Thesis Part I (Research)

I came toITP to explore the social value of design, particularly interested in how the principles of human-centered design and various technology platforms could transform our societies and communities for the better. Exhausted by the incompetence and incapacity of government and politicians, I envisioned design and technology as potential solutions to complex social and political issues. Enamored by the idea of applying the same framework that helped design tackle business issues to tackling social and political issues, I really believed, and still do, that design and technology can help transform global civil society(specifically NGOs and non-profits) to become major players in the governance world. I also believe that the true beauty of design and technology is its accessibility, and that designers and technologists have the potential, and an emerging responsibility, to impact peoples’ world view even more than our political counterparts.  '

During my time at ITP, I have been introduced to the concepts of critical theory and speculative design which I’ve used as frameworks for nearly every project I’ve done at ITP. I’ve become particularly engaged with critical theory in the context of objects and visualizations. More specifically, designing and engineering physical objects, sculptures and products with the intention of inciting conversation about complex issues. One of my favorite examples is the 79% clock. I think its beauty and effectiveness is rooted in its accessibility – every office in the country could and should have one of these. I’ve also spent time looking at visualizations and computational media and how they can be platforms for communicating valuable and meaningful information and data. Without this context of speculativeness and criticality, so much of design is meaningless tome. No more tech for tech’s sake.  

I’m interested in exploring critical theory and speculative design outside the context of its traditional mediums, or at least the mediums I’ve been usingthem in (i.e. physical objects, computational media, and graphic design). I’m interested in seeing how the principles of critical design could translate toemerging technologies, potentially such as AR or AI. I believe there’s an opportunity for designers and technologists to create and integrate speculativeand critical theory and design principles into our emerging technologies so they become the norm, rather than an after-thought.

In my research process I came across an interesting piece of work in Dunne & Raby's "Speculative Everything", specifically Sascha Pohflepp's "The GoldenInstitute". For this piece, Pohflepp revisited a moment in history when a very different America could have been developed: "The Golden Institute forEnergy in Colorado was the premier research and development facility for energy technologies in an alternate reality where Jimmy Carter had defeated RonaldReagan in the US election of 1981." The project was presented through a variety of media, including a corporate video presentation explaining theGolden Institute's history, structure and mission, a model of its HQ, and drawings and images of design proposals.  

This "what-if" scenario is powerful in the context of speculative design.It immediately made me think it could be interesting to create a similar hypothetical multimedia project that could envision what the current world would like if Al Gore had defeated George Bush in the 2000 PresidentialElection and what the energy and economic landscape might look like today in the United States had he won. It also had me think more presently and start to imagine what President-Elect Joe Biden's "Build Back Better" clean energy plan might look like. It made me ask myself the question: why doesn't the United States have high speed rails? I started to do some research on some of the many high speed rail proposals and projects currently under ideation and development in the United States: specifically, the privately funded Houston-Dallas high speed rail, the publicly funded SanFrancisco-Los Angeles high speed rail, and the Microsoft backed Cascadia high speed rail.

I then shifted to start thinking about urban public transportation and its direct correlation to economic prosperity. In New York City, also considering the relationship the MTA has with the NYPD and how that affects the public.Rethinking and speculating on the future of transportation and energy in this country might be the direction I want to ultimately take this project. I've also decided that in the context of public transportation, I'm increasingly becoming more interested in public transportation stations as opportunity area for further research and speculation.

ARUP is a British multinational professional services firm headquartered in London which provides engineering, architecture, and planning services for all aspects of the built environment. They are one of the global leaders in what they do. In 2019, they released a “Future of Rail 2050” report that explores how rail travel might change for urban dwellers. The backbone of the report is rooted in two forecasts. The first being that “by 2050, around 75% of the world’s population will live in cities. It is estimated that by the global urban population is growing at two people per second, adding 172,900 new city-dwellers each day.” The second is that “by 2050 passenger mobility will increase by a staggering 200-300% and freight activity by as much as 150-250… this means that smart solutions will need to be implemented to provide adequate transport capacity for growing volumes of goods and people.” 

The white paper leads to some interesting projections:   

- Virtual supermarkets could become more common in train stations. They site an example in South Korea that already exists. They also project that “virtual shopping walls” will become a thing, with retailers like Starbucks having already experimented with the concept on a train that travels from Geneva Airport toSt. Gallen, Switzerland.     

- As retail expands in transit stations, so will the entire transit experience as they will implement gyms, hairdressers, meeting spaces and offices. They use GrandCentral as an example of an “experiential” train station.  

An article written by Japanese electronics conglomerate Hitachi makes similar predictions for what the future of public transportation stations might look like: realtime passenger information, robot assistance, smart ticketing, and IoT everything.  

