Eindhoven Hackable World City: speculating on future investments for the city

Posted on February 1, 2013 by Michiel de Lange

Eindhoven Hackable World City
by: Matthijs Bouw, Froukje van de Klundert, Michiel de Lange en Martijn de Waal, Amsterdam, 2013 (pdf 2.2 MB)

A while ago The Mobile City (Martijn and I) was invited by Amsterdam based architecture and planning firm One Architecture to collaborate on a research project about the possible future of urban planning and policy in the Netherlands. The project was commissioned by Deltametropool Network for Metropolitan Development.

One of the outcomes of this collaboration is the publication ‘Eindhoven Hackable World City‘ (in Dutch, pdf 2.2 MB) in which we present our ideas about the future of the Eindhoven city region, and the role of technologies therein.

For the non-Dutch: Eindhoven is the fifth-largest city in the Netherlands. Together with a number of other municipalities, Eindhoven is part of Brabant Stad, a metropolitan area with more than 2 million inhabitants. In 2011 Eindhoven was named world’s most intelligent community by Intelligent Community Forum. (Wikipedia)

Below the executive summary of the publication (the publication itself is in Dutch only):

Executive summary ‘Eindhoven Hackable World City’
Traditional urban planning in the Netherlands with top down master plans and large scale area development is over. This is partly due to the financial crisis, demographic change, peak mobility, and the digitization of urban society. The challenge of large future investment projects is to optimize and make better use of existing resources. Cities will have to adapt in flexible ways to changing circumstances. This implies an important conceptual shift in thinking about city making: it is less about individual possession and more about the question how multiple stakeholders can make use of the various resources that the city offers.

Digital media play an essential role in developing the instruments that allow a shift of gears to happen. The question is: how are we going to make use of these technologies? On the one hand local governments, technology companies en knowledge institutions are forming consortia to turn cities into ‘smart cities’ with the aid of informatics. Digital technologies are used to optimize urban processes and make them more efficient, like mobility and healthcare. On the other hand citizens and cultural organizations are increasingly often taking matters into their own hands. Tapping into the online culture and ethics of do-it-yourself (DIY), they take ownership over their city and undertake collective action: from collaboratively maintaining urban gardens to creating sensor networks to measure noise pollution or air quality.

We think these initiatives are too isolated to really offer a sustainable future perspective on urban transformation. The smart city departs too much from a utilitarian view of the good city but forgets the public domain and diversity of identities of urbanites. The bottom-up initiatives in the so-called ‘social city‘ on the other hand are often too fragmented. They are insufficiently connected to institutional stakeholders and lack impact and scalability. They also sometimes suffer from a ‘people-like-us’ mentality that seems to implicitly yearn for small-scale sociability rather than drawing on the potential of complex and heterogeneous city life.

These developments take place all over the world. In the Netherlands the city of Eindhoven is one of the most interesting places. In few other cities the divide is as big between high-tech business innovation occurring at the city periphery and inner city urban (sub)cultures. In this proposal we pose the question: how can we better connect ‘smart city’ and ‘social city’ in Eindhoven through research and design? The challenge is not to fall in the same trap of attempting to construct yet another grand narrative for top-down urban planning. We are more interested in exploring and creating the conditions for urban ownership of citizens and organizations. Can we connect businesses, governments and the cultural and societal sectors to collaboratively make Eindhoven a truly smart hackable world city with the aid of digital media technologies?

Radio show “Hoe?Zo!” about play, 12 December 2012 20:00 – 21:00 radio5

Posted on December 6, 2012 by Michiel de Lange

Next week on 12 December 2012 I’m one of the participants in the radio show Hoe?Zo!, about play, games and culture:

Hoe?Zo! legt spel op de snijtafel

Waarom spelen we? Hoe belangrijk is spel voor de ontwikkeling van een kind? Worden volwassenen tegenwoordig steeds speelser? Hoe belangrijk is spel voor onze cultuur? Welke invloed hebben games op ons gedrag? En wat doet spelen met je brein?

Hoe?Zo! zendt op woensdagavond 12 december van 20.00 tot 21.00 live uit vanuit het anatomische theater van Museum Boerhaave. De opname is te beluisteren op Radio 5.

