Hinting Civic Futures

Abstract

By 2030, 70% of the world’s population will live in cities. With technological development, the focus of building a city has been changing over time. Currently, the urban construction is dominated by the dream of the built environment with embedded intelligence. Urban data streams are processed by algorithms which feed to the physical urban choreography, namely the Smart City. But what does this smart-dream-future vision mean to its citizens? People choose to live in the city for seeking out meaningful jobs, like-minded communities, exciting opportunities etc. People take delight not in urban technological wonders, but in how the city can empower them to fulfil their own dreams. And this is where cityness lies. Taken as an organic combination of the ‘nexus of technological infrastructure’ and the ‘concentration of humanity’, cityness reflects how people live in and live for the city.

The core of this project is to call for cityness in the future smart age. Hinting Civic Futures is a design practice that explores the alternative futures for cities in the smart age, concerned with interrelatedness of social and technical aspects. It stimulates a re-envisioning of urban solutions beyond traditional smart city. By exploring how people want to dwell in what kind of city in the future, Hinting Civic Futures strives to find the connection of functionality and desirability, where resides the cityness. And furthermore, to develop the notion cityness in a preferable direction.

By exploring next generation cities derived from positive value incentives and brings them alive, the project strives to uncover the composition of cityness. This will help further open up space about how cityness can be amplified in enacting policy-making, business-modelling and behavioural change.