"Near Data" and "Far Data" for Urban Sustainability: How Do Community Advocates Envision Data Intermediaries?

TL;DR

This paper explores how community advocates perceive data intermediaries in urban settings, emphasizing the importance of connecting local and distant data to promote social justice and urban sustainability.

Contribution

It introduces the concepts of 'near' and 'far' data in the context of urban data practices and proposes pathways for data intermediaries to support community-driven change.

Findings

Advocates emphasize connecting local ('near') and distant ('far') data for social impact.

Three pathways identified: storytelling alignment, communicating context, and relationship building.

Supports data feminism and raises questions for urban sustainability efforts.

Abstract

In the densifying data ecosystem of today's cities, data intermediaries are crucial stakeholders in facilitating data access and use. Community advocates live in these sites of social injustices and opportunities for change. Highly experienced in working with data to enact change, they offer distinctive insights on data practices and tools. This paper examines the unique perspectives that community advocates offer on data intermediaries. Based on interviews with 17 advocates working with 23 grassroots and nonprofit organizations, we propose the quality of "near" and "far" to be seriously considered in data intermediaries' works and articulate advocates' vision of connecting "near data" and "far data." To pursue this vision, we identified three pathways for data intermediaries: align data exploration with ways of storytelling, communicate context and uncertainties, and decenter artifacts for relationship building. These pathways help data intermediaries to put data feminism into practice, surface design opportunities and tensions, and raise key questions for supporting the pursuit of the Right to the City.