Mediaattori – Urban Mediator A hybrid infrastructure for neighborhoods

This design research project investigates the area of designing at the boundaries of digital and physical urban space. Its aim is to present cities with a direction for the future that addresses the possibilities presented by the interweaving of new digital technologies and urban space, for empowering people in shaping their own city. The approach followed is not technologically driven but rather takes people’s everyday practices (de Certeau 1984) as the grounding point for the investigation. The design process is built upon dialogues with people and the urban environment as a way of gaining understanding of urban everyday practices and designing in harmony with them. The resulting design concept, Urban Mediator, illustrates a local and people-centered perspective for our urban futures. It proposes a hybrid infrastructure for urban neighborhoods. This combined digital and physical framework gives people the possibility to engage in improving the quality of their everyday urban environments and their experience of these environments. The concept, presented through scenarios, is developed as a working tool for catalyzing discussion between different stakeholders that would be involved in a future proposal for collaborative design for cities. The thesis has been produced under the umbrella of the ARKI research group, at the Media Lab of the University of Art and Design

On DIY Cloth Face Masks and Scalar Relationships in Design

In this paper, we take the case of Do-It-Yourself (DIY) face masks as an entry point to questions of scale and scalar relations in design. We provide two example scalar trajectories that illustrate how DIY face masks - as everyday design artefacts - are in continuous shaping and re-shaping through various forms of active use and design. We also point out how scalar relations manifest in knowledge sharing and circulation of know-how, as DIY masks emerge in a world facing the same COVID-19 virus but within different local realities and relationships.Peer reviewe

When Self-Organization Intersects with Urban Planning: Two Cases from Helsinki

Participation as self-organization has emerged as a new form of citizen activism, often supported by digital technology. A comparative qualitative analysis of two case studies in Helsinki indicates that the self-organization of citizens expands the practice of urban planning. Together, they enable the mobilization of different groups around issues related to urban space. The consequences have become visible in temporary uses of places, event making and community development through bottom-up cultures. However, the lacking links to decision-making constrains new solutions and creative actions.Peer reviewe

Exploring E-Planning Practices in Different Contexts

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.Peer reviewe

Towards Peer-production in Public Services: cases from Finland

Drawing from a case-study on Helsinki Home Care, the authors identify institutional impacts of new service development in the context of public service delivery, posed by the increasingly collaborative nature of service development and delivery. The authors illustrate the change through identification of characteristics embedded in the traditional professional logic, and the new service logic. With this, the paper contributes to the theoretical discussion on service innovation and collaborative service creation, showing that solely the technical, organizational or commercial perspectives are insufficient in understanding the service development process. This paper further widens the discussion about public service innovation using the institutional change framework. There are many challenges and opportunities in designing, developing and maintaining services for participatory modes of governance, not to mention their co-creation and peer-to-peer aspects. We ask what can be learned from the current research, and what is happening already beyond academia? With the aim to increase the opportunities for dialogue between the Finnish scene and the international context, we have gathered this collection of articles that deal broadly with the relationships between peer-to-peer dynamics, and public services. Most of the cases presented are illustrative of recent developments and discussions in Finnish society, however, also included are broader international perspectives, giving historical reflection and future-oriented speculation on how peer production might affect the structures of our society