on the now defunct forms of Soviet Bureaucratic socialism and a liberal
or social democracy...this ethos will create new collective solidarities...”14
One of the challenges we seek to examine (and address through the development of MikroAct) is the role that
ICTs or existing technologies can play in supporting these collective solidarity networks (or urban action
networks), as well as for building social capital. How does action and collective, community support shift
from merely expressions of support — ‘likes’ and accolade — to real life solidarity and action that have
sustained and long-lasting socio-political and economic consequences?15
Problem Reporting: Leaving quality of life up to governments
In Moscow, websites like Angry Citizen16 coordinate action around citizen concerns, and similarly Street
Journal17 allows residents to report problems in their districts. Both sites direct complaints to government
agencies, although neither website is explicitly run by municipal government. РосЖКХ18 however is the local
government’s website for people to report public utility problems, maintained, which are directed to the
Moscow government. It was developed with input from the founder of Dom Dvor Dorogi19 another site that
promotes citizen input into the public utilities by allowing them to report problems to municipal and state
authorities. Essentially, there is a vast ecosystem of online problem reporting websites that channel requests
to government agencies, some run independently, while others are maintained by the government.
In New York City, 311 is positioned as a centralized government resources and a direct forum for citizens to
report non-emergency quality of life issues. Like in Moscow, there are several websites in New York City that
support government agencies in directing and routing citizen concerns to the appropriate authorities. A
recently developed website and mobile app which has won significant industry accolade is Public Stuff20,
which allows citizens to report issues. SeeClickFix21 is similar to 311, but enhances the problem reporting
experience by facilitating collective mapping, tracking, and prioritization of non-emergency, quality of life
problems.
Online to Offline: Building local communities through ICT
But going one step beyond simple problem reporting, some websites are entering the realm of community
building through technology, while staying locally oriented and location specific. Launched in 2012,
14
Parr, Adrian, The Deleuze Dictionary, p 163.
Megan Graber, “A Brief History of Applause: The Big Data of the Ancient World,” The Atlantic, published March 15, 2013,
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/03/a-brief-history-of-applause-the-big-data-of-the-ancient-world/274014/
(accessed April 2, 2013).
16
Angry Citizen, http://www.angrycitizen.ru, (accessed April 16, 2013).
17
Street Journal, http://www.streetjournal.org (accessed April 16, 2013).
18
RosZKH, http://roszkh.ru (accessed April 16, 2013).
19
Dom Dvor Dorogi, http://www.domdvordorogi.ru, (accessed April 16, 2013).
20
Public Stuff, http://www.publicstuff.com, (accessed April 16, 2013).
21
See Click Fix, http://www.seeclickfix.com, (accessed April 20, 2013).
15
6
Neighborland22 is a website which allows people within a locality to re-imagine the spaces they live in and
express what they would like to change. Popularise23 is another online platform “that shares the power to
build new places” in neighborhoods, allowing users to connect with other local residents. MeetUp24, “the
world's largest network of local groups”, allows users to “organize a local group or find one of the thousands
already meeting up face-to-face... with the goal of improving themselves or their communities.” The sites’
stated mission is “to revitalize local community and help people around the world self-organize...” It is one of
the few emerging websites that seeks to connects ad-hoc groups of users both online and offline.
User-generated actions and creative urban interventions
There is another class of online platforms that place an emphasis on sharing urban-based actions. Actipedia25
is an “online, open-access, user-generated database of creative activism” creating a space for users to read,
comment, share experiences and examples of activists and artists using creative tactics and strategies to
challenge power and offer visions of a better society. 100en1dia26 encourages a day of 100 urban
interventions and allows users to submit ideas and get inspired by the existing resources: “a civil action day
where people take ownership of their city and create a better place to live.”
22
Neighborland, http://www.neighborland.com (accessed April 20, 2013).
Popularise, http://www.popularise.com, (accessed April 20, 2013).
24
Meet Up, http://www.meetup.com, (accessed April 20, 2013).
