I ran into a few issues while trying to collect data this week. I had plans to go around the neighborhood and look at notice boards at coffee shops, laundromats, and other public spaces, but as I was getting ready to go out, I realized I didn’t know where to go. I was interested in utilizing my connection with Neighborhood House, so I was thinking of focusing on either the 97219 area code, Multnomah neighborhood, or Collins View (mostly due to convenience). Ideally my boundary would be big enough to include important community resources, but small enough for it to be a realistic, walkable size for people who can’t drive, or if main roads are blocked.
After meeting with Liz, I decided that the Collins View neighborhood would be my best option based off of a few factors: 1) Convenience. I have access to this neighborhood on the Nextdoor app, and I am most familiar with this neighborhood out of any other neighborhood since I live here. 2) Resources. Mark Duntley suggested that I meet with the community representative on the IRB, Bob Fischer. As I did more research on Collins View, I also saw that he is the current head of the Collin’s View NET team, which would be an invaluable source of information if he agrees to work with me. 3) Neighborhood Composition. Initially I was thinking of focusing on Multnomah Village neighborhood since that’s where my internship is and there are a lot of local businesses that I thought could be cool to incorporate. However, I realized Collins View could be a more fruitful option because of this lack of a central meeting point. Collins View residents truly would have to turn to each other initially since there aren’t many businesses around us, and due to our hilly geography, we are somewhat constrained to our hill (unless we want to walk up and down a lot of hills after this traumatizing disaster).
Since I plan to use Nextdoor as one of my primary data sources, I’ll explain what kind of data I think I will be able to extrapolate from this app. It’s basically your standard social media app set-up with a homepage newsfeed of posts, an inbox for personal messages, notifications section, and list of neighbors. Each neighbor has a profile that they fill out about themselves, including interests, years lived in the neighborhood, recommendations, etc. Interactions on Nextdoor are recorded in the newsfeed, and they include requests, questions, buying or selling, notifications, help wanted, and events. Both individual neighbors and organizations (like the Portland Bureau of Transportation) can post updates. Neighbors have three options for responding to posts: thank, private message or reply. I’m interested in looking at what kinds of interactions connect the most people, or which interactions create the most meaningful relationships (trust).
To get more information, I will try to access the Collin’s View NET map your neighborhood map, and I might try to administer mental maps or surveys to Nextdoor participants. This shouldn’t be too difficult since I already have access to everyone in the neighborhood, so a survey link would be relatively simple to post. Overall I’m looking forward to using Nextdoor as a datasource!