Mobile Design as Neighborhood Acupuncture: Activating the Storytelling Networks of South Los Angeles

Abstract

A delicate touch is required to empower neighborhoods using civic media. Funding is persistently scarce. Especially in marginalized neighborhoods, blunt designs can be counterproductive and even entrench complex problems. New metaphors may be needed to guide design and empower local neighborhoods. Urban acupuncture is used as the basis for this study, emphasizing a light-touch strategy that has shown success in Brazil with urban transit, and more recently in Europe with urban design. We specifically propose “neighborhood acupuncture” to address the local level, tapping the sociology of place-based communication. To investigate the implications for systematic design, a case study is probed in South Los Angeles using mobile media for community mapping. Using qualitative methods, three tactics were investigated for the potential to “poke” the network into action, including one to bridge diverse storytelling networks. Each tactic ultimately seeks to build the capacity for collective action around neighborhood issues. Acupuncture is broadly argued to sustain two design shifts: first to help approach neighborhoods as ecosystems, and second, to design for circulation rather than any single technology platform.

Keywords:

• neighborhood acupuncture
• mobile media
• community empowerment
• mapping
• design research

Notes on Contributors

Benjamin Stokes is an assistant professor in the School of Communication at American University.

George Villanueva is an assistant professor of advocacy and social change at the School of Communication at Loyola University, Chicago.

François Bar is an associate professor of communication and spatial sciences in the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California.

Sandra Ball-Rokeach is a professor of communication in the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California.

Notes

1 Urban sociologists refer to “neighborhood effects” to describe how social outcomes are shaped by persistent social conditions tied to physical place, including poverty, economic growth, and environmental health. By the dawn of the twenty-first century, a substantial literature on neighborhood effects had emerged (e.g., see the literature review in Sampson et al., 2002). In brief, this literature shows that both affluence and inequality are tied to both human networks and geography. Neighborhood strategies can also be more sustainable over the long term compared to targeting criminals or other problematic individuals, per the reasoning of sociologists such as William Julius Wilson (Sampson, 2012: XIII).

2 The term “smart city” has high exposure as a broad umbrella for technology-based innovations in the city, from smart governance, to the smart economy, and the smart/green environment (Zygiaris, 2012).

3 See link to the stories at http://ridesouthla.com/press-from-watts-ride1/

4 The project blog drew more than 2000 unique visitors in its first six months, with more than 80 percent coming from the Los Angeles area (according to IP address look-ups).

5 The type of local media emphasized by CIT is “geo-ethnic,” defined as media that targets a specific geographical area (as with the Leimert Park Beat), and/or a specific local population (such as new immigrant minorities). Normally geo-ethnic media are not emphasized by non-profit campaigns that emphasize reach, which privilege mass outlets such as the Los Angeles Times. However, the primary emphasis of the CIT model is not reach, but the community ties and stories that are disproportionately covered by geo-ethnic media. Community integration, for example, empirically emerges more through community newspapers than metro newspapers (Finnegan and Viswanath, 1988). Mobile media also have particular implications for highly local news (Goggin et al., 2014).

6 By most accounts, South Los Angeles accounts for more than 50 square miles that include 25 formal sub-neighborhoods of LA and three unincorporated districts.

7 Midway through this research study, LA County released a bicycle plan for the first time in 37 years that will “vastly expand” the existing 144-mile network, adding 832 miles of new bikeways (Yaroslavsky, 2012).

8 We sometimes describe this first-hand authenticity as “situated engagement” to underscore how the experience depends on the social situation of the group.

9 Such uses are often low-tech, such as using SMS to send teams on scavenger hunts around Philadelphia (see the Re:Activism case study of Macklin and Thomson, 2011; Ruiz et al., 2012).

10 Social capital for our purposes is the value that comes from social networks, especially the ties and trust between individuals and between groups. There are many approaches to social capital (Bourdieu, 1986; Farr, 2004; Putnam, 2000); our approach is most consistent with those that consider the benefits to the group (not simply to individual members), and that emphasize the potential for group empowerment.