Data Domotopia: introduction to the quantitative survey

Abstract

AbstractThis paper describes the Data Domotopia a 2300 + respondent self-administered web-based survey. It includes 100 + multi-purpose items about home-making and stillness in a moving world. We suppose that home-making can reveal coping strategies and resilience practices to make everyday life work – as home is a central location in people’s activity-travel patterns. To describe this phenomenon, the concept of Domotopia is introduced, defining how people arrange, use, and experience their homes to cope with the pathologies of accelerated and liquid modernity (Bauman 2005). While the Data Domotopia is based on a mixed-method combining qualitative and quantitative material, this paper focuses mainly on the description of the questionnaire – which is organized into three interrelated layers: the dwelling, the dwellers, and the neighborhood. Each of these layers unfolds in functional, social, emotional and sensory components. The survey covers most of the contemporary issues related to home-making. This includes the domestic space and gender issues; the socio-spatial resources (mobility, action space, core, and wider social network); lifestyles, ideals, and residential aspiration; time pressures, time use, organization and stress; equipment, rules and arrangements; interpersonal relations, cohabitation and negotiation, dominance and power. Intakes on the Data Domotopia is given by two concrete cases about the time-space coverage of the habitual action space, and about inter-personal task allocation. These examples show the potential of the data to study domocentric stillness and resilience to urban pathologies. The data – aggregated to the infra-communal level – is available for research purposes.