I have to admit that URTing has not always been fun to use. As I also posted previously, it involved a lot of work including designing the structure of my URT and manually uploading data, besides conducting research in the field and in the library. However, very recently, I came to realize that this way of thinking is deeply based upon the binary between the form and the content, which I thought I didn’t buy at all. And this way of thinking, to my surprise, effected all the process of my project.
As we discussed in the beginning of the semester, city is a space in which multiple infrastructural layers exist. I know it is so a basic theme that it is almost a shame to say something about it NOW, but I have to confess that I was forgetting about it. And layer is a crucial element of URT that decides the overall visualization of the project. When I designed my layer, I was thinking only about the contents of layers, not the forms. I wish I had considered both. Let me explain with a concrete example.
I was going to put a layer of NYPD helicopter, which virtually blankets everywhere with its high-quality surveillance camera and mobility, and I cannot. NYPD helicopter belongs to “Data Collector and Data Transmitter” entity that I designed it to be appeared in a small circle. And what I wanted was creating a huge circle, in a shady color, so that I can show the user that NYPD helicopter covers all the area in New York City. However, in order to do that, I should have designed my entities in a totally different way. I designed it according to the chain of orders, not according to how much areas each surveillance node covers. So I had to give up this idea. It could have been different. Long story short, I think it might be very much helpful to think about a shape of a layer when you decide what kind of layer you need for getting a sense of what you are doing.