From Informal Addresses to Reliable Places: Participatory Data Governance of Civic Addressing in Puerto Rico

Juan A. Padilla

arxiv: 2605.02924 · v1 · submitted 2026-04-23 · 💻 cs.HC · cs.CY

From Informal Addresses to Reliable Places: Participatory Data Governance of Civic Addressing in Puerto Rico

Juan A. Padilla This is my paper

Pith reviewed 2026-05-09 20:35 UTC · model grok-4.3

classification 💻 cs.HC cs.CY

keywords civic addressingparticipatory data governancereliable placesgeolocationtransitional artifactsPuerto Ricoaddress formalization

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The pith

Reliable Places emerge as transitional artifacts where civic address reliability develops through participatory use, enabling services and formal pathways.

A machine-rendered reading of the paper's core claim, the machinery that carries it, and where it could break.

The paper frames the absence of formal addresses as a data governance challenge best addressed through community participation. It introduces Reliable Places as a mechanism where a location's reliability is established by its practical use in services rather than official designation alone. This allows immediate benefits like emergency response while building toward standardized addresses. Readers might care because it provides a bottom-up path to improve infrastructure in regions with historical addressing gaps without requiring top-down formalization first.

Core claim

Reliable Places are transitional governance artifacts through which place reliability emerges via use, enabling services while supporting pathways toward formal civic address assignment in contexts like Puerto Rico where formal addresses are absent.

What carries the argument

Reliable Places as transitional governance artifacts that gain reliability through use in participatory data governance.

If this is right

Actionable geolocations support essential services where formal addresses do not exist.
Participatory processes help build place reliability over time.
This approach creates pathways from informal locations to standardized civic addresses.
Data governance becomes more adaptive to real-world usage patterns.

Where Pith is reading between the lines

These are editorial extensions of the paper, not claims the author makes directly.

Similar transitional artifacts could apply to other informal data systems such as land records or resource mapping.
Community-driven verification might accelerate adoption in additional regions facing addressing challenges.
Long-term outcomes could include measurable improvements in service equity for historically underserved areas.

Load-bearing premise

That place reliability emerges via participatory use and that this process effectively supports pathways to formal civic address assignment.

What would settle it

If Reliable Places in the described project fail to show increased service access or faster formal address assignment compared to similar informal locations, the central claim would not hold.

read the original abstract

This paper examines civic addressing as a problem of participatory data governance. Drawing on a project developed through the U.S. Census Bureau's The Opportunity Project with engagement from FEMA, we describe the use of actionable geolocations to support services where formal addresses are absent. We introduce Reliable Places as transitional governance artifacts through which place reliability emerges via use, enabling services while supporting pathways toward formal civic address assignment.

Editorial analysis

A structured set of objections, weighed in public.

Desk editor's note, referee report, simulated authors' rebuttal, and a circularity audit. Tearing a paper down is the easy half of reading it; the pith above is the substance, this is the friction.

Desk Editor's Note private letter to a colleague

This is a descriptive case study of a Puerto Rico addressing project that coins 'Reliable Places' as a framing device but offers no data or mechanisms to support the claim that reliability emerges from use.

read the letter

The paper walks through a real project that uses participatory methods to generate actionable geolocations in parts of Puerto Rico without formal addresses. It ties the work to the Census Bureau's Opportunity Project and FEMA involvement, and it introduces Reliable Places as transitional artifacts that supposedly gain reliability through actual use, which then supports services and opens paths to formal assignment. That framing is the main new piece. It gives a concrete way to talk about the gap between informal and formal civic data systems, and the government connections make the description feel grounded in practice rather than purely theoretical. The practical angle on disaster response and service delivery in similar regions is also useful to see laid out. The main weakness is the absence of any supporting detail on the central claim. There are no metrics for what counts as reliability, no before-and-after numbers on service access or formalization rates, no description of the participation process or validation steps, and no account of how use actually produces the reliability effect. The argument rests on stating that the dynamic works without showing the process or outcomes. This leaves the contribution at the level of a project narrative rather than a substantiated finding. Readers working in civic tech, urban informatics, or participatory data governance would get some value from the case details and the new term, especially if they are looking for examples to adapt. It is not the kind of paper that supplies reusable methods or falsifiable results. I would send it to peer review as a case study. Referees could ask for the missing evidence on mechanisms and outcomes, which would either strengthen it or clarify its limits.

