“We need to recognise that walkability is in every single step and in every built relationship, in every building where people live and work, and in even the smallest spaces in which people move.”

 

—David Sim (2019, p. 97)

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Overview

Positionality refers to how one’s identity, background, values, institutional role, and social location shape the research encounter (Rose, 1997). In interviews, design ethnographers are not neutral instruments; they influence what is said, how it is expressed, and how it is interpreted. The researcher’s presence always shapes the data. By reflecting on how identities and assumptions influence the questions we ask and the meanings we construct, students learn to approach participants and data with reflexive awareness rather than a stance of neutrality.
 

Cities embody overlapping exposures—physical, digital, social, and environmental. Sonnenschein et al. (2022) introduce the urban exposome as the totality of contextual factors that shape human health and well-being. Sim (2019) extends this perspective through the notion of the soft city, where flexibility, slowness, and empathy define the quality of urban life. This week, students experiment with photogrammetry as a form of digital ethnography to capture these multilayered exposures within a selected research site, linking qualitative understanding with spatial analysis (Wu, 2021). 
 

The urban exposome (Woods et al., 2025) further involves mapping and measuring often invisible environmental factors across temporal and spatial dimensions. One experimental approach to interpreting slow data is smartphone photogrammetry, which generates three-dimensional models from multiple two-dimensional images. Using specialised software, spatial information, such as depth, scale, and position, is analysed to reconstruct physical objects and environments (Chapinal-Heras et al., 2024). Through the deliberate, evidence-driven act of scanning a site, design researchers engage in a reflective and embodied process of observation, connecting technology, place, and the lived experience of the city.
 

Reflections

• How might the concept of the urban exposome extend design ethnography beyond people and services to include environmental and social infrastructures?

• In observing your own city, which forms of urban exposure—physical, digital, or social—most shape everyday experiences of well-being?

 

References

• Chapinal-Heras, D., García-García, I., & Riera-Torres, M. (2024). Photogrammetry, 3D Modelling and Printing: The Creation, Replication and Visualisation of Cultural-heritage Assets. Virtual Archaeology Review, 15(1), 17–29. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2212-0548(24)00026-2

• Rose, G. (1997). Situating Knowledges: Positionality, Reflexivities and Other Tactics. Progress in Human Geography, 21(3), 305-320. https://doi.org/10.1191/030913297673302122 (Original work published 1997)

• Sim, D. (2019). Soft City: Building Density for Everyday Life. Island Press. 

• Sonnenschein, T., Scheider, S., de Wit, G. A., Tonne, C. C., & Vermeulen, R. (2022). Agent-based Modeling of Urban Exposome Interventions: Prospects, Model Architectures, and Methodological Challenges. Exposome, 2(1), osac009. https://doi.org/10.1093/exposome/osac009

• Woods, T., Palmarini, N., Corner, L., Barzilai, N., Maier, A. B., Sagner, M., Bensz, J., Strygin, A., Yadala, N., Kern, C., Ward, P., Ferrucci, L., Bischof, E. Y., Barker, R., Shiels, P. G., Guiot, G., Monti, J., Justice, J., Kennedy, B. K., & Furman, D. (2025). Cities, Communities and Clinics Can Be Testbeds for Human Exposome and Aging Research. Nature Medicine, 31(4), 1066–1068. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-025-03519-8

• Wu, B. (2021). Photogrammetry for 3D Mapping in Urban Areas. In W. Shi, M. F. Goodchild, M. Batty, M. P. Kwan, & A. Zhang (Eds.), Urban Informatics (pp. 401–413). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-8983-6_23