WEBVTT

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When we think about mapping cities,

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we tend to think about roads
and streets and buildings,

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and the settlement narrative
that led to their creation,

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or you might think about
the bold vision of an urban designer,

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but there's other ways
to think about mapping cities

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and how they got to be made.

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Today, I want to show you
a new kind of map.

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This is not a geographic map.

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This is a map of the relationships 
between people in my hometown

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of Baltimore, Maryland,

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and what you can see here is that
each dot represents a person,

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each line represents a relationship
between those people,

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and each color represents a community
within the network.

NOTE Paragraph

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Now, I'm here on the green side,
down on the far right where the geeks are,

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and TEDx also is down 
on the far right. (Laughter)

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Now, on the other side of the network,

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you tend to have primarily
African-American and Latino folks

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who are really concerned about somewhat
different things than the geeks are,

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but just to give some sense,

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the green part of the network 
we call Smalltimore,

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for those of us that inhabit it,

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because it seems as though
we're living in a very small town.

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We see the same people
over and over again,

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but that's because
we're not really exploring

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the full depth and breadth of the city.

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On the other end of the network,

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you have folks who are interested
in things like hip-hop music

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and they even identify with living
in the DC/Maryland/Virginia area

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over, say, the Baltimore city
designation proper.

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But in the middle, you see that there's

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something that connects
the two communities together,

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and that's sports.

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We have the Baltimore Orioles,
the Baltimore Ravens football team,

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Michael Phelps, the Olympian.

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Under Armour, you may have heard of,
is a Baltimore company,

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and that community of sports
acts as the only bridge

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between these two ends of the network.

NOTE Paragraph

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Let's take a look at San Francisco.

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You see something a little bit
different happening in San Francisco.

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On the one hand, you do have
the media, politics and news lobe

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that tends to exist
in Baltimore and other cities,

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but you also have this
very predominant group

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of geeks and techies that are sort of
taking over the top half of the network,

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and there's even a group
that's so distinct and clear

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that we can identify it
as Twitter employees,

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next to the geeks, in between
the gamers and the geeks,

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at the opposite end
of the hip-hop spectrum.

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So you can see, though,

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that the tensions that we've
heard about in San Francisco

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in terms of people being
concerned about gentrification

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and all the new tech companies
that are bringing new wealth

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and settlement into the city are real,

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and you can actually see
that documented here.

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You can see the LGBT community

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is not really getting along
with the geek community that well,

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the arts community, the music community.

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And so it leads to things like this.

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["Evict Twitter"]

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Somebody sent me this photo
a few weeks ago,

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and it shows what is happening
on the ground in San Francisco,

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and I think you can
actually try to understand that

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through looking at a map like this.

NOTE Paragraph

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Let's take a look at Rio de Janeiro.

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I spent the last few weeks
gathering data about Rio,

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and one of the things
that stood out to me about this city

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is that everything's
really kind of mixed up.

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It's a very heterogenous city in a way 
that Baltimore or San Francisco is not.

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You still have the lobe of people involved

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with government, newspapers,
politics, columnists.

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TEDxRio is down in the lower right,
right next to bloggers and writers.

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But then you also have this
tremendous diversity of people

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that are interested
in different kinds of music.

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Even Justin Bieber fans
are represented here.

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Other boy bands, country singers,

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gospel music, funk and rap
and stand-up comedy,

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and there's even a whole section
around drugs and jokes.

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How cool is that?

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And then the Flamengo football team
is also represented here.

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So you have that same kind of spread

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of sports and civics
and the arts and music,

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but it's represented
in a very different way,

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and I think that maybe fits
with our understanding of Rio

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as being a very multicultural,
musically diverse city.

NOTE Paragraph

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So we have all this data.

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It's an incredibly rich set of data
that we have about cities now,

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maybe even richer than any data set
that we've ever had before.

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So what can we do with it?

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Well, I think the first thing
that we can try to understand

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is that segregation is a social construct.

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It's something that we choose to do,
and we could choose not to do it,

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and if you kind of think about it,

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what we're doing with this data
is aiming a space telescope at a city

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and looking at it as if was
a giant high school cafeteria,

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and seeing how everybody arranged
themselves in a seating chart.

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Well maybe it's time to shake up
the seating chart a little bit.

NOTE Paragraph

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The other thing that we start to realize

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is that race is a really
poor proxy for diversity.

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We've got people represented
from all different types of races

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across the entire map here --

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only looking at race

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doesn't really contribute to
our development of diversity.

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So if we're trying to use diversity

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as a way to tackle some of our
more intractable problems,

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we need to start to think 
about diversity in a new way.

NOTE Paragraph

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And lastly, we have the ability to create

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interventions to start to reshape
our cities in a new way,

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and I believe that if
we have that capability,

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we may even bear some
responsibility to do so.

NOTE Paragraph

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So what is a city?

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I think some might say that it is

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a geographical area or a collection
of streets and buildings,

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but I believe that a city 
is the sum of the relationships

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of the people that live there,

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and I believe that if we can start to
document those relationships in a real way

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then maybe we have a real shot

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at creating those kinds of cities
that we'd like to have.

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Thank you.

NOTE Paragraph

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(Applause)