25
Actipedia, http://www.actipedia.org, (accessed April 15, 2013).
26
100en1dia, http://100en1dia.com (accessed April 15, 2013).
23
7
Figure 1: Ecosystem of existing online civic engagement websites, position in a design space along problem
solving vs. building solidarity and institutional vs. citizen agency
Many believe that online civic engagement through ICTs can play a crucial role in building community, social
and political solidarity; the question is how best can this be done in conjunction with ongoing place-based
initiatives. Reviewing these web-based initiatives we found innumerable, non-interactive resources that do
little to facilitate real world, collective action. There are many problem-reporting websites, privately and
government run, and many fewer civic engagement sites which use online spaces to connect with offline
realities, or which facilitate face-to-face interaction. It is unclear if these sites adequately (or at least,
successfully) promote or support DIY urbanism or self-organizing in place-based communities, even if it is
their stated goal. There seems to be a lag in inspiring and mobilizing people’s interest online, and making this
actually happen. Place-based interaction and a vibrant problem-solution loop are often missing, while there is
a gap or a conflict of interest in terms of quality of life issues being addressed. Many initiatives inevitably
encounter rapid turn-over of users and changing functionality, while others often shift from being critical of
government action to working closely with municipal or government authorities to accomplish shared goals
(e.g. Dom Dvor Dorogi or Delai Sam), or perhaps are simply subsumed by them to sustain their interests.
Other groups like Occupy Sandy used Amazon.com’s gift registry to facilitate donations during Hurricane
8
Sandy, demonstrating how actors can flexibly self-organize using an array of ad-hoc tools and technologies
available, to suit pressing needs.
Perhaps the only difference in the ecologies of problem solving platforms online in the U.S. vs. elsewhere is
that the mobile app ecosystem is more significantly developed in the U.S. Nonetheless, these sites highlight a
gap in activating citizen engagement or an ethos of DIY self-organizing. Hence, there is a need for new forms
of globally accessible and adaptable tools to support localized, community organizing and civic interfacing,
targeting already ‘active’ citizens, rather than the typical problem complaint dichotomy.
Challenges of community self-organizing: Case studies from Moscow and New York
Community self-organizing seeks to undertake activities of common interest that are often unsanctioned and
do not require reliance on existing institutions. It is a process where some form of coordination is needed to
support cooperative action among the disparate parts of an existing social system. The process of selforganizing is usually spontaneous, and not directed or controlled by any single agent or authority, however it
is often lead by individuals or local groups. Self-organization strives to support forms of decentralized
decision making and address common issues of concern in a more horizontal manner.
Questions we faced as we began this research revolved around how community or neighborhood actors
organize themselves; how they use ICTs and in what way these lead to synchronization of their efforts. How
can ICTs effectively facilitate people to collectively address issues of quality of life in their cities, districts and
neighborhoods? We first sought to understand what drives local residents to engage with each other and
their urban environments. This section examines two case studies of self-organizing in Moscow and in New
York City. Our goal was to examine critical challenges and opportunities in this context, and explore how an
emerging platform like MikroAct can be designed to more effectively facilitate collective urban action.
We chose Moscow’s Delai Sam festival (which means ‘do it yourself’ in Russian) and Occupy Sandy in New
York City since our teams were involved in both initiatives; they offer examples of intentionally selforganized, activist networks, with an instructive set of differences. Occupy Sandy represents functioning
digital activism and Delai Sam shows how urban activists are leveraging different ICT tools, but have a gap in
being able to self-organize more broadly due to limited technological capacity. The example of Occupy Sandy
demonstrates civic mobilization during disaster and crisis, while Delai Sam seeks sustained civic engagement
to improve urban quality of life and alternative visions for the city. However, both examples illustrate how
financial scarcity, climate change, and government mismanagement create conditions whereby many citizens
themselves seek to be responsive and self-organize by ‘thinking globally while acting locally’, working for a
common good in place-based and networked localities. Both represent emerging patterns of co-design and
participatory urban change, while share many similar challenges of self-organization and scaling of efforts.
