City
Will anyone use Toronto's new anti-graffiti app?
Taking the city's battle to clean up Toronto digital, Rob Ford visited a lane way near St. Clair and Lansdowne to unveil a new mobile app that lets citizens report unwanted graffiti instantly. Instead of coughing up for a phone call, smart phone users can now snap a picture and whisk it off to 311 for processing.
"This is as efficient as it gets," remarked Ford at press conference earlier today. "This will make it easier than ever to report graffiti vandalism and help keep the city spotless.
Standing in front of local residents busily painting over tags on garage doors, Ford pointed to a bridge on Scarlett Road near Lambton Golf Club as a clean-up success story he hopes to replicate across the city. "Once people know we mean business, the people that are causing this mess are going to learn a tough lesson," he declared.
The app, which costs $1.99 (and is currently only available for iPhone), lets Apple smartphone users send photographs directly to the city with a request to remove of the offending material. If the property owner fails to clean up the tag, the city will - so they say - step in and bill the owner for the work.
The fact the new app costs money to download (even though a portion of the money goes to the Toronto Library Foundation) might put some people off reporting problem tags. The fact it's only available for iPhone further narrows the app's scope to people with a particular brand of smart phone - possibly eradicating a chance to get people genuinely interested in reporting problems in their neighbourhood engaged. I also suspect the iPhone and graffiti-fighting demographics don't entirely cross over.
The other City-endorsed mobile app, the gratis "SeeClickFix", is also receiving extra promotion as part of the push for cleanliness. Interestingly, SCF allows its Blackberry, Android and iPhone users to report graffiti too, without the expense.
Would you pay to report graffiti in your neighbourhood? Do you think the City's new mobile-friendly approach to combatting vandalism will prove an effective tool?
Photos by Mariam Matti
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Glad to see an actual graffiti artist putting up a piece once the door was primed! Why no mention of THAT in the article?
i wish there was an app that I could snap photos of those youngin's doing drugs in my ally - get those kids educated about healthy living. I'd rather encourage those kids to make art!! Especially if it's on some boring white garage in an ally.
Let's encourage a healthy, happy city!
Studies in the past has showed that behaviors of youths
Is influence by the intensity of the graffiti exposed.
I only wonder how those those pseudo artists manage to to disfigure our walls do easy,with all the security and polices. Are they coming late at night ?
Behold, let's all pay $2 for an app that'll help the city wage a fruitless war against business owners and street artists (yes, genius, who do you think pays for the anal-retentive graffiti cleanup on their buildings?)
This guy is mismanaging us into the ground.
You may not like seeing graffiti everywhere and may wish it were all gone, and I understand that sentiment. But some of us feel the same way about the increasing presence of advertising *everywhere* in this city. I consider advertising in public places a form of visual pollution. Street art done by real people, often very creatively, I like.
I'M supposed to pay $1.99 for an app that reports graffiti in my neighbourhood, so that the city can come and hassle the property owner (my neighbour!) whose house/business/whatever got tagged??? I'M supposed to pay money to essentially help the city force other people to essentially pay for "violations" that are not their fault? Yeah...um, no. What kind of a neighbour would I be, to use this app?!
So let's have a look at the graffiti that's on your private property that you like so much. Let me save you the trouble, you won't because it's B.S. Though I would love to be proven wrong.
The lunacy of charging for an app like this aside. I can imagine only the crankiest of cranks would actually pay for the opportunity to report some wall spray.
Canadians, we thought you were all smarter than that.
+1 on an app to report property owners for ad space they allow marketing & ad companies to post their bullshit.
This is the dumbest idea ever next to voting in this idiot. How many at bats does RoFo get? I swear if you strike out 3 times you're out. I know its not baseball but this guy is just striking out left right and centre. Someone needs to stop this guy, he's making our city mad.
I surmise I most always using it ,I will! Graffiti is treacherous and ruins the structure of its placement. I did not voting for Mr. Ford, but his no graffiti efforts is so good!
How about garbage on the streets? That seems to me the most obvious place to start when you want to clean your city. Look at Ottawa, who puts extra money towards it, and then compare it to a Toronto street.
It's like RoFo was assaulted by a spray paint can when he was younger and has never gotten past it.
Ford and Palaccio didn't have to set it up, there is already lots of crap like that on garages to get rid of. I can't tell where they went, but they should have started across the street from Earlscourt Park and the local community centre.
http://seeclickfix.com/apps
Oh, and the city pays for the cost of the removal if the property owner chooses not to.
Toronto having to learn how to remove graffiti from New York - it boggles the mind.
Hey Rob, got that? Hefty fines for those who graffiti the city!
For everyone else bitching about the $2 price of the app just d/l the free version http://seeclickfix.com/apps (sorry, it was worth mentioning again)
https://www.facebook.com/robfordiphone
culture + jamming
Aside from that, graffiti works similar to the broken window theory. The more tags, the more it seems acceptable to break the rules, and then it snowballs.
I have probably reported over 50 tags in the past week.
The abuse potential of this thing is just unparalleled.
Just think of the possibilities!
How long before people start defacing Ford's house once per week and have him pay?
How long before people just flood the office with thousands of pics per day?
Who gets paid to decide which requests warrant action?
"This is as efficient as it gets"? It costs almost $2 and is only available for iPhone. Depends on what Ford was describing as 'efficient'. The software, yes. The program, not so much.
Besides, not all graffiti is horrible. It adds character to a city; it's part of the urban landscape. However, some is tasteless, like in the photos in this article.
1. This app only allows you to "snitch" as opposed to Washington's free app, DC 311, which has over 80 report areas including true customer service stuff, such as reporting trash, not picked up.
2. This app was developed by a third party with no city affiliation and the Mayor is using taxpayers' resources to shill for. Conflict of Interest again!!
3. As I mentioned earlier and mentioned by many others - DC 311 is free and this costs moolah.
4. The app didn't work. Three of us downloaded it for "research" purposes and it worked on neither iPhones or androids, crashing repeatedly.
5. The app is poorly designed, we found ourselves scrolling through repetitive (duplicate?) entries. Extremely confusing.
6. Public Leaf designed this. Who is Public Leaf anyway? Their website is pretty sparse and not very open or transparent.
7. The media and many commenters seem to have fallen for the mayor's spin that this app is a tool to help in the war against graffiti. Missed opportunity on what could be a good app offering an alternative channel for citizens to engage in positive activities with the City.
8. See Cory Doctorow's comments: http://boingboing.net/2012/04/19/torontos-dingleberry-mayor-r.html
lo que sabe y termine su próximo teléfono para satisfacer las expectativas de lo que se
desea con este equipo y cuando lo vean en sus manos disfrútenlo
todo lo que puedan ya que no alcanzará el tiempo para aprovechar todas sus opciones y utilidades que volverán
la vida realmente más sencilla y divertida.