Referee Report

1 major / 0 minor

Summary. The paper examines civic addressing as a participatory data governance challenge, drawing on a U.S. Census Bureau Opportunity Project collaboration with FEMA in Puerto Rico. It describes the use of actionable geolocations to support services in the absence of formal addresses and introduces 'Reliable Places' as transitional governance artifacts through which place reliability is said to emerge via participatory use, enabling services while supporting pathways to formal civic address assignment.

Significance. If the central dynamic holds, the work could contribute a useful conceptual framework to HCI and civic technology literatures on data governance in informal or disaster-affected settings, highlighting transitional artifacts that bridge informal and formal systems. The project context with Census and FEMA involvement provides a concrete grounding that could inform design and policy if mechanisms and outcomes were documented.

major comments (1)

[Abstract] Abstract: The claim that 'place reliability emerges via use' is load-bearing for the entire contribution yet is presented without any mechanisms (e.g., feedback loops, validation protocols, or governance rules), metrics (e.g., usage thresholds, reliability indicators, or transition rates), or project-specific evidence (e.g., before/after service access counts or formal address formalization numbers). This leaves the causal pathway from participatory use to reliability and formalization unsubstantiated.

Simulated Author's Rebuttal

1 responses · 0 unresolved

We thank the referee for their constructive comments, which help clarify how to better substantiate the core contribution. We address the single major comment below and indicate planned revisions.

read point-by-point responses

Referee: [Abstract] Abstract: The claim that 'place reliability emerges via use' is load-bearing for the entire contribution yet is presented without any mechanisms (e.g., feedback loops, validation protocols, or governance rules), metrics (e.g., usage thresholds, reliability indicators, or transition rates), or project-specific evidence (e.g., before/after service access counts or formal address formalization numbers). This leaves the causal pathway from participatory use to reliability and formalization unsubstantiated.

Authors: We agree that the abstract condenses the central claim without sufficient detail on mechanisms or evidence, which risks leaving the causal pathway unclear. The full manuscript describes the participatory processes from the Census-FEMA collaboration, including iterative geolocation validation by community members and service providers, feedback loops where usage informed reliability updates, and observed enablement of services such as emergency response. However, these elements are not explicitly framed as mechanisms or metrics in a dedicated section. We will revise by (1) updating the abstract to reference the participatory validation and service-enablement pathways, and (2) adding a new subsection that details the observed governance rules, usage-based reliability indicators, and qualitative project evidence. Quantitative transition rates to formal addresses are not available because formal assignment remains a separate, longer-term governmental process outside the project's direct scope; we will note this limitation explicitly rather than claim unsubstantiated numbers. revision: partial

Circularity Check

0 steps flagged

No circularity: conceptual introduction without derivations or self-referential reductions

full rationale

The paper is a descriptive account of a civic addressing project that introduces the term 'Reliable Places' as transitional artifacts. No equations, predictions, fitted parameters, or derivation chains appear in the abstract or described content. The central claim defines the new concept directly in terms of its intended properties (reliability emerging via use) without claiming that this follows from prior independent results, self-citations, or fitted inputs. No load-bearing steps reduce by construction to the paper's own inputs, and the work remains self-contained as a proposal rather than a mathematical or empirical derivation.

Axiom & Free-Parameter Ledger

0 free parameters · 0 axioms · 1 invented entities

The central claim rests on the introduction of 'Reliable Places' as a new conceptual entity whose utility and emergence mechanism are asserted without independent evidence or detailed validation in the abstract.

invented entities (1)

Reliable Places no independent evidence
purpose: transitional governance artifacts through which place reliability emerges via use
Newly postulated concept introduced to describe the project's approach to bridging informal and formal addressing.

pith-pipeline@v0.9.0 · 5350 in / 1288 out tokens · 52086 ms · 2026-05-09T20:35:18.101870+00:00 · methodology

discussion (0)

Reference graph

Works this paper leans on

9 extracted references · 9 canonical work pages

[1]

