Comparing Digital Cities

Erik GeelhoedInteraction technology DepartmentPersonal Systems LaboratoryHPL-?? Bristol EditionAugust, 1996

WEB, Digital CitiesAs input into the design of Digital City Bristol Interactive(DCBI) we compared a number of digital cities. All the digitalcities in this study provide local mostly textual informationabout government, leisure, culture etc. Currently only a fewcities feature residents. Digital City Amsterdam’s graphical userinterface is innovative in the sense that it represents a largeinformation space in a single overview, whilst enhancingnavigation, allowing growth and maintaining clarity. Alsounique is the integration of living areas with the informationspace and the enabling of social interaction thereby energisingthe city. We believe that the focus on local information andissues will provide a high value to DCBI users. Variability ofbandwidth could be aided by providing clear and robustinterfaces.

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Internal Accession Date Only

For External UseCopyright Hewlett-Packard Company 1996

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Contents

1 Introduction ..........................................................................................

2 Method .................................................................................................

2.1. Search..............................................................................................

2.2. Sample.................................................................................................

3. Analysis.................................................................................................

4. Discussion............................................................................................

5. References............................................................................................

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Summary

As input into the design of Digital City Bristol Interactive (DCBI) we compared a number ofdigital cities. All the digital cities in this study provide local mostly textual information aboutgovernment, leisure, culture etc. Currently only a few cities feature residents. Digital CityAmsterdam’s graphical user interface is innovative in the sense that it represents a largeinformation space in a single overview, whilst enhancing navigation, allowing growth andmaintaining clarity. Also unique is the integration of living areas with the information spaceand the enabling of social interaction thereby energising the city. We believe that the focus onlocal information and issues will provide a high value to DCBI users. Variability ofbandwidth could be aided by providing clear and robust interfaces.

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1. Introduction

This study aims to contribute to the design of Digital City Bristol Interactive (DCBI). DigitalCity Amsterdam; De Digital Stad (DDS); attracts considerable interest (e.g. Brants et al,1996; Graham, 1996). DDS has also been a major source of inspiration for our thinking. Wejudged three aspects particularly attractive: novel ways of representing the information space,enhanced navigational cues and last but not least the social aspects of the city. Residents ofthe digital city can communicate with each other via the digital city computer interface asindividuals or as groups thereby energising the city. This report describes how other digitalcities display information, whether they harbour residents and how they compare to DDS.

The Berkeley Community Memory project has been described as the first community network(Schuler, 1994) dating back to 1972. It was conceived as a tool to help strengthen theBerkeley community and could only be accessed via dedicated terminals. However thefounding of the Cleveland Free-net (fig 1) in 1985 is more commonly seen as the beginningof digital cities (Schalken & Flint, 1995). The people of Cleveland access the Free-Net viamodems. Originating as a questions-and-answer forum devoted to medical topics it grew andusing a city metaphor it provides information on all aspects of the local Clevelandcommunity. The free-nets movement grew rapidly in the USA and Canada. There are now alarge number of free-nets organised in the umbrella organisation : National PublicTele-computing Network [http :// www.nptn.org/].

Fig 1 : Cleveland FreeNet

This report describes how using a combination of WWW searches and references weidentified a number of digital cities in The Netherlands, USA and the UK. Stockholm wasalso included in the sample, because of its interest in competing for the Bangemann

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challenge. Other sites in the world e.g. Kazakhstan and CyberSidney were either underconstruction or proved problematic in accessing. After data collection "city.net"[http://www.city.net/] from Excite published a guide to 2090 on-line cities. It is costly to doan exhaustive analysis. However judging from city.net’s list it seems that we have covered arepresentative sample.

We analysed the data for the occurrence of common and distinguishing features regardingcontents, navigation and the representation of the information space as well as marking theoccurrence of residents in the city.

2. Method2.1. Search

Using the SavvySearch [http://www.cs.colostate.edu/~dreiling/smartform.html] search enginewe entered the keywords : digital and city. The SavvySearch is an experimental search systemdesigned to query multiple Internet search engines simultaneously. Not all the cities identifiedin the search were functional or accessible. In addition we excluded projects wherephotographic images of cities were used without this being coupled to information provision.We complemented the search following WWW references.

2.2. Sample

The search resulted in the identification of a list of 19 digital cities for comparison, 8 in The Netherlands, Stockholm, 6 in the USA and 4 in the UK:

DDS Digital City Amsterdam - The NetherlandsLeiden Delft The Hague Utrecht Eindhoven Groningen Friesland Stockholm - SwedenDenver Freenet - USACleveland Digital City Washington Palo Alto Nashville Kirklees - UKCardiff Surrey Manchester

However Denver, Cleveland and Digital City became unavailable in the course of the study,leaving a sample of 16 digital cities for analysis.

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Figure 2 : Amsterdam

Figure 3 : Groningen

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Figure 4 : Nashville

Figure 5 : Palo Alto

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Figure 6 : Digital City

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Fig. 7 : A Dick Bruna illustration.

Fig 8 : Mondriaan

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3. AnalysisThe contents of the overview homepages for each site were analysed for how the informationspace was represented, contents of information and the occurrence of residents. We scoredwhether or not the city had Residents, whether there was a graphical information Map ratherthan the use of blue hypertext lines or grouped icons, and whether there was informationabout the following headings : Government, Education, Health, Recreation/Tourism,Commerce and Art/Culture.