These hypotheses are interesting, but I also think they’re over idealistic and don’t address many of the current issues facing public transportation systems such homelessness, targeting by the police of people of color, accessibility, and sustainability.

Many subway stations across the city, country and world are plagued with outdated infrastructure, filthiness, homelessness, and crime. However, I believe that many of them are primed for renovation and have the opportunity to become hubs for community participation, sustainability efforts, and criminal justice reform. In identifying these issues and potential solutions, I've managed to simultaneously create a loose framework for myself. I believe I want to create artifacts and speculate on solutions around the three following issues that occur in subway stations: lack of sustainable infrastructure, homelessness, and crime.  

1.  Homelessness:Addressing homelessness is a key issue for the future of public transportation.The American Public Transportation Association conducted a survey in 2018that reported on homelessness across public transit across the country. Though the report was fairly conservative and didn't provide any ground breaking solutions, it did confirm a hypothesis of mine which was that transportation government agencies are often a first point of contact for homeless individuals, but transportation agency employees are not equipped with training to deal with such situation. Some high-level solutions to that could be either leveraging existing infrastructure by converting existing police stations (in subway stations) into appropriate mental health institutions or improve the relationship between transit/police officers and mental health institutions.

2.  Sustainable Infrastructure: I'm intrigued and want to continue to research the idea of using piezoelectric energy harvesting on a large industrial scale to energize subways. Piezoelectric sensors are devices that use the piezoelectric effect to convert mechanical energy into electrical energy. The way I'm currently envisioning them is a subway station covered in piezo sensors that would convert the mechanical energy of the force of people walking along the platform into electrical energy that could power train cars, platform lights, subway vendors, etc. My initial research suggests the technology isn't quite affordable yet to be implemented on an industrial scale, but that the technology could be there in 5-10 years.Nonetheless, the technology exists affordably on a very small scale and could be interesting to prototype and experiment with. Research could include answering some of the following questions - which areas of subway stations are walked on the most? which areas of the subway would produce the most force and therefore electrical energy?

3.  Criminal Justice Reform: Subway stations have unfortunately become hubs for police violence, particularly towards people of color. To site one example, on October25th, 2019, a group of NYPD officers claimed witnesses spotted19-year-old Adrien Napier carrying a gun outside near the intersection ofAtlantic and Flatbush avenues. After a brief chase, the officers spotted Napier sitting on a subway train at Jay Street Metrotech (the closest train stop toITP's campus). After a hostile arrest that involved over 10 police officers pointing guns at the teenager, no weapon was found. However, Napier was still arrested for fare evasion. This part of the project might propose less speculative solutions and more critical solutions.

While speculative projects are important in understanding what can be, it's important to be realistic. Just this week, the MTA released its 2021 budget, which includes reducing subway and bus service by 40 percent, commuter rail service by 50 percent and lay off more than 9000 workers (doesn't include corporate employees). The MTA Chairman Pat Foye called the agency’s budget"grim". The Chief Financial Officer, who created it, said it was"ugly". These cuts come in large part because Republicans failed to provide any support to transit systems in theCOVID relief bill. The MTA claims they will need to secure $12 billion in federal relief aid by the end of the year, which appears unlikely given theRepublican majority in the Senate. But Republican politicians’ refusal to pay for public infrastructure projects has a long history in the United States dating back to the car revolution of the 50's. But even more recently, The Koch brothers have financed anti-transit campaigns over the years which has proven affective. 

In this vein (of Republican politicians in this country having backwards priorities),I've been trying to think more about how we can repurpose existing infrastructure and budgets to better support the well-being of our transit systems. One idea that came to mind is redirecting NYPD funds towards non-police crisis response strategies in public transportation hubs. This already exists in some capacity as the city has started dispatching mental health professionals and EMS workers to answer certain 911 calls. Perhaps though we could take this a step further and repurpose existingNYPD Transit stations to EMS stations to provide additional access to dispatch calls as well as be on location for subway related mental health and homelessness related issues. Currently, the budget for the TransportationBureau (one of the 10 subdivisions of the NYPD) which manages policing in theNYC transit systems, has $245million allocated to its budget. 

For my thesis I want to create a speculative narrative, supported by data, visuals and artifacts, about how the MTA can tackle the issues of homelessness, criminal justice reform and sustainability through design and technology. My thesis will consist of three sections supported by artifacts in each section.  