From Informal Addresses to Reliable Places: Participatory Data Governance of Civic Addressing in Puerto Rico1 1 This paper is a preprint of a workshop paper accepted at the CHI 2026 Workshop on Participatory Data Governance at the CHI 2026 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Juan A. Padilla Computer Science and Engineering Department Univers...

work page 2026
[2]

Street Addresses Are Simple — But Not in Puerto Rico. U.S. Census Bureau, Washington, DC, USA. Available: https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2020/01/street-addresses-are-simple-not-in-puerto-rico.html (Accessed: Jan. 10, 2026)

work page 2020
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MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA

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work page doi:10.7551/mitpress/6352.001.0001
[5]

The Opportunity Project, Census Open Innovation Labs

Transforming local addressing systems in Puerto Rico. The Opportunity Project, Census Open Innovation Labs. U.S. Census Bureau, Washington, DC, USA. Available: https://opportunity.census.gov/sprints/2022-sprints/ (Accessed: Feb. 9, 2026)

work page 2022
[6]

Social Studies of Science 43, 2 (2013), 241–264

Infrastructuring and the formation of publics in participatory design. Social Studies of Science 43, 2 (2013), 241–264. https://doi.org/10.1177/0306312712471581

work page doi:10.1177/0306312712471581 2013
[7]

place”’ and “space

Re-space-ing place: Place and space ten years on. In Proceedings of the 2006 20th Anniversary Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW ’06). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 299–308. https://doi.org/10.1145/1180875.1180921

work page doi:10.1145/1180875.1180921 2006
[8]

Human–Machine Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Actions, 2nd ed.; Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK, 2012

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work page doi:10.1017/cbo9780511808418
[9]

International Journal of Human–Computer Studies 62, 3 (2005), 381–422

The mechanics of trust: A framework for research and design. International Journal of Human–Computer Studies 62, 3 (2005), 381–422. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2005.01.001

work page doi:10.1016/j.ijhcs.2005.01.001 2005

[1] [1]

From Informal Addresses to Reliable Places: Participatory Data Governance of Civic Addressing in Puerto Rico1 1 This paper is a preprint of a workshop paper accepted at the CHI 2026 Workshop on Participatory Data Governance at the CHI 2026 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Juan A. Padilla Computer Science and Engineering Department Univers...

work page 2026

[2] [2]

Street Addresses Are Simple — But Not in Puerto Rico. U.S. Census Bureau, Washington, DC, USA. Available: https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2020/01/street-addresses-are-simple-not-in-puerto-rico.html (Accessed: Jan. 10, 2026)

work page 2020

[3] [3]

Information Systems Research , publisher =

Steps toward an ecology of infrastructure: Design and access for large information spaces. Information Systems Research 7, 1 (1996), 111–134. https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.7.1.111

work page doi:10.1287/isre.7.1.111 1996

[4] [4]

MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA

Sorting things out: Classification and its consequences. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/6352.001.0001

work page doi:10.7551/mitpress/6352.001.0001

[5] [5]

The Opportunity Project, Census Open Innovation Labs

Transforming local addressing systems in Puerto Rico. The Opportunity Project, Census Open Innovation Labs. U.S. Census Bureau, Washington, DC, USA. Available: https://opportunity.census.gov/sprints/2022-sprints/ (Accessed: Feb. 9, 2026)

work page 2022

[6] [6]

Social Studies of Science 43, 2 (2013), 241–264

Infrastructuring and the formation of publics in participatory design. Social Studies of Science 43, 2 (2013), 241–264. https://doi.org/10.1177/0306312712471581

work page doi:10.1177/0306312712471581 2013

[7] [7]

place”’ and “space

Re-space-ing place: Place and space ten years on. In Proceedings of the 2006 20th Anniversary Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW ’06). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 299–308. https://doi.org/10.1145/1180875.1180921

work page doi:10.1145/1180875.1180921 2006

[8] [8]

Human–Machine Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Actions, 2nd ed.; Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK, 2012

Human–machine reconfigurations: Plans and situated actions (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511808418

work page doi:10.1017/cbo9780511808418

[9] [9]

International Journal of Human–Computer Studies 62, 3 (2005), 381–422

The mechanics of trust: A framework for research and design. International Journal of Human–Computer Studies 62, 3 (2005), 381–422. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2005.01.001

work page doi:10.1016/j.ijhcs.2005.01.001 2005