In Conclusion...

In my first post, I said that I hoped "to create an archive of photos that would capture the diversity of experiences with the everyday need to travel around the city." My project would be focused on two central themes: social interactions between various groups who participate in the same kinds of public transportation together, and the ways in which transportation indicates globalization of a city like Dublin.

The basis for my belief that I would witness an interesting variety of social interactions was that regardless of occupation and within a very wide range of people, the bus, train, and road are interesting spaces that bring together students, adults, families, residents and tourists who might otherwise never interact in their day-to-day business. Residents of the same city can live lives that barely resemble one another's, but transportation is one of the everyday needs that seems to be a preoccupation across the board.

Secondly, I thought urban transportation systems were worth exploring because they are an indicator of and a tool for globalization. While globalization brings with it the increased ability to work with colleagues worldwide, breaking down many previously impervious spacial barriers, there is still an importance for the ease of crossing spaces when they are proximal (ie. in the same city.) At the same time, access to reliable international travel helps businesspeople in Dublin cooperate with their colleagues worldwide not only online, but through frequent or at least regular visits.

The process of making the archive has further shown me that Dublin has a wide variety of residents and visitors who utilize public transit each day. While I did not always capture exactly what I was expecting, I think that was to be expected since I was shooting in a relatively new place. For instance, sometimes I went to a good location at the wrong time of day, or didn't know whether it would be appropriate to take photos in certain settings or times, or lacked access (for example, in the airport). Therefore, sometimes I did not get the shots I was expecting, but the archive still fits my ethnography because it is the way I, as a newcomer, have seen and experienced public transit here in Dublin.

I learned that it was much easier to capture modes of transport (tending toward the second theme, of globalization and transportation systems in place) than it was to capture people in transport, at least in so far as those people were interacting. The photos I got of large groups of people captured the urban rush of a cosmopolitan area, but I did not encounter as many clear instances of different groups together on the same mode of transit as I initially hoped. Therefore, I think my archive more effectively illustrates the spaces in which people interact than those actual interactions.

I think making our own ethnographies probably helped to clarify some of the theory we covered in the first half of the semester. For instance, we earlier discussed the relationship between denoted and connoted messages, but I now can look through my photographs and pick out images in which I was trying to suggest something that couldn't exactly be captured in the frame.

I can definitely see myself using a visual ethnography as a methodology for a larger future project, such as an undergraduate thesis. I could see myself, particularly, exploring more in depth the way transportation affects quality of life in urban settings and the way people relate to one another within a daily practice like the commute and within occasional practices like tourism. I would like to see whether people say they prefer the kinds of transportation that bring different groups together (such as busses and subway systems). I would also see whether they would choose to live in a city that primarily uses automobile transportation, or whether they would find that to be alienating.

This project could go on much longer to more fully represent the experiences of those who use public transportation in Dublin on a regular or an occasional basis, but my archive has taken shape in a way that has represented certain types of transportation and the people who utilize it. As Sarah Pink wrote in "The Visual in Ethnography", one of the most important considerations for the visual researchers of today is the mobility of subjects or informants. She references Vared Amit, who "has pointed out, 'the people whom they [ethnographers] are trying to study are increasingly likely to be as mobile if not more so than the ethnographers trying to keep up with them.'" This speaks to both the challenge and the reasoning behind my project. Dublin's identity is shifting toward that of an ever more globalized city. The everyday movement of its residents and visitors from place to place is an important factor in this shift, so by building an ethnography-- an archive of photos that create and represent my knowledge of Dublin transportation based on my experience as a newcomer to the city- I hope to have captured in some way the way Dubliners relate to their experience of moving about, in, and out of the city.

dublinbikes

The dublinbikes project, a city bike sharing program, puts Dublin among the likes of Seville, Brussels, Vienna, and Paris. The website reports that they have over 25,000 long term subscribers and there have been almost 306,000 rentals since the launch of the program in September 2009. They also report that over 95% of the rentals are free (under 30 minutes long)- which encourages Dubliners and visitors alike to make use of this environmentally friendly and quick mode of transportation. While elsewhere in Ireland, the use of bicycles to travel to work has decreased, it is steadily increasing in the urban center- the rate among Dubliners increased by 6% between 2002 and 2006.

Not Your Usual Commute

These shots, taken around St. Stephen's Green, are of modes of transport used more for tourists than for commuters, but I thought they were interesting and also, I think the growth of Irish tourism has been central in its globalization. Visitors from all over the world in 2009 (according to the National Tourism Development Authority, Failte Ireland) amounted to about 6.5 million, including 3 million British and about 814,000 Americans. In an earlier post, I tried to capture some of the tourist busses (self-advertising) aimed at these- but I think these unusual forms of transit for a city resident are also aimed more at the visitor to the city.

Dublin On Foot

As the weather gets warmer in Dublin, a lot of residents seem to be choosing to move about on foot, especially during peak traffic times and on some of Dublin's pedestrian-only streets.

Grafton Street, Easter Sunday

Approximately 5 PM on a Tuesday

Earl St. North on a Friday afternoon

Further Research

If I were to use my visual ethnography as part of a very large project, such as an undergraduate thesis, I think it could be fruitful to compare the urban transportation systems of Dublin with those of another city that it differs from in some clear way. Comparing the systems and the feelings city residents have about them could produce an interesting project about what it means to be a resident moving about a global city. It would also allow me to ask questions such as:

Do urban residents feel that their quality of life improves as transportation systems improve, or do they ever prefer earlier systems for reasons of nostalgia or otherwise? (This could be supplemented with research about how quickly new transportation systems become popularly used, and for how long people have to get used to them before they start to replace the prior system.)

