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.
The link shows you a must read interview for students, teachers and deans of every urban design and urbanism schools.
The entrance is not the only awesome thing about Parsons New School. Two recently launched Masters courses are aiming to transform the way we think about cities. Read all about it on This Big City.
帕森設計學院傑出之處，絕不只有入口，該校新推出兩項碩士課程，期望改變人們思考城市的方式。詳情請見《城事》。
Source: thisbigcity
Urban design and architecture have become responsive professions. It is typical to be given a problem or a project from a client and then asked to respond to their needs. PORT A U is interested in reverting that situation. We want our design and research to showcase an existing condition and showcase the present potentials. We promote an idea through our work rather than just responding to a client.
- Christopher Marcinkoski
Source: mascontext.com
Learning from Hamar
”(…) Educated as an architect and urban designer I have the same experience as most architects have – dealing with projects shifting from conception to realization. Up until now any project I have worked on had a similar way of developing: Meeting he clients, receiving the programme, site and budget, researching and developing it with other experts, making it work together in the most creative and innovative way.
With dreamhamar, the network design methods, and the fact that we are going to be physically onsite, the project is due to undergo many alterations in addition to the ones that usually take place.
“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans” said John Lennon, This is what I feel is happening in Hamar. We have made preliminary design, we are holding workshops and other activities locally and globally – some of them were planned, some of them are spontaneous -, but what really matters is the community that is bein created around Stortorget Square through this process. To build a square we need to build a community first. A community is the foundation of a square. And the truth is, that the steps for building a community are impossible to plan. We can provide the setting, we can offer activities, but is up to you, to the people, to create that community or not.
For me, an architect, this is also about learning from Hamar. I can see Hamariens looking at themselves, defining themselves. I am also an outsider looking at and trying to understand Hamar. Like the pizza network design style, it is about tasting the igredients before mixing them together, and about getting people to think, work and enjoy a pizza long before it gets in the in the oven. People are curious about me too.
Some of them have asked me “What do you dream for Hamar?””
Excerpt from Learning from Hamar | dreamhamar by @dolceoblio
Source: dreamhamar.org
