︎

Mia Winther-Tamaki

Hi! I am an urbanist based in NYC with an academic background in urban planning, researching spatial justice and civic infrastructure. My past work spans multiple fields, including at a nonprofit building AAPI capacity, an urban tech startup focusing on customer success and UX design, a consulting firm planning affordable broadband infrastructure plans, the NYC Economic Development Corporation assisting with waterfront pedestrianization and redevelopment projects, and a research lab conducting GIS spatial analysis.

I am an active participant of the Web 3 ecosystem and am advocate for decentralized digital infrastructure. My mission is to support community-driven urbanism and civic systems for lasting, liberatory public spaces.

open places, open access, and open web


blog        warpcast        zora         are.na       linkedin       email



-----------------------------------------------------------




OPEN SPACE TO OPEN WEB: A RADICAL URBAN RESTRUCTURING OF CAPITALIZED URBAN SPACE THROUGH DECENTRALIZED CIVIC FRAMEWORKS

(working project, 2024)


This project seeks to understand how the decentralized tools of Web3 allow us to rethink and restructure urban governance, public goods, and property ownership to liberate us and our physical and digital spaces. The political left commonly espouses narratives that contend the decentralized technologies behind cryptocurrency are techno-deterministic and of the right-wing libertarian agenda. However, decentralized technologies can be embraced for their emergent, plastic, and redistributive qualities. that move power currently centralized at the hands of the political and financial elite, into the hands of the collective. This project asks: “How can decentralized civic frameworks serve as an effective strategy for more equitable valuation and distribution of decision-making, infrastructure, public goods, and property in New York City?”



------




THESIS: EYES OF THE STREET: SURVEILLANCE FROM ABOVE AND BELOW IN PROSPECT PARK AND SURROUNDING NEIGHBORHOODS



MASTER’S THESIS OF URBAN PLANNING
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, PLANNING, AND PRESERVATION

This study investigated the spatial distribution of surveillance cameras (both public and private) in Brooklyn, as it relates to race and class-based demographics.
There are 3 different scales of analysis: 1)  Brooklyn borough, 2) Prospect Park and adjacent neighborhoods, and 3) blocks within  Prospect Lefferts Gardens and Park Slope neighborhoods. The Brooklyn borough-wide analysis reveals a more top-down systematic deployment of surveillance infrastructure (ex: NYPD cameras, LinkNYC WiFi cameras) which is analyzed in comparison to the more bottom-up deployment of privately owned surveillance (ex: Amazon Ring home security system doorbells cameras). 1,538 total camera locations were collected, mapped, and analyzed using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) methods.

This thesis was presented as a poster at the 2023 Stanford Trust and Safety Research Conference on September 27th, 2023.





------







FAR-NEAR MAGAZINE VOL 5, 2024, P. 174-181.

This is an essay about two very different strains of “resilience” that took place the aftermath of the Fukushima Nuclear disaster. "The Japanese state touted highly idealized narratives of a quixotic struggle and richly resilient futures, but refused to commit to the housing security policies and resource-backed support needed to realize them. Resilience meant something else for the state - it fostered a common-sense understanding of Fukushima soaked in neoliberal bromides, while the resilience of community nurtured informal infrastructures of care."


Far-Near is an artist-run curated cross-cultural book series that "broadens perspectives of Asia through image, person, idea, and history to unlearn the inherent dominative mode."





------





LEARNING MODULE: ADVANCING JUSTICE THROUGH BROADBAND AND DIGITAL WORK





HR&A ADVISORS, BROADBAND EQUITY PARTNERSHIP

During my time as a fellow in digital equity consulting at HR&A Advisors’ Broadband Equity Partnership, I led research on racial equity in broadband work, which I presented in an internally-distributed learning module.





------





RESEARCH: STREET-LEVEL SURVEILLANCE: PUBLIC SPACE INTO POLICE STATE



CONFLICT URBANISM
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, PLANNING, AND PRESERVATION


This project investigates the US law enforcement’s use of public urban space as a covert tool for a massive data extraction operation, and how it conflicts with privacy in modern urban life.  Using python and D3 software, this study visualizes data from the Atlas of Surveillance from the Electric Frontier Foundation (EFF).




-----





2023 URBAN Magazine
Columbia University, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation


Narrative about the informational ethics surrounding technology-enabled cities and smart infrastructure.





------





RESEARCH: LOCATING THE DIGITAL DIVIDE ACROSS NEW YORK CITY



URBAN INFORMATICS
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, PLANNING, AND PRESERVATION

This project identifies the spatial gaps in digital infrastructure throughout New York City. Using publicy available data from the NYC Open Data Portal, we assessed the spatial relationship between neighborhoods with differing socioeconomic and demographic factors, to their proximity to digital infrastructure such as WiFi Hotspots and Internet Service Providers' broadband cable. Using Python programming, we created multiple data visualizations, including a tree and heat map, and conducted a regression analysis.