What are some of the differences between cities in which residents walk or use public transit and cities in which residents each drive individual or family cars? (This would continue to explore the idea that all different kinds of people ride public transportation--what effect does it have on interaction among residents when they do not?)

For any of these questions and the others that would become possible in a comparative research project, it would become much more necessary to interview the people using the public transportation. For my project, I have been focusing largely on the visual and for that reason I could never conclude something about how residents feel- I have to, rather, deduce what I can from the visible ways they interact and use public transit. An undergraduate thesis or other large research project could definitely use the visual ethnography I have been building, but would most likely require some additional methodologies.

Advertising on City and Tourist Busses

I decided one day to take a look at what is advertised on busses in the city because such advertising seems to be aimed at, naturally, the commuting population. What advertisers decide it is a good investment to focus on busses?

Interestingly enough, aside from ads for films and events, I saw a lot of ads for tourist destinations. I think this speaks to a population that travels not only for work, but for leisure. Above all, they indicate a population that moves about frequently. I also decided to document a few tourist busses (which seek to advertise themselves) and a few other interesting signs related to transportation.

I found this last one particularly interesting, because of the message it conveys to its (primarily bus-riding) audience about the relative worth of different means of transportation based on cost.

Áras Mhic Dhiarmada, Busáras (Dublin Bus Station)

The bus station in City Center, home of Bus Eireann and other national bus companies, seemed especially crowded leading up to the holiday weekend.

Many of the travelers seemed young and like students, reminding me of the rush to Grand Central/ Port Authority/ Penn Station/ Newark Airport whenever my university goes on break for holidays at home. However, I have learned from living on campus this semester that for many UCD students, it seems unreasonable to travel home only once or twice a semester. Perhaps it is worth noting that students living away from home in the city of Dublin seem to use public transportation to go home more frequently than most of my fellow students in New York, even though for East Coast students like me, getting home by train would only take about three hours.

However, there were also many families waiting in the station, potentially off to visit family in other parts of the country. The ease with which good roads and transportation systems allow individuals to reconnect with family in the place where they grew up seems to be a huge factor in motivating individuals to move into the city or into a different area where opportunities for work or school are more appealing. That is to say, it is important for most people to know that there is an efficient way to get home when that is needed.

Which Photos Don't Make The Cut?

One of the challenges of this project is deciding which photos to include and which ones should be left out. It is an important process not only because the selection and organization of images impacts how visually pleasing and interesting my blog will be, but also because the images suggest different understandings of Dublin as a global, cosmopolitan city (the focus of my ethnography.)

The selection of which images are "important" or "meaningful" enough to post is a kind of analysis. As Sarah Pink explains in Chapter 5 of Doing Visual Ethnography, individual researchers classify and give meaning to ethnographic images in relation to the academic culture or discipline in which they identify their work. Since I am attempting to depict Dublin's identity as a global city, and point out the importance of urban transportation in that identity, I am obviously biased toward images that reflect that kind of globalization. On the other hand, a researcher who wanted to focus on the commute's impact on workers in Dublin (such as the Working Lives Institute) might focus more specifically on individuals en route to a destination, whereas my research lends itself more to images of crowds or of the actual transportation structures used by them. My experience in Dublin is subjective, and therefore my archive is not representative of an objective truth, but of my impression that Dublin's identity has shifted and that globalization and transportation are linked and inherent in that process. In general, I have chosen images that I found to be visually clear and appealing when possible. I have also tried to include a sample from different types of transportation--so I try to post a balance among the different groups of photos I have in my archive. For today's entry I will include some of the originally-excluded photos to show how my decision-making process is going.

Sometimes, I have gone to areas where I expect lots of people to be moving around, and realized that I don't know the city quite well enough to know the right day or time of day to look, and have found roads and sidewalks a bit emptier than I expected.

(Approximately 9 AM, Good Friday)

I am still working on improving my photography skills, and for that reason, sometimes Dublin is just moving too quickly for me to capture a good image..

I found myself, once I had started this project, taking photographs of transportation in places other than the city of Dublin, wondering if there was a way in which they did fit the project. However, realizing that it would be extremely difficult to gain a sense of Ireland's transportation system as a whole, much less those of various cities I would be visiting, I knew it would be better to focus on Dublin and Dubliners specifically. I had to leave out certain images I liked because I recognize that they do not fit this particular project.

I actually included this in an earlier post because it includes a Dublin city bus, until I remembered that it is actually not in Dublin, but in County Wicklow.

Cars on the street in Prague, Czech Republic

Port in Barcelona (although I did find it particularly interesting to see a boat boasting an Irish flag!)

The London Underground

These types of images cannot be included in my main presentation, but hopefully help to demonstrate the process I use to decide which photos will be the best to post.

Crossing the Liffey

Since the Liffey divides Dublin's North and South Sides, many Dubliners have to cross the river each morning and evening as they commute to work or school. I decided to spend a morning documenting some of the ways they do so. I wanted to be sure to explore the Docklands especially after a reading we did in the first half of the course, entitled "Cultivating a Cultural Dockland," by Brian O'Connell of The Irish Times. The article, written in 2006, outlines some of the projects at work on "Dublin's evolving riverside" (see below), particularly by describing the cultural community that is finding economic and community support there. While artistic expression is not necessarily the focus of my blog, crossing the river is an everyday experience of many Dubliners, and so I think it is important to note, as O'Connell does in the article, that "Just like the waterfronts of Vancouver or Boston, Dublin Docklands is a large-scale development project where a culture and urban regeneration have made for uncomfortable, yet necessary, bedfellows." His parallel of the docklands with those of Vancouver or Boston point out that in major ways, the project of developing the docklands is a project of globalization.