9
We should also note that these cases of DIY urbanism differ as they are located in already significantly
developed and planned cities with formalized aspects. We are not discussing informal cities and trajectories
simply because of the lack of scope of research.
Case Study: Delai Sam (Moscow)
Moscow has been the site of rapid urban change over the past few years, with unfettered commercial growth
and city infrastructure development (such as roads and highways), while marginalizing neighborhood living.
In response to this, in 2010 a group of environmental advocates, architects and planners came together to
craft an alternative city manifesto, Moscow 2020—an attempt to promote a more sustainable vision of their
city and address the global impact of climate change through localized actions. With mass protests after the
reelection of President Putin in 2011, there was a realization among many city residents that socially just
change was perhaps only possible through self-organized actions. 2012 witnessed the election of a wave of
young, progressive, municipal deputies, who have become engaged in response to the lack of effective local
governance. Overall, in the past few years in Moscow there has been a sense of overall disillusionment with
federal politics and a resurgent interest in urban development and sustainability, given plans to double the
size of the city, already the largest in Europe.
Delai Sam was established in 2010 (originally as LocalFest) by a network of activists, as an initiative for
grassroots, ecological urbanism towards a livable, citizen-oriented Moscow. The activists organized festivals
every six months, consisting of a conference and series of workshops around sustainable urban change. The
festival is horizontally organized, whereby anyone can propose a lecture and workshop about DIY urbanism
or tactical actions towards a more sustainable and livable city. As an informal conference, ‘Delai Sammit’
became a forum for exchange and the workshops run during the festival have become a way of disseminating
urban ideas, but there had been no online forum for people to search tactics, understand or gather
information. Each year with a scramble for spaces in which to organize the festival, it is demonstrated time
and again the need for participants to meet in physical settings and learn by doing. Supporting wider
outreach and networking as well as inspirations and resource sharing throughout the city continue to pose an
obstacle to the uptake of the festival and its ethos.
Delai Sam has been evolving significantly, run and organized by a core of volunteers with ecological, urban
and media backgrounds. Although the core-teams promote ideas of DIY and horizontal self-organizing, they
ironically face practical challenges of being able to efficiently and effectively organize themselves and
mobilize greater numbers within the community. In a politically charged city like Moscow, engaging in public
civic activism can be tricky and often contentious, with many public gatherings banned or participants
detained. There is a shortage of public urban spaces where people can freely meet, organize and work on
issues of shared concern. How can Delai Sam use technology to promote the ideas of self-organizing and
solidarity building in the city? Delai Sam now has several media partners for outreach, and in 2013 created a
blog (www.delaisam.org) to consolidate information and attract interest. The site, although media-rich and
10
interactive, still faces obstacles in engaging a wider sphere of public awareness and coordinated action in the
city of Moscow. Although the festival includes master-classes and workshops promoting urban sustainability,
broad based participation and involvement remains a challenge. The possibility of crowd-funding and crowdsourcing the initiative has also been relatively unexplored – though would perhaps be useful.
Figure 1: Participants during a workshop at Delai Sam in Moscow in April 2013
One of the hurdles we recognized in supporting Delai Sam’s efforts lies in how they themselves articulate
their needs; which is in part the problem of “synchronization.” Delai Sam and its members have had no way of
coordinating local gatherings or knowing about other initiatives around the city, except through word of
mouth via informal networks. Although they use social media (Facebook, Livejournal, Vkontakte and a wiki)
to connect, they lack physical spaces and being able to follow activities and actions based on their
communities of interest.