Table 1 : Digital Cities and FeaturesDigital Cities Residents MAP Government Education Health Recreation

/TourismCommerce Art / Culture

Amsterdam Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y

Leiden Y Y Y Y Y Y

Delft Y Y Y Y Y Y Y

The Hague Y Y Y Y Y Y

Utrecht Y Y Y Y

Eindhoven Y Y Y Y Y Y

Groningen Y Y Y Y Y Y Y

Friesland Y Y Y Y Y Y

Stockholm Y Y Y Y Y

Washington Y Y Y Y Y

Palo Alto Y Y Y Y Y Y Y

Nashville Y Y Y Y Y

Kirklees Y Y Y

Cardiff Y Y Y Y Y Y

Surrey Y Y Y Y Y Y

Manchester Y Y Y Y Y

Table 1 displays the result of the analysis and the letter Y indicates a presence.

There were four cities that had residents. Only Amsterdam integrated information andresidencies. Four cities (see figures 2-5) featured a graphical map representing theinformation space. Most cities covered all the information categories. Figure 6 displaysDigital City, a site that became no longer accessible during the research but featured residentsrather than information.

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4. Discussion

Common to the digital cities in this study is the provision of local information aboutgovernment, leisure, culture etc. For most of these, the information is textual with someimages added. Currently only a few cities allow residents. However judging from some of thesites more and more cities will feature residents. Graphical user interfaces to capture the vastinformation space are not common practice.

The Amsterdam interface seems to stand out in the way a large information space isrepresented in a single overview, whilst allowing growth and maintaining clarity. Also uniqueis the integration of living areas with the information space and the ability to allow some formof (currently maybe still primitive keyboard based) social interaction.

People in general find it easier and quicker to understand and evaluate a bar chart than therelevant table of numbers (Tufte, 1983). Similarly the Graphical User Interfaces that weredeveloped at XEROX PARC (Card et all 1983) are seen to be superior over text basedinterfaces. Whether a graphical approach in a WWW interface is better than a textual one inthe light of a cost benefit analysis has not been established yet; e.g. downloading text is fasterthan downloading images and this speed of access may outweigh the benefit of fasteroverview using graphical representations. Moreover previous time perception research carried out at Bristol labs (Geelhoed, 1995) has shown that faster is not always perceived asfaster.

Reducing screen clutter and providing very clear traffic sign like graphics may aide inenhancing overview and navigation. It has been argued (Garcia, 1996) that in the Dutchgraphical tradition there is a practice of using primary colours with thick-line drawingsspanning the work of Mondriaan (fig 8) to Dick Bruna( fig 7).

Sometimes the commercial uses of the Internet give rise to comments such as: "It’s likehaving a shopping mall with no people in it." What a digital city provides is people; to walk the streets, populate the shopping malls etc., toquote : Geert Lovink, Dutch critic, philosopher of new media and member of ADILKNO, theFoundation for the Advancement of Illegal Knowledge (founded in 1983):

"We must make a distinction between the computerisation of society and thewillingness of individual citizens to actively, actually, use it. The question of acomputer culture is completely different from the state of a society wherethere are many computers. In a computer culture we see that abstractinformation is not enough. It will only become interesting for people and haveresults when information begins to live, when the communication concept firstplaces the people who are in the system and in only second place comes thepassive, the dead information. A lot of people in the government and inbusiness think that if they are just offering information, it is enough. But thisis not the case. It is very important that the people can find and identifythemselves with the media and that there are part of the computer network.That they are not treated as consumers who are just buying something."

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Most people spent most of their time NOT travelling. It is indeed the focus on localinformation and issues that form an important part of a digital city. What sort of informationabout one’s own locality might people want to access? This will be a topic of research.

We cannot assume that the bandwidth via which we communicate with other people orinformation providers will be constant. It may indeed range from very wide to narrow. Forsome time to come we will have to deal with changing bandwidth even to the point where forsome of the employed media a user will be out of range. Thus part of the interface, via anagent or direct manipulation, must be adaptable to changing bandwidth. Here too clearinterfaces which during bandwidth reduction minimise on deterioration may be of advantage.

5. References

Card, S.K., T.P. Moran & A. Newell. The Psychology of Human-Computer Interaction.Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, London, 1983.

Garcia, D., 1996, in communique.

Geelhoed,E.N., P. Toft, S. Roberts & P. Hyland,To influence Time Perception. Proceedingsof CHI ’95 Conference Companion, 272-273, ACM New York.

Graham, S. Flight to the cyber suburbs. The Guardian OnLine Supplement 2-3, ThursdayApril 18 1996.

Brants,K., M.Huizinga & R.van Meerten. The new canals of Amsterdam: an exercise in localdemocracy. Media, Culture & Society, 18, 233-247, 1996.

Lovink, G. Democracy is in crisis. Is Internet the solution? Interviewed during ISEA 95, inMontreal (Canada), http://www.cicv.fr/SYNESTHESIE/CI/demnetgb.html

Schalken, K. & J. Flint, Handboek Digitale Steden (Manual Digital Cities). Stichting DeDigital Stad, Amsterdam 1995.

Schuler, D., Community Networks: Building a New Participatory Medium. Communicationsof the ACM 37(1), 39-51, January 1994.

Tufte, E.R. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Graphics Press, Cheshire,Connecticut, 1983.

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