1.   Floor Energy 

For this project I’d like to explore the idea of converting the mechanical force of people walking through subway stations into electricity. This “floor energy” concept is an emerging technology that many technology, engineering and startup companies have begun to explore and implement in various settings – ranging from public transportation stations to entertainment venues. Pavegen Systems is a technology company that has developed paving slabs to convert energy from people’s footsteps into small amount of electrical power. The tiles convert kinetic energy from footsteps, using a dynamo, into electricity. In St. Omer, France, Pavegen has filled the outside of a busy train station with 14 energy tiles. These tiles convert the kinetic energy into electricity that powers parts of the station. Energy Floors is a similar company, with as lightly more playful and artistic outlook. Their proprietary technology is very similar, but they use the electricity to power the floor’s “infinity LED lights”. However, Energy Floors has also trialed their technology in Russia’s railway stations. The Russian Railway Research Institute and Energy Floors have used the technology to harness energy from the footfall of its busiest stations. Electricity from passenger’s footsteps are being used on site or fed into the grid, meaning that just by going about their daily commute, people will be creating a cleaner energy environment.  In many ways the potential of this technology speaks for itself. These two companies both leverage dynamos, an electrical generator that creates direct current using a commutator. Another technology that does a similar thing is called a piezoelectric sensor, which is a device that uses the piezoelectric effect to measure changes in pressure, acceleration, temperature, strain, or force by converting them into electrical charge. For my project, I want to explore thepotential of both of these proprietary technologies as well as explore and collect data on where the most foot traffic occurs in MTA stations.   

2.    Repurposing of Police Transit Stations 

As I stated in a previous section, I’d like to explore the idea of repurposing existing NYPD Transit stations to EMS stations to provide additional access to dispatch calls as well as be on location for subway related mental health and homelessness related issues. I’m also going to explore the idea of how the floor energy could help power some of the EMT medical supplies. From a technical standpoint, I’m going to most likely render these in blender. However, I would like for them to be accessible on the web so they can exist as part of my narrative. In order to do that I’m going to have to see if and how I can convert blender materials in webGL elements. Or, if I should use an alternative web-based rendering program like three.js. Example of blender rendering of a train station:  

3.    Central information hubs that function as mesh networks 

I want to prototype and build central information hubs with relevant data that also function as Wi-Fi mesh networks. I want the data displayed to actually be relevant to the community. I want to reach out to the Red Hook Wi-fi project to see if they have any data points/research that shows what the most useful components are.Some example of data points it could be:

-      COVIDcases per capita
-      Mental health resources in the area
-      Public sector job listings
-      Local Weather
-      Train schedule
-      Amount of people on trains

Final Product: 3D rendered train station displaying all of my proposed idea. User can navigate through it. Lives on the web.

-      79% Clock:https://79percentclock.com/
‍-      Train schedule API: https://www.transit.land/routes/r-dr5r-a
-      Dunne & Rabby’s Speculative Everything: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/speculative-everything
-      Golden Institute: https://pohflepp.net/The-Golden-Institute
‍-      Cascadia High Speed Rail: https://www.cascadiarail.org/
‍-      Houston-Dallas High Speed Rail: https://www.texastribune.org/2020/09/21/dallas-houston-high-speed-train/
-      ARUP’s Future of Rail 2050 report: https://www.arup.com/perspectives/publications/research/section/future-of-rail-2050
-      Homelessness/Transportation:https://www.apta.com/wp-content/uploads/Transit_Responses_Homeless/REPORT-2018-Leadership-APTA-Team-4-Public-Transit-and-Social-Responsibility.pdf
-      Piezo electric sensor: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2542435118301260#undfig
-      Adrien Napier arrest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?ab_channel=EyewitnessNewsABC7NY&v=cSldj3N517c
-      MTA 2021 Budget: https://gothamist.com/news/mta-prepares-budget-cuts-would-make-transit-system-unrecognizable
-      Senate refusal to include public transit in relief bill: https://www.democrats.senate.gov/news/press-releases/schumer-floor-remarks-on-republicans-failure-to-provide-any-support-to-transit-systems-and-state-and-local-workers-suffering-because-of-covid-in-their-partisan-coronavirus-bill
-      Koch Brothers anti-transit campaigns: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/climate/koch-brothers-public-transit.html
-      EMT/NYPD/MTA relationship article: https://www.amny.com/news/mayor-mental-health-professionals-not-nypd-will-respond-to-mental-health-crises/
-      NYPD Transit Division: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/20/nyregion/defund-police-nypd-budget.html
-      Pavegen Systems: https://pavegen.com/
‍-      Energy Floors: https://energy-floors.com/
‍-      Red HookWifi Project: https://redhookwifi.org/
‍-      Blender Rendering example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=li3leAOafBw&ab_channel=SaqibHussain
-      Hitachi article: https://social-innovation.hitachi/en-eu/stories/transport/train-station-of-the-future/