Gathering Concerns Directly on City Streets
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Walking through Nolita, thinking about City Hall's ways of knowing what's going on in the city. City agencies address "mediated" concerns, not "felt" concerns. By mediated I mean concerns gathered by an online form, a phone call, or emergency report. By felt I mean concerns gathered directly in the field, by direct experience of neighborhood dynamics. The equivalence of mediated and felt is in the quality of the mediation, how lossy the mediation is. Mediation results in "aspectival" reduction, i.e., a reduction in the number of aspects relayed from the original situation (also known as Broken Telephone Effect).
Human feeling/experience has infinite aspectival dimensionality, because one can aspectify a moment indefinitely. What aspects are prioritized in mediation? An effective mayor or city officer feels the situation directly, not relying solely in mediation. Sensing the pulse of the city, from the ground, and from every perspective, every job, every role – delivery person, neighbor, passerby. Concerns on the ground, concerns in-the-flesh. Same for CEOs. Chains of mediation give you broken telephone effect, like the children's game, message changes.
✎ Connection to
Key / A Fragile Democracy