A Geo-Spatial Information Model for Rurban Planning

The Indian context of planning primarily focuses on urban settlements comprising approximately 30% of our land area. The rest two-thirds are composed of spatially isolated rural communities which lack access to adequate infrastructure, services and connectivity for which the absence of a standardized planning methodology is a pertinent reason. Since a spatial entity is never disconnected from its context, planning is most effective when undertaken in the context of a region, joining settlements in need of physical, economic and social connectivity. Within a region, the availability of a multihierarchical geo-spatial database is fundamental to spatial planning, and research identifies that it requires conspicuous attention in our rural planning strategy. The proposed paper addresses this lacuna of data infrastructure at the micro-regional level. An example of micro-region is the rurban cluster, comprising several village settlements around a central town, displaying potential for spatially integrated development. The rurban cluster is in compliance with the Shyama Prasad Mukherji National Rurban Mission (SPMNRM), a flagship programme initiated by the Ministry of Rural Development (Government of India) in 2016. The planning, implementation and execution of this scheme also sufferes due to the lack of geo-spatial database management. Borrowing from past experiences in the country and abroad, this paper constructs a model for geo-spatial planning of rurban clusters. The model takes care of all the stages of rurban cluster planning such as delineation of the micro-region, database design and management, analysis, evolution of alternative scenarios and finally implementation and monitoringthrough geo-spatial information systems. Once developed and applied, it objectively evaluates the corresponding stages of the SPMNRM (non-spatial) and the new model (geo-spatial), to demonstrate how the latter adds value to the planning process and produces superior results on ground

Seeing the invisible: from imagined to virtual urban landscapes

Urban ecosystems consist of infrastructure features working together to provide services for inhabitants. Infrastructure functions akin to an ecosystem, having dynamic relationships and interdependencies. However, with age, urban infrastructure can deteriorate and stop functioning. Additional pressures on infrastructure include urbanizing populations and a changing climate that exposes vulnerabilities. To manage the urban infrastructure ecosystem in a modernizing world, urban planners need to integrate a coordinated management plan for these co-located and dependent infrastructure features. To implement such a management practice, an improved method for communicating how these infrastructure features interact is needed. This study aims to define urban infrastructure as a system, identify the systematic barriers preventing implementation of a more coordinated management model, and develop a virtual reality tool to provide visualization of the spatial system dynamics of urban infrastructure. Data was collected from a stakeholder workshop that highlighted a lack of appreciation for the system dynamics of urban infrastructure. An urban ecology VR model was created to highlight the interconnectedness of infrastructure features. VR proved to be useful for communicating spatial information to urban stakeholders about the complexities of infrastructure ecology and the interactions between infrastructure features.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2019.102559Published versio

An augmented reality study for public participation in urban planning

Ongoing urbanisation processes invoke immense construction activities, for which citizens often participate in planning. Yet, imagining planned buildings based on visual representations is a highly demanding task. While traditional methods, such as construction spans, 2D, or 3D visualisation often fail to offer a complete picture, we propose Augmented Reality (AR) as a more adequate tool. We first present an evaluation of the suitability of AR compared to construction spans for a future building and assess which degree of abstraction of AR is most effective, as well as difficulty of interpreting them correctly. In a between-subjects field study we compare construction spans and a prototype AR application including three levels of detail (LOD) of the same building project. Participants solve two estimation tasks using the construction spans and six estimation tasks using the AR application, before answering a questionnaire on the different visualisation methods. We find participants are confident about the potential of AR, but no significant differences between the different LOD groups in subjective assessment. Results suggest that previous knowledge (e.g. in GIS) may have a positive impact on dimension estimation performance. Also, details, such as façade elements or windows, could facilitate estimation tasks because they allow inferences about a building’s size

