Andron, Sabina, Tom Ward, and Konstantinos Avramidis. "Urban Surfaces Research Network Vol. 5". 13 Nov. 2025. Web. 13 Nov. 2025.
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Andron, Sabina, Tom Ward, and Konstantinos Avramidis. "Urban Surfaces Research Network Vol. 5". 13 Nov. 2025. Web. 13 Nov. 2025.
Contributing to this international workshop publication, Yufeng Zhao explored how archived urban imageries function as urban surfaces through Google Street View's 17-year digital archive. Zhao presented "all text in nyc" (alltext.nyc), a search engine that democratizes access to street-level text data, revealing patterns from 251,565 "NO PARKING" signs to traces of political resistance across New York City. Built with accessible Python code using OCR and panoramic mapping, the project is taught through workshops to spread the means of self-indexing. The work challenges the asymmetry where tech companies alone possess computational power to analyze urban imagery, arguing that surveillance isn't inherent to technology but determined by who controls search capabilities.
Zhao's contribution appears on pages 50-53 of the publication.
The Urban Surfaces Research Network (USRN) brought together 85 international members for its fifth online workshop on October 13, 2025, resulting in this publication exploring the role of surfaces in developing public cultures and equitable cities. The network, established in 2023, unites scholars from sociology, law, geography, architecture, heritage, design, and media to engage with the politics of urban surfaces.
MIT Media Lab graduate student Yufeng Zhao contributed to this workshop by presenting research on digital urban surfaces and computational access to street-level imagery. Zhao's contribution, featured on pages 50-53.