------





PUBLICATION: “MESH TOGETHER”



URBAN OMNIBUS, THE ARCHITECTURAL LEAGUE OF NEW YORK

A review of NYC Mesh, a community-driven, bottom-up, and decentralized WiFi network that resists internet service provider monopolies in NYC. Insurgent WiFi "can be located in the battle for infrastructural citizenship...the idea that access to basic infrastructure is essential for individuals to participate fully in society and exercise their rights and responsibilities as citizens.”





------





PUBLICATION: “POLICY BRIEF: INTRODUCTION TO BLOCKCHAIN FOR LOCAL GOVERNMENTS”


INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY, RIO
AUTHORS: HARMALKAR, KOVAKS-GOODMAN, SANCHES, WINTHER-TAMAKI, ZIA
AUGUST 2022

A co-authored policy brief developed in collaboration with the city government of Medellín (ACI Medellín), serves as a guide for policy makers interested in the basics of blockchain technology, applications in local government, and potential use cases.





------






RESEARCH: NEW YORK CITY MESH WIFI NETWORK DATA VISUALIZATION



TEAM: EDDIE JOE ANTONIO, MATTHEW HEATON, MIA WINTHER-TAMAKI
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, PLANNING, AND PRESERVATION







------








FAR-NEAR MAGAZINE, BLOG, 2022

A personal narrative essay of the suburbanization of Nasushiobara, an exurb in Japan and my mother’s hometown.





------






STUDIO PROJECT WITH NEW YORK CITY DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION (DOT)
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, PLANNING, AND PRESERVATION

This project was a four-month long urban planning studio. Our clients were the Office of Street Improvement Programs (OSIP) at the New York City Department of Transportation. After the Covid-19 pandemic, Open Streets and Open Restaurants became critical extentions of public space for the city. My role consisted of designing a user interface for Open Streets volunteers, community members, DOT staff, and place managers to access information about Open Street hours, programming, and other data.





------





UX: CIVIC SECTOR DATA TRANSPARENCY DASHBOARD PROTOTYPE





HUMAN-CENTERED DECISION MAKING
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, PLANNING, AND PRESERVATION

CLIENT: INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY RIO

This project represents a concerted three-month long effort to equip Rio de Janeiro’s government with the practical technological tools to foster a culture of transparency in their government. This consisted of consultation with the Institute of Technology and Society of Rio de Janeiro (ITS Rio), interviews with key stakeholders, robust analysis of Rio’s cultural context, and case study reviews. We developed a prototype of a user-centric product built for interoperable data flows to be used by civil servants of the Rio municipality. The platform prioritized the simplification of data collection and sharing of agency-wide information sharing. The dashboard provides interactive incentivization and transparency tools to foster better agency-wide decision making. Final deliverables also included a detailed implementation strategy and designed a user guide to ensure successful deployment.




------




RESEARCH + PANEL: SPATIAL ANALYSIS OF THE NYC OPEN STREETS PROGRAM


INTRODUCTION TO GIS FOR PLANNERS
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, PLANNING, AND PRESERVATION
PANEL PRESENTER AT NYC OPEN DATA WEEK, 2022
TEAM: SABINA SETHI UNNI, MIA WINTHER TAMAKI

We created a priority metric to identify which of DOT’s existing open streets are among the most in need of funding/resourcing (similar to “priority A” designations). The Department of Transportation (DOT)’s Open Streets program is a form of tactical urbanism where previously car-dedicated streets are repurposed into pedestrian only spaces. However, it is widely criticized for reproducing spatial inequities, rather than resolving them. We argue that one way to address these inequities is resourcing existing open streets, with funding, programmatic support, full-time staffers like community organizers, infrastructure, and more. Our research created a metric (also known as a multi-criteria decision analysis) to determine which open streets the DOT should prioritize resourcing, through analyzing land use, street safety, and public infrastructure. Our analysis suggests prioritizing three streets: (1) Murray Hill’s Barton Avenue (due to proximity to vision zero traffic intersections + potential to expand into the LIRR plaza nearby), (2) East Harlem’s East 119th Street (due to proximity to PS 112 and a GreenThumb community garden), and (3) Mott Haven’s Alexander Avenue (due to proximity to four NYCHA complexes). Finally, as a proponent of critical feminist methodology and participatory GIS, our project also outlines how to reproduce this same research to incorporate other priorities.

Our project was selected for presentation as a panelist at  2022 NYC Open Data Week at Cornell Tech.




------




PANEL: “AVOIDING CLIMATE DISASTER: A DISCUSSION WITH NOAM CHOMSKY, BELINDA ARCHIBONG, AND JEFF SCHLEGELMILCH”

STUDENT PANEL IN CONVERSATION WITH NOAM CHOMSKY
THE EARTH INSTITUTE, COLUMBIA CLIMATE SCHOOL

I had the honor of participating in a student panel discussion with Noam Chomsky where I asked him a question about the role technology plays with the state of the climate crisis.