Program your city: Designing an urban integrated open data API

Cities accumulate and distribute vast sets of digital information. Many decision-making and planning processes in councils, local governments and organisations are based on both real-time and historical data. Until recently, only a small, carefully selected subset of this information has been released to the public – usually for specific purposes (e.g. train timetables, release of planning application through websites to name just a few). This situation is however changing rapidly. Regulatory frameworks, such as the Freedom of Information Legislation in the US, the UK, the European Union and many other countries guarantee public access to data held by the state. One of the results of this legislation and changing attitudes towards open data has been the widespread release of public information as part of recent Government 2.0 initiatives. This includes the creation of public data catalogues such as data.gov.au (U.S.), data.gov.uk (U.K.), data.gov.au (Australia) at federal government levels, and datasf.org (San Francisco) and data.london.gov.uk (London) at municipal levels. The release of this data has opened up the possibility of a wide range of future applications and services which are now the subject of intensified research efforts. Previous research endeavours have explored the creation of specialised tools to aid decision-making by urban citizens, councils and other stakeholders (Calabrese, Kloeckl & Ratti, 2008; Paulos, Honicky & Hooker, 2009). While these initiatives represent an important step towards open data, they too often result in mere collections of data repositories. Proprietary database formats and the lack of an open application programming interface (API) limit the full potential achievable by allowing these data sets to be cross-queried. Our research, presented in this paper, looks beyond the pure release of data. It is concerned with three essential questions: First, how can data from different sources be integrated into a consistent framework and made accessible? Second, how can ordinary citizens be supported in easily composing data from different sources in order to address their specific problems? Third, what are interfaces that make it easy for citizens to interact with data in an urban environment? How can data be accessed and collected

Open source urban planning for augmented citizens

Open source urban planning fas to be understood not as focusing on physical aspects of cities, but as approaching their transformation by understanding the behaviours and the social processes of the citizens and exploring alternatives to reconciliate them with physical realities designed in response to former social structures ans ways of life

The People's Smart Sculpture

The People’s Smart Sculpture (PS2) panel discusses future oriented approaches in smart media-art, developed, designed and exploited for artistic and public participation in the change and re-design of our living environment. The actual debate about a smart future is not taking into account any idea of media art as an instrument for to realize the social sculpture, mentioned by Beuys [1] or as social sculpture itself. The People’s Smart Sculpture is the only large scale Creative Europe media-art project (2014-2018) in this context. It fosters participative-art and collaborative media-art-processes. The artistic results and the open approaches of the project will be discussed by 5 panelists from 5 countries. The project itself is constituted by 12 project-partners in 8 European countries with more than 350 artists and creatives from 29 countries worlwide. The approach works on two levels: the implementation of cultural participation-projects by media-artists and the ongoing optimization of the art and participation aspects. PS2 integrates diverse groups of people to participate in the non-institutional set up of structures for the people´s re-design of their urban,societal and living environment. Artists, citizens, creatives with a new user's perception and new skills are able to „medialize“ the Cultural Revolution of art, culture, society and science: into spaces of a new public

Tokyo behind Screens: Participant Observation in a City of Mobile Digital Communication

This paper critically discusses the method of participant observation (as ethnographic method and everyday practice), which consists of participation, observation and mediation, and suggests adjustments, through the lens of perception, which seem necessary in smartphone-saturated cities. The author argues that digital and material forms of mediation lead to different possibilities and limitations of sensory perception. These therefore need to be consciously acknowledged in the social production and construction of space and place. Through a focus on human perception, the challenges that individualised on-site media consumption provides to the concepts of participation, perception and mediation are discussed. In this regard, the interface, most prominently the screen, functions as a nexus that retranslates information through mediation back into the field of human perception. Mobile digital communication can therefore enrich the sphere of perception (at site), but what is digitally mediated is at the same time constrained by the technical and translational possibilities of the medium and the interface. The case study of the Shimokitazawa Curry Festival in Tokyo is used to show how participation, multisensory perception and mediation are practiced in an urban setting. The same case also provides empirical data concerning multisensory participation as a method that is facing new challenges through increasing mobile digital communication

European Standards for Vocational Training in Urban Regeneration

SATURN is the Leonardo da Vinci funded project developed by a partnership of Edinburgh World Heritage, Warsaw School of Economics, CEIT Alanova and IURS (Institut pro udržitený rozvoj sídel o.s.). The project aims to establish a framework for vocational studies in urban regeneration. One of the key questions this project raises is: what range of skills and knowledge professionals should have to enable them to define issues accurately and find the most suitable solutions for urban regeneration? The SATURN project provides a set of manuals and recommendations for students, learners, and professionals in the field of urban regeneration. The real value of SATURN comes from its practical dimension and input from practitioners actively involved in city planning and the processes of urban regeneration