Delai Sam since its inception has remained a small and exclusive group of activists working on and sharing
ideas, though each year the participants grows; in 2013 there were almost 200 participants. They have,
however struggled with engaging larger communities of interest in a broader dialogue and to foster expanded
civic action in the city. Involving new partners and citizens in doing interesting projects has relied on the
awareness and actions of a few, not to mention the challenge of simply staying abreast of each other’s
11
activities in the city or engaging in collaborations; this inevitably leads to replicated efforts, an ineffective use
of civic resources and an inability to scale actions.
Case Study: Occupy Sandy (New York City)
On February 23rd, 2013, a group of data archivists, activists, computer scientists, and social researchers came
together to examine grassroots coordinated disaster response during the Hurricane Sandy disaster in New
York City in November 2013. Under the auspices of OpenData Day, at a hackathon hosted by OccupyData NYC,
this collective, Occupy Sandy, explored critical research questions, action agendas, and data sets produced.
Occupy Sandy mobilized upon a variety of data and communication practices. Some of these were tactical and
innovative: such as fulfilling immediate community needs by distribution needed items or materials through
an Amazon wedding registry or by coordinating logistics through the deployment of a full-scale Enterprise
Resource Planning (ERP) systems such as CivicCRM. For the majority of the participants of the OpenData Day
event, Occupy Sandy’s disparate data sets and practices reflected risks, redundancies, and lost opportunities.
Inadvertently, many Google documents containing personal information were shared indiscriminately; there
were concerns about homes getting canvassed multiple times with assessment surveys; and there was a
database of 20,000 volunteers matched far too infrequently with service opportunities.
The starting point of this collective investigation is prescient. Questions did not focus on how neighborhood
groups were able to self-organize. The motivation and imperative to act in the face of a natural disaster was
simply a self-evident and urgent cause that rallied communities and individuals to donate time, effort, and
resources. Site assessments, volunteers, donations, receipts, location, and logistics were the categories of data
identified by participants of the OpenData Day event. This was the identified trace, the documentation trail of
Occupy Sandy, the important sets of information used in the mobilization of the grassroots effort. The
identified data sets did not include the hundreds of videos, the thousands of tweets, the countless DIY
wayfinding signs, or content of the narrative project - all of which certainly rendered a measure of support for
organizing and supporting relief efforts.
The clearest action agenda for Occupy Sandy data was to support future grassroots-based disaster relief
networks. Ideas included the formulation of a unified schema, a distributed data warehouse, and an emerging
recognition that a variety of data practices take precedence over technological constraints. These ideas were
articulated through the hackathon, through participatory research using data analysis, transformation,
visualization and user-interface design of tools to coordinate, track and measure citizen action. Two distinct
approaches to technology, social networking, and self-organization emerged during the course of the
hackathon. Data Anywhere, a distributed, data warehousing project was articulated as a potential response to
the data management issues that plagued Occupy Sandy’s network of actors. By archiving existing Occupy
Sandy data on a redundantly distributed database and layering it with an Application Programming Interface
12
(API), information could be more efficiently and securely distributed .27 Another approach was articulated by
a group assessing volunteer coordination and mobilization for collective action using blogs and email lists.28
Figure 2: Hackathon participants working on Occupy Sandy data in New York City in February 2013
A function of self-organization is the reflexive capacity of grassroots actors to collaboratively document,
process, and design methods to support civic action. This allows participants to not only understand what
practices worked in previous contexts but to translate their findings to support better grassroots mobilizing
in the future. In both case studies, we found that creative, DIY and tactical interventions were being used by
communities to connect with and support each other’s efforts. However, effective self-organizing and
mobilization of citizen action requires place-based interaction (workshops, teach-ins, hackathons, festivals)
and technology-mediated coordination, documentation and dissemination of best practices and DIY tactics.
Supporting Civic Action through Collaborative Design Research
In our research we have drawn from case studies, fieldwork and design explorations to examine new ways to
facilitate synchronization, co-design of tactical urban action, and self-organizing in neighborhood contexts.
27
“Data Anywhere – distributed data storage and sharing solution” Drew Hornbein’s Weblog,
http://blog.dhornbein.com/2013/03/07/data-anywhere-distributed-data-storage-and-sharing-solution/ (accessed April 15, 2013).
