In this exercise, you will do a site reconnaissance in downtown Ann Arbor and conduct a survey to collect information about an urban object of your choosing. You will take pictures of each urban object and record the required data output. You will also use your observational skills to ask questions about what you see to decide the additional information that needs to be collected. You will learn to pay attention to what grabs your attention to hone your intuitions as a researcher. You will use that to guide the development of your research and research question.

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Preparing for site reconnaissance and the next assignment

• Turn on automatic geotagging to ensure that your phone is collecting coordinate information when taking a picture. For iPhones, this is making sure that location settings is turned on for the camera. You will not need the coordinates for this assignment but you will need them for the next one.

During site reconnaissance

• Go out and walk around.
• Spend a bit of time noticing the things that exist repeatedly throughout the landscape.
• Select an object that catches your attention that you would like to spend the semester learning more about.
• Pick a survey area that will allow you to collect at least thirty instances of your urban object. The area may be larger or smaller depending on the urban object that you choose. Decide the survey area explicitly and do an exhaustive survey of all the instances of the object that you find.
• Take pictures of the urban object, and collect the required data outputs along with your thoughts and questions. You can create the data table ahead of time to record, or you can just write it down.
• The more images you collect, the easier the later assignments will be. Take pictures of the urban object from all angles that are possible (each side, top, bottom). Take a pictures of the entire object, take pictures of details of the object that you find interesting, take pictures of the surrounding that the object sits in, take pictures of labels that you can look up and google later.