Participatory urban planning is seen as an important aspect of developing local democracy, as some of the interviewees in my research mentioned (T. Kesarovski, personal communication, January 27, 2022). With city-users being co-owners of the city and providing valuable knowledge from a non-experts perspective for the munici-palities about how the city is experienced, it is widely accepted that residents themselves should be more involved in the processes of shaping their urban environment (B. Herlo, personal communication, February 04, 2022).In order to involve city-users in local planning processes, there has been a recent shift away from traditional, analog practices toward the use of technological means. However, the current implementation of digital tools, which is primarily limited on the desktop, is still either unsuitable or cumbersome for many people (S. Rott, personal com-munication, January 31, 2022). During my research I observed that these traditional practices got mainly replicated as digital platforms instead of rethinking participatory methods in general. This is one of the main causes which lead to the fact that the same homogenous group of people remain involved and committed to these projects. The efforts of the municipalities to integrate especially young people in such processes, who so far represent an absolute minority, still remains an unresolved challenge.In this project I explore technological possibilities in order to create a participation culture on the go and therefore offer a more flexible opportunity to participate in planning processes. Consequently, I explore technological ways to engage a broader range of people, focusing primarily on digital natives among the cities residents. In doing so, I develop a framework based on the concept of contextual experiences to see whether mobile devices can serve as a gateway to more meaningful participatory methods and raise awareness of urban change.The mobile application leverages situated and lightweight inter-actions to enable citizens to reflect and comment on their given surroundings. By taking advantages of emerging technologies, the city-users are enabled to participate in engaging ways and experi-ence urban projects through its visualisations in context. This project is grounded in the notion of the surrounding environment and the experience in context, rather than solely on the technology itself.Rather than replacing traditional methods, the project is intended to serve as a complement to traditional participation methods by providing an engaging, flexible, and easy entry point to participatory planning opportunities.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:umu-197516 |
| Date | January 2022 |
| Creators | Schussmann, Barbara |
| Publisher | Umeå universitet, Designhögskolan vid Umeå universitet |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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