Neu-Neustadtmodell

With the advent of mobile devices for personal use, the local and global tracking and mapping of individual movement patterns began. Whenever a mobile phone connects to the nearest mobile phone mast, the device’s approximate location can be determined. This reveals broad movement patterns that already reveal a great deal about the daily routines and lifestyle habits of the device owners. Smartphones with built-in GPS sensors now refine location data to within a few metres, providing the reassuring feeling of always knowing exactly where one is.
The fact that the data collected by these devices does not remain with the respective users is due to the technology and the many possibilities for contextualisation. In this way, constantly refined movement profiles are created – where someone sleeps, works or shops – and those who deviate from their usual routine stand out. Today, map data is being generated which, thanks to the sheer number of users, can provide far more information than that once obtained through archaic mapping methods. Where are the hotspots, where are the traffic jams, where are the demonstrations, where do the rich live and where do the poor live? So we are actively helping to map the world, and usually without even realising it.
For example, when filling in ‘captchas’2 on websites, when reviewing restaurants on travel platforms, or when going for a hike and subsequently analysing the distance covered and speed digitally. And, of course, whenever we upload geotagged photos to social media, thereby capturing even the remotest corners of the world that the Google Street View car has not yet reached.
Even where the GPS signal cannot reach us, for example indoors, we record the interior of the buildings around us using the gyroscopes built into our devices and the soon-to-be-available 3D cameras. The New Neustadt Model is fed by individually collected data. The urban space is assembled here in a collage-like manner, always linked to biographical events and the respective objects.