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.
Can digital technologies enable citizens to act on collectively shared issues?
(…)
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. (…)
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? (…)
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? (…)
I’m currently working on a project that will use information streamed via our preferred social networks to arouse citizen action. From my recent blog post “on global citizens and avatars”:
As isolated as may feel in a world of 7 billion people, there is one hero that is surging ahead, thriving on openness and mastering all the skills learned through three or four generations of social networks: our avatar. That smiling, fearless, handsome self-portrait not afraid of making up a few stories to find a place in the collective streams of strangers…
