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I am interested in the Macro scale and the macro effects evident at a city-scale level. I remember visiting New Orleans in 2016 and vividly remember seeing several signs with a large 'No' symbol drawn and the text  "neighbors not tourists" printed on the sign. Recently, as part of my research into New Orleans, I stumbled on this piece by the Guardian on how short-term rentals through platforms such as Airbnb are leading to gentrification in New Orleans. Highlighted in the article is how several Airbnb hosts do not reside on the listed premises. I remember the place we stayed, as we were a large party, having a 617 prefix number.  The prefix stood out as I knew the code 617 represented Boston and was curious what someone with ties to Boston doing in New Orleans as a host. In a similar vein, the article also highlights the problem of absentee hosts, hosts who acquire property for the sole purpose of setting up the property as an Airbnb site.

To tackle the problem, one councilwoman passed a law that required any Airbnb hosts in residential zones to have a homestead exemption verifying they live on site. In this case, a city-wide measure was taken and passed into law affecting the micro. It is common to have one host having several properties in different residential areas in New Orleans. From a technical standpoint, it could be viewed that Airbnb as technology is developed and presented as a scalable product. With no limits to reproducibility. Meanwhile, real-life discontinuities exist in the form of such homestead laws. It is impossible to live in more than one homestead at the same time. In other words, the concept of the human is not scalable.
Likewise, neither is cultural heritage. The city of New Orleans positions its self as a city with great cultural heritage. It is through this heritage that they seek to draw more and more tourists. How do cities think of scaling up successful initiatives and how do they navigate the political, social, ecological, or economic entanglements. At what point is downscaling necessary? Is culture scalable?

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/13/new-orleans-airbnb-trem…

I am currently a Ph.D. student interested in exploring the entanglements of scale, especially in the context of environmental sensing.  My primary research seeks to engage in discourse around the value of scalability that is presented as inherent in computation. While the term scale-up is almost synonymous with computation, sustainability; on the other hand, is known as a problem of scale. Take for example, the discourse on climate change where the actions required to combat climate change requires interventions at different scales. In this context, demanding changes at individual scales while no corresponding changes happen at larger scales would not yield much.

In looking at New Orleans, I came across a video on IoT cameras developed by Cisco, the networking giant. What struck me other than the apparent rise of surveillance capitalism was the narrative of one of the police officers highlighted in the video. The officer mentions that it is not feasible for the city to place police officers on every corner. In the context of scale, the police officer is implying that cameras are useful as they extend the police officer's ability to surveil the city. In other words, cameras and the networks help scale up the police officer, making it possible for them to cover a larger scale than before.

One of the police officers, in the video, also mentions that New Orleans is a tourist and hospitable town. Which brings up the question at any given period, what scale of visitors can New Orleans support without stretching the city's resources? Several other cities in the world have made efforts to limit visitors, in order not stretch city resources. The recent crisis at Mount Everest is an excellent example of what happens when resources are stretched to accommodate the increasing number of local visitors. How could something of this nature similarly impact New Orleans?

At the communication center where the video feed is analyzed, the IT manager provides reasons as to why they chose Cisco as their vendor. One of the reasons he gives was that the system is easily expandable, allowing the ability to scale out/up the network.

I was interested in the accident prevention mindset that was in part responsible for poor response in past nuclear disasters, so I read a summary of “Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity” by Ulrich Beck, one of the works referenced in Schmid’s article. The summary better explained the societal mindset that a structured set of rules for accident prevention was more reliable that the educated and adaptive individual.

The point that nuclear fallout does not respect national borders was interesting, so I looked at how far fallout can spread. An understanding of how geological features such as mountains and valleys can affect the immediate fallout zone and how meteorological conditions can spread eradiated rain and wind significant distances from the site of a disaster would be important in the evacuation and clean up portions of a response to a nuclear disaster.

When discussing existing emergency response groups that dealt with nuclear disasters the IAEA was mentioned several times, so I looked into the organization and their responsibilities. Although the IEAE is often criticized for its slow response to Fukushima, I found that the organizations stated missions are to promote peaceful use of nuclear energy and safety, as well as implement safeguards meant to prevent military use of nuclear energy. While an international group that works closely with the nuclear industry it does not claim any responsibility to act as a response group to nuclear disasters.

The bibliography was not included in the pdf, and was not easily available online. From the article itself it is clear that the author was involved in a significant amount of original research in Ankara to gather data for this article.

The bibliography shows references to several papers by many of the same authors, showing it was produced as a continuation of previous ideas but showing new information learned through the PIH’s activities in Haiti and Rwanda. The bibliography also shows many references from the early to mid 1990’s showing similar thoughts to initial research done in Baltimore and other places with high rates of AIDS.

The main argument is supported using historical data and documents from humanitarian aid organizations as well as analyzing media reports in order to determine the public opinions over the past several decades.

The articles has not been referenced in other papers that are publicly available, likely due to the very recent publication. It has been published through several platforms and is widely available.

These systems would all be difficult to use if the user was in a situation with a risk of sexual assault, although the apps claim to be for specifically these situations. If in a dangerous situation, spending time to open an app that may or may not be of help is not the best use of time.