Thriving Together Symposium
San Antonio is growing and transforming as a city
While the city is currently the fastest growing in the nation it is also ranked among the nation’s highest in poverty. Although, national poverty rates are dipping, the percentage of San Antonio’s population in poverty is currently the second highest among the top 25 largest U.S. metropolitan areas in 2017. With 17.3 percent it is nearly twice that of Washington, D.C., which had the lowest rate of the 25 cities, with around 8 percent.
Uneven distribution of economic development and urban growth in the city.
Harvey Cox
The difference between a “problem” and a “mystery” is that we may be able to solve a problem, but the mystery is something we have to live with.
As we change and transform as a city, problems like transportation, housing, infrastructure will determine San Antonio’s future.
Henry Kissinger once said, “a problem avoided is a crisis invented.”
When it comes to San Antonio’s Southside it appears that our perception is shaped by myth rather than facts.
Pilot Project (why we choose these communities)
Started in with a collaboration with Andrew Anguiano and the Urban Future Lab in 2017.
We choose the Mission San Jose and Quintana communities because they have been most reflective of the larger situation on the Southside as well as their proximity to major economic entities.
Why these communities?
Illuminating economic disparities and economic regional impact
The question is, why aren’t these economic assets activating the environment?
Are we even asking the right questions?
Conditional or metadata
Driven by political, economic, and commercial interests
Surface Perception vs. Actual Reality
Layering and convolution of Systems, Problems and Myth
We wanted to research and understand what systems are at work in our pilot communities?
Personalization
90 out of 100 corporations don’t reach their consumers anymore. Shift in cultural narrative.
Community driven engagement
We are proposing Unconditional data
Data free from any attachments or constrains
Developing a trust relationship
The way we look at the environment
Environments and the physical manifestation of data
In numerous community events we set the foundation to find the right balance between Human, Physical, and Political environments
Identified problems
Economic, mobile, and digital inequity
Highway 90 is a divider between a predominantly credit-based economy in the north and a cash-centric economy in the south
City of Islands
Transportation inequality: workforce from the south has to travel farther distances to their job or taking a bus from Quintana to La Cantera will take someone 90 minutes
False sense of center
In this presentation I will focus on “Islands”
Islands that could be considered economic, social, or cultural entities.
No worries, however,
“There is no world, where there are only islands,” the French philosopher Jacques Derrida once declared. What he meant was that, despite the assumption that all beings inhabit a common world, no two share the same Umwelt [environment], or the experience of it. For him the unity of the world is a construction, and therefore, we all inhabit incommensurable separate islands in a “world archipelago.”
Beautiful depiction of this condition by Madelon Vriesendorp
The city of the Captive Globe- is a global condition
Archipelagos
San Antonio
It’s up to us now how to determine the relationships between the black and the white.
Uneven urban and economic growth leads to income segregation and inequality.
Do we believe the clustering of commercial, economic, and social islands is representative of the ethos of our city moving forward?
Or are we going to work on more personalized environments that address the needs of all of our residents?
It is a matter of perspective
And we believe in neither a here or a there, a black or a white, but in the third condition.
Not inside the box, outside the box, but no box, unbounded
Based on biblical parables we have approached this project through the lens of the third condition
Expanding our perspective, learning
Presence of inactive asset
How the Presence of inactive asset contributes to a larger geographic identity
In a first step we have mapped assets and cultural anchors to better understand the fabric, the intersection of the physical space and the human space in both communities
We also learned about the existing economic activity in both communities and how everything is clustered along corridors.
Finding new definitions for the future of these communities was at stake for us
Strategic partnerships
We hoped to accomplish finding a balance between human, physical, and political environments
Personalize data and ultimately, economically revitalize and develop these communities
According to the latest Census information out of the 25 largest metro areas in the United States, San Antonio has the second-highest percentage of people living in poverty. 18.5 % of its citizen live below poverty line. That makes it higher than the national average of 14%.
This data only gives us a very singular insight into very complex and diverse problem. It does not indicate family and household structures and giving us clear insights into cultural poverty.
Speaking of cultural poverty, however, is not a new development, but rather a tragic continuation of the long history of deeply entrenched inequity that has created generations of impoverished residents.
People we have worked closely with
We turned problems into methodologies, and methodologies into assets.
We developed a strategy
That was Value and Asset driven
Began development of data survey
Parallel to the survey we have also worked on developing a mobile application in collaboration with Cityflag and Dr. Alberto Gomez who is our current research fellow at the Urban Future Lab.
We needed a strong metaphor to communicate our rather complex data idea.
Tree of life
Organized into strategies and tools
Human, physical and political environments
Life size trees of life at our current exhibition
Different constellations that can help you follow
All data results from our surveys so far
125 questions
About 300 responses
breakdowns of general survey with all questions and answered and unanswered in pie-charts
Detail general survey
Stakeholder survey
How data translates into space
Density of responses and clustering of data
Cultural anchors and opportunity zones
Possible internal and external nodes
Data a genesis moment
Once we started taking data out of pie charts and developing a completely transparent data matrix the complete DNA code from both communities would emerge.
DNA code
Unconditional information about both communities that not only give full insights into the community, but it is a blueprint for developing a strategic plan and building a future.
At this point we did genetic testing and engaged with the community, community stakeholder, and students at local universities and schools. Data analysis and testing the “community genome” and the “whole genome sequencing” could be possible next steps to further explore the fabric of the community and how this translates into better relationships with surrounding entities, economic development (internal and external nodes), as well as community development.
Genetic profile
Just as in the majority of direct-to-consumer genetic testing the first steps helped us identify cultural markers, points and places of interest, opportunity zones, but also locate “diseases,” problems and shortcomings in the communities. For example, when a particular condition occurs near or next to a gene, they play a direct role in affecting the gene’s function. Ultimately, however, these are indicators through which we have recovered a large dataset can help us get a clearer understanding of local configurations, opportunities, and risks hidden in the genome.
We have also included various illustrations and maps in different scales to not only visualize the results but also divide the outcomes based on the evidence. Some of our analysis already indicates certain data gives us insight into how to weight risks or analyze certain patterns to put the data into perspective.
Although there is, what we call conditional data, metadata available, the majority of our findings are new and give a better understanding of an actual reality versus the surface perception we have received from metadata.
For example, the already existing community based small business economic activity in the communities gave us an inclination about the entrepreneurial spirit and “start-up” activities in Quintana and Mission San Jose
DNA code needs to be deciphered and translated into internal and external opportunity zones. Basically, to stay in the language of DNA decoding, we need to identify the code out of the 125125 first and then think about jhow these “pharmacogenomic” findings translate into medicine and the variability of drug responses based on the genetic code. Where do we have organic resistance to the code and where can external and internal impulses accomplish revitalization, development, and opportunities. We propose to develop a genetic profile of the pilot communities. This can happen on an individual or collective basis to create a chart that can set a profile exemplifying the “disease and condition” and “risk status” to determine the next steps as well as possible solutions and pharmacogenomics.
Local analysis
We need to look at the problems from both side
Genetic ancestry analysis
To start a dialogue of how similar and different we all are.
As the majority of San Antonio’s new developments are facing north, the region spanning south of US Highway 90 underscores that the geographic condition is a missing link between the Southside and its various communities, the valley, and towns on both sides of the Mexican border.
We have only look at this small sliver
What if scenario?
Cultural identity like in the Mediterranean
Start a new highspeed train dialogue
Two sides of a coin like Janus
Using pixel facade to make the point that when you are in it, and this is whether you are
inside of the box or outside of it you don’t see/have perspective
our approach we hoped to give an unbounded “no-box” approach
to myth that are problems and can be solved