The idea of the Property Development Datasniffer is a device to take on bat walks, which ‘detects’ planning applications. It’s been inspired by my recent work with housing activists investigating the London Development Database. This database contains every major planning application in London since 2004, so is an intriguing source of data on how London has changed. It also gives insights into what decisions where made, where, and by who.

It builds on my previous work creating a very simple land registry datasniffer, which allows you to locate housing sales in space while walking around at night. While this device was fun, I felt the relationship between house sales and bats was a little too oblique, perhaps? Or perhaps not. There certainly might be a relationship - as house prices rise, incentives to develop in the area might increase, which might effect bats (and might be complicated by them). But the planning system is more directly entangled with bats, and so the London Development database runs close to the point in which bats begin to have a subtle shaping influence.

The image to the right is one I am preparing for Sidekick Book’s forthcoming volume Battalion. More on that another time…

Going from the present, primitive, Land Registry Datasniffer to this will take some doing. The obvious tasks are as follows:

• Investigate the London Development Database so I have both sufficient geolocation data and sufficient granularity of other data to make this device tenable.
• Adapt the Nightsteps software to be able to read and use the London Development Database.
• Create noisemaking attachments which are sufficiently rich to articulate the presence of different planning applications.
• Find a convincing way to turn the data into high frequency noise.
• Construct easy to use controls and an attractive casing for the device.

It looks like I’ve got my work cut out for me!