Cities as Interaction Machines
Above, William H. Whyte’s The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces. Very cool sociological documentary of how people move within and occupy city spaces.
I found the video at Swiss Miss, but it was just the tip of the iceberg. Her source was a wide-ranging Atlantic article by Kio Stark, an NYU Interactive Telecommunications Program prof, describes her course, Stranger Studies 101: Cities as Interaction Machines:
There are three broad themes during the semester.
- Why stranger interactions in cities are meaningful
- The spaces and the significance of the spaces in which strangers interact, and
- How strangers ‘read’ each other, how they initiate interactions, how they avoid interactions, how they trust each other and how they fool each other, how they watch, listen and follow each other.
Then there is the secret theme. I want students to fall in love with talking to strangers, to do it more, and to make technology that creates more plentiful and meaningful interactions among strangers.
[via swissmiss]