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Teaching

Reflections on The Digital Image of the City: Hartford 2015

As the new semester is upon us–how did that happen so quickly?–I wanted to reflect back on my courses from last semester. I had a beautiful first semester at Trinity College, thanks mostly to those incredible faculty, staff, and students with whom I spend my days.

My senior seminar, The Digital Image of the City, which was a huge success–or so said the students on the final day, all smiley as they were on the last day (and as you can see on the image in the left)! I share a short explanation about the Community Learning Initiative course, describe the in-the-field and critical GIS research methods students used and applied, and then share their final presentations for apps, websites, or technological infrastructure to improve the City of Hartford for the common good. I also share the Trinity College Communications write-up regarding the course–thanks to them we also …

Digital Image of the City: Smart City Recommendations for Portland, Maine

This fall, I taught the Digital Image of the City in the Digital & Computational Studies Initiative at Bowdoin College. As over half the world’s population now dwells in cities, revolutionary advances in technology such as big data have caused policymakers and activists alike to shift their focus toward a movement of smart urbanism. Smart urbanism includes interventions in urban issues through better uses of technology and data, from gentrification to pollution, access to public spaces to improved walkability. In the course, students conducted qualitative field research and learned the geographic information systems (GIS) open-source platform QGIS. Then then identified an issue in the City of Portland related to the topic of housing, infrastructure, or public space. As the final outcome of the project, students created maps and conducted research to help them devise technological solutions to these issues.

On December 10th, 2014, the students of The Digital …