Paper short abstract:

This research introduces the case of the "Hanok," a traditional Korean housing form that embodies a unique architectural heritage, to discuss how the Hanok Village has adeptly navigated the resilient relationship between modernity and tradition, as well as development and preservation, and how technology facilitates the city's ongoing prosperity.

Paper long abstract:

This proposal aims to discuss the “Hanok,” representing a traditional Korean housing form that embodies a unique architectural heritage, and the case of Hanok Village in Jeonju City, renowned as one of South Korea's successful examples of urban revitalization and a prominent tourism destination. The success can be attributed to long-term strategic planning since the early 1990s, which has embraced aesthetical approaches, pivotal in preserving cultural heritage while fostering economic and regional sustainability. This has been achieved by facilitating dynamics among diverse stakeholders, including citizen and resident communities, small businesses such as artisans, restaurants, and hotels, as well as urban design professionals, supported by government policies that incentivize and coordinate development initiatives.

While the village has adeptly navigated the resilient relationship between modernity and tradition, development and preservation, there is a need to discuss the role and scope of digital technology in facilitating the city's ongoing prosperity. Given its critical agenda to invest and incorporate digital infrastructure to embody the concept of a smart city, its multifaceted influences can be further discussed by drawing from Henri Lefebvre's concepts including (1) the spatial realm - how technological aspects (e.g., digital mapping) influence or influenced by the form of housing, roads, and nodes; (2) the discursive realm – how the cultural identity has been both preserved and transformed amidst the infusion of digital concepts; (3) the lived space - how these changes resonate with and impact the daily lives of residents and visitors.

Paper short abstract:

This paper presents a comparative analysis of inclusive engagement methods, from three smart European cities, involving residents in the design and implementation of green solutions, highlighting the importance of inclusivity in diverse urban environments for addressing climate change challenges.

Paper long abstract:

Community engagement and co-creation play pivotal roles in the development and implementation of sustainable environmental solutions. Recently, there has been a growing recognition that addressing environmental challenges requires collective action and collaboration among diverse stakeholders, including local communities, governmental bodies, non-governmental organizations, and businesses. By involving community members in the decision-making process, projects can be designed in a way that reflect the unique socio-cultural and environmental contexts of the area. This maximizes the potential of successful implementation and long-term sustainability of the proposed solutions, fostering a sense of ownership, with mutual benefits for the involved parties.

To this end, co-creation emphasizes the importance of knowledge sharing among stakeholders. By bringing together individuals with diverse expertise and perspectives, co-creation encourages innovative thinking and the development of holistic approaches towards effective solutions for addressing environmental challenges. Therefore, the adoption of co-creation approaches becomes an increasingly essential tool through which communities can leverage their local knowledge alongside scientific expertise to devise effective strategies.

Following the above, the paper performs a comparative case study analysis in order to examine inclusive engagement methods that involve residents in the design and implementation of sustainable solutions, taking into account their diverse needs, preferences and local knowledge. Through three co-creative process examples from three major smart cities, London, Barcelona, and Copenhagen, we illustrate that participation through co-creation necessitates acknowledging the heterogeneity of citizens and taking seriously issues of urban social justice and inclusion.

Paper short abstract:

We use speculative storytelling to present the perspectives of different multispecies characters in a river ecology to rethink more-than-human smart cities and open up new possibilities for designing with urban data.

Paper long abstract:

In this talk we approach the context of an urban river as a site for reimagining designing smart cities. We use speculative storytelling and fabulation to explore urban data from the perspective of diverse non-human characters in a river ecology, including carp, algae, mayfly, pollution, cars, blue tit and the river itself. We take a flood event as a starting point and show how the different data relations between different species/characters surfaces their interdependencies and opens up new ways to approach the smart city. Through the river ecology we tell braided stories in first person of different inter-related species through time and space, which are changing due to climate change and human-activity. By presenting these intimate and personal stores of interconnection we show how some species adapt (or don’t). We use this creative storytelling as a design method to surface new way to think and make multispecies urbanism and approach data in smart cities.

We offer this talk as an experiment for designers to tackle multispecies data and smart cities in a new way. One thing we anticipate arising through this process is that through paying attention to non-humans we can learn from them, as has been shown in indigenous wisdoms (e.g. Drinkable Rivers, 2023; Wall Kimmerer, 2020).

Paper short abstract:

This presentation will discuss how we can reconsider the 'urban' as a site of ecological richness -as opposed to its usual pairing with pollution- and critically analyse the digital tools for detecting biodiversity and wildlife in the urban.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation will discuss how we can reconsider the 'urban' as a site of ecological richness -as opposed to its usual pairing with pollution- and critically analyse the digital tools for detecting wildlife in the urban. First, I will discuss how pollution is presented as an essentially 'urban crisis' in smart city proposals, where data-driven solutions perpetually postpone impending environmental destruction (Halpern and Günel, 2017). I will then use Simondon's concept of transduction to demonstrate the co-generative relationship between data and infrastructure and by building on this theoretical background, I will discuss how this process leads to the urban being defined by relational problems. Following this, I'll suggest to shift the focus to the ecological richness of urban environments by drawing on Matthew Gandy's (2022) Natura Urbana project. With this, I ask how we might find different ways of drawing attention to biodiversity by using digital media in urban environments. That is, how data and infrastructure in the urban environment can be positioned to celebrate the unique forms of vegetation and biodiversity at the edges of the built environment, as opposed to the dominant approach that equates it with environmental degradation. To illustrate this, I will critically discuss apps that are designed to record biodiversity and wildlife in the urban context to study what types of epistemologies they produce and circulate and whether these contribute to environmental justice in urban spaces.

Paper short abstract:

This contribution will focus on a hands-on workshop format tested with urban planners and developers. It builds on the method of critical making, combining hands-on prototyping with reflexivity - and adds speculative cityscapes overlaid with AI to uncover biases built into digital transformation.

Paper long abstract:

Digital transformation brings with itself numerous promises. Smart- and metacities are seen as drivers of economic development and a re-uptake in creativity in European cities.

This contribution will focus on a hands-on workshop format tested with urban planners and developers. We abstained from generating solutions to issues as it is usually done e.g. in design thinking. Instead, we focused on opening and exploring the problem space through prototyping and discussions.

The process is inspired by two important pieces of academic literature. First, Agre’s recommendations to include critical thinking and reflexivity in the design process, so that biases can be uncovered as early as possible (Agre 1997). Second, the method of the workshop itself, called Critical Making: "an elision of two typically disconnected modes of engagement in the world – ‚critical thinking,' often considered as abstract, explicit, linguistically based, internal and cognitively individualistic; and 'making,' typically understood as material, tacit, embodied, external and community-oriented" (Ratto & Hockema 2009).

The workshop made the invisible visible by creating speculative cityscapes. We created physical prototypes of neighborhoods, and then generated speculative overlays with AI to better understand the potential digital infrastructure behind smart and meta-cities. We asked reflexive questions, such as who is benefitting from this digital transformation, and who is left behind? Otherwise invisible digital infrastructures showed themselves, allowing participants to bring to light inherent biases, hurdles and potentially exclusive design.

In this contribution we will reflect on the potentials of such approaches for the city planning of the future.