Contact us
:
Sitemap
:
Our benefactors
:
Help
Search
Home
News
Reports and Publications
Science & Public Affairs
SPA Archive
June 2006
SPATalk
Science and Peace in Antarctica
Twin tracks to tackle climate challenge
Budget throws sensitivities into relief
News in Brief
Morality,theology and action on climate change
What are we going to do about the decline in chemistry students?
The psychology of terrorism
Science meets policy
Where did texting come from?
The self-sorting tendency
Physics in the City
Young people and gambling problems
Deaf people and linguistic research
Food labelling in Europe - We need information for the majority
Food labelling in Europe - We want nutrition labelling
Food labelling in Europe - It's a mess
Mobile phones and children - Voluntary Code
Mobile phones and children - Children face risks
Mobile phones and children-UK code of practice
And then there was one
Joys and duties of a scientist
Scientists in the pay of industry
Creationism reviving; science recruitment declining
All hail the new Science Supremo
The self-sorting tendency
Roger Burrows fears software might divide society
Previous research has demonstrated how important neighbourhood images can be. They influence both the lives of local residents and the attitudes and behaviours of others with the power to invoke neighbourhood change.
However, the sources of such neighbourhood imagery are fundamentally changing. This will necessitate dialogue between groups of people who have had little engagement with each other: the geodemographics industry; software designers; commercial and public sector software providers; those concerned with housing, neighbourhood and regional policy; and those concerned with the design and roll out of e-government.
From local to global
Images and perceptions of neighbourhoods and communities used to be generated from a range of primarily local sources. Local residents and those living nearby would hold key information about the history and folklore of particular places. Much of this was verbally communicated.
The state and commerce also collected more systematic statistical and other data on neighbourhoods but, for the most part, this was not available to the general population.
However, the technological means by which neighbourhood images are now constructed, disseminated and consumed has undergone a revolution in recent years. With the emergence of numerous Internet-based neighbourhood information systems (IBNIS), any member of the public with access to the Internet can quickly and easily gain huge amounts of detailed information.
UK resources
In the UK, commercial websites such as
www.upmystreet.co.uk
and
www.homecheck.co.uk
provide a plethora of statistical, geodemographic and environmental data down to the level of individual postcodes. National Statistics, through its site
www.neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk
, provides detailed official data on a huge range of topics. In addition,
www.upmystreet.co.uk
provides a 'conversations' service where lay people 'on the ground' can comment on the social life of particular localities.
Alongside these 'data-driven' sites, others – which might have a humorous intent (such as
www.craptowns.co.uk
and
www.chavtowns.co.uk
) – provide more informal (and usually negative) qualitative observations on places.
Similar sources exist in the USA. Much of the information is derived from powerful statistical and geodemographic data developed by marketing companies.
Sorting software
Developments in IBNIS need to be set in the context of the increasingly important role that software plays in contemporary societies, particularly in urban environments. We need to take seriously the need to analyse the relationship between 'physical' urban spaces and the digital technologies that are increasingly shaping understandings of these spaces.
Access to digital technologies is socially uneven – leading to a basic social divide between the 'information rich' and the 'information poor'. Recent debates have examined how technologies like IBNIS are themselves beginning to divide and sort populations in a manner that enhances the socio-structural position of certain groups while disadvantaging others.
Geodemographic sorting technologies deliberately segment populations, classifying them according to a range of commercial and governmental requirements, and even according to individual tastes and consumer preferences, likely lifestyle habits and so on. While such classification of people and places is hardly new in itself, sorting processes have been much enhanced by the new technologies and are increasingly widespread.
Self-selection
Until recently, such sorting has been largely invisible to the public. With the emergence of IBNIS, though, there is the possibility that it will no longer just be commercial and policy interests that are engaged in such activities. It is entirely plausible that some members of the public will be motivated to 'sort themselves out'.
The question for the future is whether IBNIS will assist in the production of increasingly separated spaces where neighbourhoods – as defined by software programmes – will come to be more homogeneous within themselves and more diverse between themselves than would otherwise have been the case.
Safeguards
There is nothing new in recognising that social divisions possess a strong spatial element. However, the emergence of IBNIS adds a powerful new means of 'segmenting' places. Obviously, whilst no one would want to prevent the public availability of neighbourhood information, it would be as well to be alert to the implications that IBNIS might have for vulnerable neighbourhoods and populations.
Certainly, at a very minimum, it might be sensible to ensure that IBNIS provide mechanisms by which local people (and others) can challenge the manner in which their neighbourhood is characterised. Also, that IBNIS make their sources of local information explicit, in addition to making clear how the information was compiled.
Professor Roger Burrows is at the Department of Sociology, University of York
rjb7@york.ac.uk