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ABSTRACT
Advanced tracking technologies are considered by smart city advocates to have the potential to transform how we study cities. This paper tests, one dimension of these broader claims, through analysing the potential contribution that Wi-Fi tracking data of Wi-Fi users in the public realm can contribute to conventional public space–public life surveys. The conclusion is that while Wi-Fi tracking data can make important contributions in terms of counting people, mapping their stays and movements at a precinct scale and larger, it is at present, not a wholesale substitute for more traditional methods – particularly when applied on a site scale to the nuances of interactions between public life and spaces. In this respect is should be considered as augmenting such traditional methods, rather than replacing them.
Acknowledgement
The author would like to acknowledge Brett Wood-Gush for his generous assistance in the preparation of this paper and Jill Penter for her ever patient copy editing.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Wi-Fi refers to the ‘family of 801.11 technological standards that allow devices to establish a wireless site area network transmitted via unlicensed 2.4 GHz spectrum’ (Lambert, McQuire, and Papastergiadis Citation2013, 5).
2 Ideally, the author would have conducted a direct comparison of Wi-Fi and PSPLS analysis on an actual site, however, privacy concerns of those collecting Wi-Fi data have rendered this impossible – in short no organisations currently conducting Wi-Fi tracking (that have been contacted) would agree to the publication of such data. As such, these findings of this paper are drawn from numerous interviews with experts in the field and the Wi-Fi tracking data (in the form of ‘heat maps’ represented on an anonymous site).
3 The term ‘urban planning’ in this paper is used to also encapsulate the related disciplines of urban design and landscape planning.
4 This paper will not include use this aspect of Wi-Fi provision in this evaluation as, according to technical experts, often only about 5% of people opt-in on the Wi-Fi portal splash page, meaning that a significant bias is potentially introduced into the sample group.
5 The overall average amount of time spent by visitors at a location for a selected time period.
6 The Queen Victoria Market is a 7 hectare historic open air market in Melbourne. The market is in the process of being renewed to create a ‘world class’ market precinct with better facilities and public open spaces.
7 In 2000, MIT decided to undertake a vast operation of building a campus-wide Wi-Fi network. By 2005, this campus has over 3000 active wireless access points providing full coverage of Wi-Fi in all academic and residential buildings referred to as iSPOTS (Sevtsuk et al. Citation2009, 328).
8 This could be garnered from opt-in questionnaires for Wi-Fi access, however, again a reliance on this distorts the sample, as typically only a low percentage of people actively connect to a Wi-Fi network.
9 Again ‘stays’ are where people are standing and sitting within a space.
10 A sensor is an electronic component capable of detecting events or changes in environmental conditions and to electronically transmit this information.