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Social Cities of Tomorrow conference text. By Michiel de Lange & Martijn de Waal

Excerpts from Social Cities of Tomorrow conference text by Michiel de Lange & Martijn de Waal.

Note: The bolds are mine.

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Can digital technologies enable citizens to act on collectively shared issues?

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We see three promising interrelated developments where urban technologies may be used to create livable and lively cities.

1. Data-commons

Sensing technologies and networked urban media create vast amounts of data about a wide range of urban processes and practices. These data can become a valuable resource, a platform on top of which new services and infrastructures can be built. We will explore how these new resources can be harvested and opened up, and turned into useful information and applications that are available to everyone. Furthermore, we will investigate how these datasets can be used to bring out, visualise and manage collective issues.

2. Sense of place and a feeling of ‘ownership’

To engage people with communally shared issues, it is essential that people envision themselves as part of the urban fabric, and understand that their individual actions make a difference to the common good. They also need to trust other urbanites to act accordingly. How can digital media be employed to foster a shared sense of belonging and responsibility, and a feeling that indeed the city is ‘ours’ to take and shape? We will explore how digital tools for story-telling, urban games, data visualisations and interactive media facades can help foster a sense of place and a sense of ‘ownership’.

3. DIY urban design & networked publics

‘Networked publics’ are groups of people that use social media and other digital technologies to organise themselves around collective goals or issues. In online culture, networks of ‘professional amateurs’ create ‘user generated content’ or take part in ‘citizen science’ projects. Think of open source software or Wikipedia as successful examples. Can we port these principles from online culture, like self-organisation and collective action, to urban life in order to make it more ‘social’ as well? We will look at the ways in which new media technologies can be employed to involve citizens in designing their own city, and to include them in governing urban issues. We will explore how these technologies can be used to create and manage publics around common pool resources, varying from car sharing to urban gardening.

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The event Social Cities of Tomorrow is also intended as an alternative to the increasingly popular idea of ‘smart’ or ‘intelligent’ cities.