Experimental method

Gathering Intelligences

Four steps for reading how flows of value have shaped a place.

A journey of enquiry

  1. EnquiryStart with a question, not an answer.
  2. LiteracyBeing able to read a place for yourself: who made a record, why, and what it leaves out.
  3. LegibilityInformation that was hidden or unreadable becomes accessible and more legible to others.
  4. AgencyThe journey of enquiry aims to inform communities around how decisions are made, and according to what values.

  1. Step 1

    Assemble the records

    Gather what is already on the public record about a project or precinct, through time.

    Choose a place with edges: a precinct, a corridor, a project. Then find where its records live: strategies and masterplans, planning approvals, budgets and grant registers, environment effects statements, canopy and other surveys, submissions and media statements.

    This is where civic AI helps. Agents can assemble far more of the public record than one person could, and set it out in date order. Each record keeps a link to its source, so anyone can check it.

    • Where do the records for this place live?
    • Who made each one, and whose interests does it serve?
    • What is missing, and since when?

    Start assembling

  2. Step 2

    Begin your dig

    What was the core priority for your place twenty years ago? Or ten?

    Start to explore what the key care factors were that have shaped flows of investment over time. Read each priority in the context of its moment: the rules, pressures and promises that produced it.

    Then trace what followed: what was approved, what was funded, what was built, and what quietly lapsed.

    • What did the plan say mattered, and when?
    • Where did the money and approvals go after that?
    • Which commitments have no record of what happened next?

    Begin your dig

  3. Step 3

    Making sense

    What might be the most useful ways to interpret what you have assembled?

    Discuss it with others. Would it read best as a map, a diagram, or a chart? Each shows something different: a map shows where, a diagram shows how things connect, a chart shows change over time.

    Then look across the whole record. Which values are most evident in the data you assembled, and which are hard to find?

    • A map, a diagram, or a chart?
    • What values are most evident in the data you assembled?
    • Which values are hardest to see?

    See examples

  4. Step 4

    Sense checking

    Visit your place, and contribute to the terrain.

    Go for a walk and examine the ground. Some of what matters about a place has never been written down; noticing it is part of the reading.

    Then bring the two together: how does your walk relate to what you assembled?

    • How does your walk and your data assembling relate?
    • Can you see connections between the two?
    • What is worth bringing back to your digital resource?

    Walk and add your sightings