28
“Occupy Sandy Data Case Study: Volunteer Outreach” posted by Marisela on March 5, 2013 on Occupy Data NYC,
http://occupydatanyc.org/2013/03/05/occupy-data-hackathon-volunteer-outreach (accessed April 1, 2013).
13
The MikroAct project emerged through a cooperative process of design and social inquiry conducted in
conjunction with the Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design29 in Moscow in July 2012. The
authors were invited by Strelka to lead a workshop with students and creative practitioners as part of their
Agents of Change30 summer program to examine transformations in urban life in the context of Moscow. The
workshop “Urban Tactics and Media Ecologies for Civic Action in Moscow”31 was designed and conducted in
partnership with Partizaning32 through fieldwork in several neighborhoods or “Microrayons” (low-income
housing districts) to address some of the critical urban and social issues emerging in the city of Moscow.
Figure 3: Urban Tactics and Media Ecologies Workshop held at Strelka in Moscow, July 2013
The workshop included 12-15 participants with diverse backgrounds in architecture, urban planning,
information technology, journalism, economics and new media, in conjunction with domain experts, activist
groups and neighborhood residents in Moscow. The participants conducted community-based research,
mapping, ethnographic fieldwork, data visualization and user interface design. One team used social media
network analysis and examined modes for collective decision-making among Occupy activists in the city.
Another team devised creative ways to collect and visualize public perceptions about the redevelopment and
gentrification of the Red October Island in the heart of Moscow.
Finally, a team conducted fieldwork in Troparevo-Nikulino, a microrayon in Moscow, to devise means for
29 http://www.strelka.com/?lang=en (accessed April 28, 2013)
30 http://www.strelka.com/agents-of-change/?lang=en (accessed April 28, 2013)
31 http://urbantacticsmoscow.wordpress.com (accessed April 28, 2013)
32 http://eng.partizaning.org (accessed April 28, 2013)
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collecting local issues of concerns, synchronizing civic action and disseminating urban tactics, initially devised
by Partizaning, and later extended by others in the microrayon. The pilot project included community debriefings and a network of custom-made community mailboxes installed in the neighborhoods to engage
participants in the process of revealing problems, resources and solutions though a prototype website
SynchroniCITY. Based on this exploratory fieldwork and co-design project, we devised a more comprehensive
approach and are developing an online platform, MikroAct (www.mikroact.org), which leverages a
combination of technology, interactive design, social media and local processes of cooperative action, to
facilitate, document and share examples of collective urban actions and neighborhood-level DIY projects.
We are currently seeking to extend this methodology and working platform in partnership with communitybased groups in Moscow and New York City over the coming year to gain invaluable insights and lessons
before the approach is scaled up and widely adopted. Below we describe various facets of the approach and
how these are being integrated into a framework of place-based and networked civic action.
Mailboxes Initiative: Connecting Online and Offline Spaces
Prior to the workshop, in May 2012, members of Partizaning33 installed a series of unsanctioned mailboxes in
Troparevo-Nikulino. The idea was to create a physical reporting space, beyond the online realm, to engage the
youth and elderly in the community. The mailboxes moved beyond the problem-reporting dynamic by
connecting real spaces and suggesting (via a sign posted next to them) that people try to solve neighborhood
problems themselves or in collaboration with others. As a result of this intervention, Partizaning received
almost 60 pieces of mail, which reported different requests for changes with varying degrees of urgency (and
seriousness). Interestingly, the mailboxes engaged concerns of children as well as older people who often do
not access the Internet and are usually not engaged in urban decision-making processes. Most of these letters
(a form of neighborhood data) revealed specific problems; many people marked critical locations on handdrawn maps for repair or safety concerns, and voiced general neighborhood concerns or desires. The
mailboxes were supported by an informal network of artists-activists living in the district, who also worked
on issues like deforestation and cycling advocacy there. Based on the numbers and types of letters, we
recognized there existed a strong level of community discontent and a form of DIY activism in TroparevoNikulino, which however was disjointed and fragmented. The letters held a potential for building social
capital, and hence are being exhibited in community contexts, in conjunction with focused discussions.
