Prototyping open digital tools for urban commoning

The paper will discuss an experimental co-design approach to the development of a digital toolkit prototype and a resulting set of co-design principles, which are put forward as a way of infrastructuring future design of digital tools for urban commoning. Focus is placed on the case study of a commoning hub in a Parisian suburb where the toolkit was co-designed through a series of prototyping workshops, carried out with hub users and addressing key hub needs. The prototyping process explored possibilities for re-appropriating and re-framing existing digital technologies as open toolkits, which can be further re-purposed by users, here and beyond, after the design of an initial toolkit prototype

Urban self-organising groups as users of digital artefacts:Nordic experiences

Abstract The aim of the article is to present and discuss the results of a qualitative meta-analysis of a series of explorative case studies on the use of digital artefacts by self-organised communities in Aarhus, Denmark and Helsinki, Finland. Drawing on a conceptual framework on participation in the design of information and communication technologies as well as in urban planning, we ask and answer the following questions: What are the digital artefact ecologies of self-organised communities and movements? What are the challenges that self-organised communities and movements face in relation to their information technology needs? And, how can co-governance with public-private- people partnerships support the digital needs of self-organising groups

Exploring e-planning practices in different contexts: Similarities and differences between Helsinki and Sydney

As planners and decision-makers experiment with information and communication technologies (ICTs), it's important to explore and analyze these attempts in different planning systems and contexts. The aim of the article is to compare the use of and aspirations attached to e-planning in Helsinki, Finland and Sydney, Australia. This comparison will highlight the interrelationship between planning context and its amenability to an e-planning approach and shows there are shared themes in both cases: firstly, the complexity involved in reconciling the aims of the e-planning experiments and their connection to the planning process itself (roles, objectives, implementation of tools and processes). Secondly, the way that e-planning opens up cracks in the façade of administration, and thirdly, the ways in which e-planning provides possibilities to reshape existing planning procedures. The authors argue that the different planning and governance contexts affect the adoption of e-planning and this adoption is necessarily a selective process