meta-Flâneur
URBANISM creating better cities using locative media, neurotechnology and AI
Stefania Maria Kousoula IAAC Scholarship Competition 2020 2nd place
meta-Flâneur
URBANISM creating better cities using locative media, neurotechnology and AI Cities grow, evolve and transform on their selves from traces of the past and the present. These traces, which can be interpreted as layers are a mixture of social, economic, functional and aesthetic elements that create the city of today. However, in the digital era of today, a new layer is added to the city, the one of the digital data which are restructuring the flows and the experience of the modern city.
It is α common strategy of urban planning to analyze data such as roads, fills and voids, buildings, green spaces etc. Although these data are always useful for planning the urban tissue, the personal experience is not always being considered as a crucial factor of urban planning. But how would the city be if during the process of urban planning we take in account the emotions that the users have during their days and nights in the city?
The digital tools that we use every day through our phone can be really useful for mapping an urban experience. We experience the transition from an analog map to a “smart” map. The use of locative media and personal maps can be used as a type of modern psychogeography. New technologies give the possibility to “customize” the old analog map. Every user has the opportunity to have his own, subjective interpretation of the city, which is based in his personal experiences.
What is more, neurotechnology applications and AI technology are evolving rapidly giving the possibilities for their use to urban planning.
Flaneur is the “stroller”, the “lounger. Flânerie is the act of strolling, with all of its accompanying associations. Georg Simmel, on 1903, in his essay “The Metropolis and Mental Life”, cited that the complexities of the modern city create new social bonds and new attitudes towars other. Some years later Henry Lefebvre observed that modern society has taken away from its members the spatial personal experience, citing that it a mental construction. For him and the Situanitionists, space is a reproduction or a conception that is produced experientially from the user. The aim of the Situanitionists’ strategies was the creation of moments, situations and experiences in the urban space. Meta from the Greek μετά-meaning “after” or “beyond”. Meta-Flâneur is the wanderer of the digital age, the wanderer of today that he is immersed in his environment seeking experiences, without any spatial or time boundaries; that he is always active in the physical urban space as well as in the digital.
meta-Flâneur
URBANISM creating better cities using locative media, neurotechnology and AI Flaneur Urbanism has three phases: night
day source: atnight.ws
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Data from Locative media
Data from Neurotechnology applications
Data from Artificial Intelligence agents
Using the data from apps like Google Maps, City Mapper, Foursquare etc to determine most and least favorite places of interest, routes and urban spaces that people are saving and enjoying for example, in Barcelona.
Using neurotechnology applications such as machines that track down the brain activity during a walk in the city can map the places that people have more good and more bad emotions, such as joy, calmness, nostalgia, bliss, gratitude, enthusiasm, stress, fear, anger etc.
Using Artificial Intelligence to simulate and predict how people’s emotions are affected with specific design decisions. Thus, user experience and emotions have a crucial part in the process of urban planning.
meta-Flâneur
URBANISM creating better cities using locative media, neurotechnology and AI
the final product Taking in account data from neurotechnology devices and locative media such as emotions, behaviors, movements and flows of the citizens of Barcelona, while overlapping them with the existing urban tissue of the city, we will have a clear view of the places that people are attracted to as well as the parts of the city that they avoid. Thus, we will have a first plan for short-term urban interventions as well as looking at a bigger scale, a strategy for a better experienced city. At the same time, asking from citizens to help with this process, either through their digital or physical traces, makes the process of planning the city more participatory and experiential. On the other hand, by using Artificial Intelligence we can predict and simulate how people will react to short-term but surely to long-term urban interventions. In this way, urban planning and design will become more accurate in terms of citizens’ needs, emotions, behaviors and experience.