33
http://www.thepolisblog.org/2012/09/cooperative-urbanism-in-moscow.html (accessed April 18, 2013)
15
Figure 4: Unsanctioned mailboxes installed in Troparevo-Nikulino
Figure 5: Examples of letters received in the mailboxes in Troparevo-Nikulino
16
SynchroniCITY: Prototype online platform to synchronize civic actions
After ongoing fieldwork and a series of in-depth discussions with active residents from Troparevo-Nikulino, it
became clear that people lacked a way of sharing resources or involving one another in community
improvement activities. Although the research team met with cycling and forest conservation activists in the
area, their efforts seemed out of sync with other activities going on in the city. During the workshop, we
created a prototype website where the local residents in Troparevo-Nikulino could report and discuss
problems online, browse resources as well as access suggested tactical solutions. The working prototype,
SynchroniCITY, emerged as a means to ‘synchronize’ tactical urban actions and design interventions, not only
within the microrayon, but also share and potentially replicate or repurpose them across the city.34 In this
context, there was a demonstrated need for residents, particularly urban activists,35 to remain aware of what
was happening across the city and engage or collaborate with similar actions (e.g. cycling tactics and
activism). The initial prototypes were developed rapidly and were tested by active residents in TroparevoNikulino . The site was openly discussed during weekly outdoor community meetings held there (with
projection screenings outdoors), which was attended not only by youth, but also caught the attention and
interest of the elderly passing by, who came to discuss their own problems at length in these gatherings.
Figure 6: SynchroniCITY, a rapid online prototype designed to showcase problems, solutions and resources
34
The SynchroniCITY prototype website can be viewed online at http://www.ngo2.ru/sync
This requirement was expressed multiple times by activists involved in organizing Delai Sam. The limitation that these activists
face is being able to widely communicate with a general audience, beyond eco-activists who are already engaged in and know of
these activities.
35
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The process of co-designing through participatory research
In February 2013, Partizaning organized a community-based focus group session in Moscow to conduct
participatory research focusing on activists who organize Delai Sam. The goal was to better understand
whether their concerns were site or issue specific. At the Ecoloft environmental space, activists and
participants of Delai Sam explained pressing urban issues and how they get involved. Discussions revealed
that people were engaged in many themes of interest that were both location (district) specific, like local
parks or construction projects that were damaging to the environment in their districts; but they were also
motivated by issues that cut across geographic boundaries. The simplified notion of problem reporting and
the dichotomy of problem-solution action, did not necessarily address creative urban activism or alternative
visions of the city. Hence, any site needed a wider framing and participation of publics across the city.
It was very important for activists to meet in real, place-based contexts despite wanting to coordinate
activities online. In a large and unwieldy city like Moscow many activists find themselves feeling separated,
working independently and unable to merge their efforts with others easily. Several expressed the desire to
work with a community on issues of shared concern. In particular, having a sense of place-based and
proximal awareness of actions by others is something many participants desired. As explained by one
participant, “it’s a good idea to be able to open a website and see what is happening around you and to have
the ability to easily get involved.” While a site like SynchroniCITY would enable people to learn about and
coordinate local actions in a wider public context, participants also expressed a need to maintain some form
of anonymous or private interaction, especially when engaging in discreet or tactical actions whereby their
identity may lead to legal repercussions from authorities. For this reason many have previously used
anonymous interaction and organized their actions using ‘Meetup’ sites.
