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Accepted 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.
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.
Multispecies urbanism: future of inclusive smart city design
Session 1 Thursday 18 July, 2024, -