Speculative enactments for urban digital twins & public participation

Cities want to give birth to their own twins, on a computer.<br/><br/>The urban digital twin is a digital copy of the city constructed from heaps of data rather than concrete, and it is being heralded as the driver for Smart Cities: by collecting more and more data and processing it in more and more sophisticated models we would monitor, predict...

Exploring shared understandings of future AI systems through design

The focus of this project was building shared understandings of future AI systems through design. Based on the literature study on the Explainability of AI, two main gaps were identified: the stakeholder's backgrounds are not accounted for during the design of systems and there is a need for a more holistic approach considering social and...

Design for Responsible Use of Surveillance Cameras in Public Space

Surveillance cameras have become increasingly prevalent in public areas worldwide, including in Amsterdam. In Amsterdam, the number and intensity of surveillance cameras in public spaces, such as streets, parks, and plazas, have reportedly increased, even in locations where they were already well-established. In addition to the growing number of...

Urban Voices: Citizen Voice: An innovative Open-source Map-based tool for effective public participation

Cities around the world constitute complex systems, as sets of sub-components that are connected and interact with each other. Due to this inherent complexity, there are numerous emerging challenges that need to be tackled. In those complex environments, various-interest groups collaborate and compete to achieve their goals and interests,...

Living with Micro Mobility in 2030: Presenting a Speculative Design

Micro mobility services aim to offer people new and more convenient modes of transport, usually across urban areas. In order to achieve this they make use of public space to implement their infrastructure on, for example by allowing people to freely park a vehicle almost anywhere in the city. One can imagine that this has a major impact on how...

You have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide?: Designing a tour that enables citizens of Utrecht to critically reflect about the collection and use of their personal data and its privacy consequences within the smart city

In 2008 more than 50 percent of all people, 3.3 billion people, lived in urban areas according to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA - United Nations Population Fund, n.d.). By 2030 this will be approximately 5 billion (Lea, 2017). On the one hand, with fast urban growth also come challenges in the way we build and manage cities. On the...