Partizaning then went back to Troparevo-Nikulino and met some activists with whom the team had worked
on the original prototype to learn more about their ideas and concerns. They were shown emerging design
concepts for a new website that expanded its focus and functionality. Participants preferred ways to simplify
the design and access both location-specific and thematic views of emerging projects they could learn about
or contribute to. The discussions revealed that self-organization and urban action requires both localized and
place-based coordination as well as awareness of similar efforts across the city. A broader framing of
cooperative action than purely problem solving was also needed to sustain and build capacity for action and
socio-political solidarity among networks of community actors. Transparency of content, trust and anonymity
must be handled and negotiated carefully among the networks of actors with crucial stakes in these contexts,
hence there must be flexibility in allowing distinct modes of usage. Co-designing through participatory
research ensures that any platform and framework devised can engage these complex dynamics over time.
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MikroActs: Towards a New Collectivism
Beyond the Problem-Solution model
SynchroniCITY was, in sense, simply an online version of the mailboxes intervention. Like the mailboxes, the
public was invited to participate in a form of local urban planning by posting their ideas about the problems
and opportunities in their neighborhood. The shortcomings of this problem-solution model became quickly
evident. As with the mailboxes, user definitions of problems can range from the petty to the obscure.
Negotiating consensus on the definition of the problems stifles creativity to coordinate solutions. As we
identified in the workshop, both in the United States and in Russia, many civic engagement websites constrain
the parameters of problems to the point that they can easily be understood and solved by public servants.
While the post-a-problem then track-the-solution model of civic-engagement encourages city officials to
measure success in city administration with citizen perceptions of quality of life conditions, this corporate
customer service orientation can fragment citizen networks of civic action. SeeClickFix in the United States
and DomDorDvorgi in Russia both illustrate a problem-solution model of interfacing individuals with
governments without activating the local context of actors and networks in a sustained manner.
Students in the summer workshop were tasked with tracing and mapping the action networks of advocacy in
the Troparevo-Nikulino district. Through interviews with residents as well as the forest and cycling activists,
the students observed that residents come together in advocacy networks at a variety of communication
levels. These levels of communication are defined by different degrees of community participation and by a
range of urban space uses. Notable across all these levels is the function of scale. At the lowest level, friends in
a neighborhood might congregate to address a concern about personal finances. The scale moves up the
social and institutional ladder to the municipal level where public infrastructure is the concern.
In Troparevo-Nikulino, the constant social enablers in the neighborhood were both the young activists as well
as the community’s retired seniors. For others, the conflicting demands of occupation and civic engagement
fragmented collectively coordinated action. A challenge was how best to engage these diverse demographics
of neighborhood actors and facilitate opportunities for cooperative action, while gradually inviting others
into the fold. Distinct motivations, stakes and modes of communication and access, clearly lead play into the
nature of engagement afforded among diverse networks of actors in such contexts.
MikroActs as reframing collective social action
Through preliminary ethnographic work and neighborhood interactions, as well as design explorations using
rapid prototyping and participant feedback, a possible framework for a more comprehensive online platform
began to be conceptualized. The notion of “mikroacts” was devised as a form of acting at a micro level in
one’s own localized context (activating micropolitics), coordinating and expanding them socially, while being
able to scale and transfer them to be repurposed in other settings. Mikroacts seek to reframe the problemsolution dynamic by supporting discussion and ideas around building social capital, and solidarity networks.
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The design of the MikroAct site is centered on coordinating and sharing emerging urban actions, while
facilitating longer-term advocacy campaigns by collectives of networked actors. This conception is hence
operationalized in the framework of collectives, actions, and campaigns. Actions are represented by
mikroacts, which are shareable and replicable containers of media content. In essence, mikroacts are activity
streams of images and messages related to any kind of emerging action; they become representations of
urban tactics, interventions, and direct actions. They are locatable instances of a collective effort to influence
change. By documenting an action - how it was accomplished and the influence it gained (measured user
interest and media produced) - the mikroact is positioned for replication or repurposing in a different context.
Figure 7: Co-designing and staging collective action using the MikroAct platform
MikroActs can also be produced by collectives and organized within campaigns. Collectives are a conception
of user interest groups that are centered on the actions that they co-create. Users that follow or participate in
the production of a mikroact are associated together, and this association defines their collectivity. Collectives
can represent established community groups or an ad-hoc assembly of individuals. Campaigns are a kind of
virtual stage upon which to bring together a variety of actions that support political advocacy. Problems and
solutions are reframed in this model as campaigns and mikroacts. Individual mikroacts can serve a variety of
campaign objectives. For example, a critical mass cycling intervention could serve to both support advocacy
for better cycling infrastructure and enrich a cycling culture in a neighborhood. These can be distinct
20
campaigns reflecting that although individuals have differences in their articulation of the problems, this
doesn’t have to limit cooperation on collective action. E.g. campaigns focusing on pedestrian life vs. cycling.
As a function of the platform, any user can replicate a mikroact into their campaign or location. A user
concerned with food composting in their neighborhood can copy mikroacts from other campaigns into their
collection. In their campaign, the collection of replicated actions form an expression of intent: “these are
actions that I believe could help advocate for improved food composting infrastructure in my neighborhood.”
Through rich textual commenting and social network sharing, interest and participation can be generated in a
design process that draws upon the experience and outcomes documented in previous mikroacts. The site
functions best in conjunction with place-based interventions including mailboxes, community gatherings,
workshops, teach-ins, public exhibits and festivals to continue fostering and supporting wider participation
among these citizen-led initiatives in each neighborhood. This approach is being tested with participants
through pilot projects in Moscow and New York City in the coming year, while we continue conducting
participatory research, site-based workshops and interventions to spur cooperative design and action.
Conclusions
Ensuring an inclusive platform means understanding participants motivations and working to ensure crossgenerational engagement, often through place-based interaction opportunities. Virtual connections need to
manifest in real space for concrete action and effectiveness, while taking into account concerns of identity and
anonymity, particularly in the case of unsanctioned activities. The problem-reporting approach, which most
existing civic engagement websites seem to follow, may facilitate more effective urban governance, but may
not build a capacity for sustained civic action. Creating better social capital requires sustained engagement
among citizens and stakeholders. Disembodied online networks are not sufficient; there needs to be a way to
facilitate localized dialogue and debate, and to support citizen initiatives as they begin to take their own
shape and form. We need to examine how different technologies engage diverse demographics and are able to
support their actions.
Both Delai Sam and Occupy Sandy are not simply forms of crowdsourcing, they are attempts to sustain
engagement and build solidarity networks towards creating alternative urban realities. Solidarity networks
facilitated by online and place-based approaches can support more effective social capital and collective
action in our urban contexts, while promoting inclusive and sustainable engagement in the city. The gaps in
citizens being able to effectively engage in collective action lies partly in the inability to connect and
synchronize activities, while developing inclusive social processes that reveal distinct stakes and interests.
As one instance of a collaborative experiment, MikroAct aims to foster a hybrid from of online/offline selforganization; as a living forum for active citizens to pursue their interests, find creative resources and
connect with others to seek local change. One challenge will be how it serves to facilitate not only grassroots
action but also dialogue between residents and policymakers. Creating and sustaining dialogues and
21
engagement both within urban localities as well as across cities to inspire actions remains to be seen; it is
only through ongoing participatory research, cooperative design, and grassroots work with diverse local
communities and stakeholders in the city can we learn how best to support citizen agency in improving the
quality of urban life while potentially promoting forms of sustained solidarity networks in the city.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank members of the MikroAct team: Anton Polsky, Dan Selden, Laura Scherling,
Alexey Sidorenko and Carl Van Toden; members of the SynchroniCITY team from the Strelka workshop:
Camilla Burke and Tony Kolobakhen; the local organizations and members of the community who came and
spoke with us: Kirill Samodurov, Ecoloft, Partizaning, Troparevo-Nikulino Neighbors group; The Parsons New
School for Design and the New School for Public Engagement; and the cities of Moscow and New York.
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