Onder leiding van presentator Jeroen Dirks ontleden vier experts het fenomeen spel:
Louise Berkhout, gepromoveerd op spelgedrag bij jonge kinderen en docente aan de Hogeschool Leiden
Michiel de Lange, nieuwe media-onderzoeker aan de Universiteit Utrecht
David Nieborg, gamedeskundige en onderzoeker, Universiteit van Amsterdam
Louk Vanderschuren, hoogleraar neurobiologie van gedrag, UMC Utrecht

Wetenschappers met uiteenlopende achtergronden leggen elke twee maanden in Hoe?Zo! een onderwerp ‘Op de snijtafel’ van Museum Boerhaave. In het Anatomisch Theater werden vroeger openbare anatomische lessen gegeven: voor de ogen van een lekenpubliek werden lichamen uit elkaar gehaald. In die geest wordt telkens één thema zorgvuldig ontleed en van alle kanten bekeken.

Op de Snijtafel
Datum: Woensdag 12 december, live vanuit Museum Boerhaave, te beluisteren op Radio 5.
Tijd: Deuren open om 19.30 uur, uitzending start om 20.00 uur. Kom op tijd, het is live!
Toegang: Gratis
Locatie: Museum Boerhaave, Lange St. Agnietenstraat 10, 2312 WC Leiden, www.museumboerhaave.nl

Workshop report “How to engage citizens with the help of digital media”, Urbanism Week 2012 TU Delft

Posted on November 2, 2012 by Michiel de Lange

Introduction
A while back I was invited to give a talk and host a small workshop during the 2012 edition of Urbanism Week. This is a yearly event organized by Polis Platform for Urbanism, the study association for Master’s students in Urbanism in the Faculty of Architecture at Delft University of Technology. This year’s theme was “Second Hand Cities: rethinking practice in times of standstill”. The organizers put together a pretty impressive program filled with interesting speakers. The workshop I gave was called “How to engage citizens with the help of digital media”. Here’s an impression.

Program
12:30 − 12:45 Introduction Michiel de Lange
12:45 − 12:50 Form teams around issues
12:50 − 13:00 In teams, identify main issue to tackle (analysis phase)
13:00 − 13:10 Analyze stakeholders are involved and take a perspective (analysis phase)
13:10 − 13:30 Generate ideas (brainstorming phase)
13:30 − 14:00 Select one idea and start developing a rough prototype (prototyping phase)
14:00 − 14:30 Plenary presentations

In a handout (pdf) to the workshop participants I described the aim of the workshop in the following way:

The overarching aim is to use digital media technologies and principles in whatever form in the proposed design. The challenge is not only to use technologies but also to find out how to port collaborative principles from online culture to urban situations!
This can be in the process of gathering (new types of) information, in the creation of new networks of collaborators, enabling citizens to become active creators, in finding new financing, as part of the creative design process, as part of the proposed product or outcome, in the communication strategy, as a way to deal with maintenance, repair and repurposing, or in any other possible way you can think of.

“Ontwerpen voor de mediastad” talk CAST Tilburg, 25 Sept 2012

Posted on October 16, 2012 by Michiel de Lange

A while ago I gave a talk “Designing for the media city” (in Dutch) at a very interesting evening called ‘City, Play, and Digital Media‘. It took place at the cozy Bomenlounge, a flexible working space for creative industry freelancers. The evening was organized by Buro Evelien Pieters and CAST (Centrum for Architecture and Urbanism Tilburg).

Other speakers were Kars Alfrink (Hubbub), Ekim Tan (Play the City), and Sacha Stolp (Amsterdam municipality, project Amsterdam Wastelands).

Here’s the presentation I gave (in Dutch):

CAST made a report of the evening, which includes a video impression made by Tilburg WebTV (in Dutch):

Some future events…

Posted on September 12, 2012 by Michiel de Lange

September 25 2012
Will give a talk at “Stad, Spel en Digitale Media” at CAST in Tilburg. More >>

September 26 2012
Will give a talk and host a small workshop at the Urbanism Week 2012 in Delft. More >>

October 4 2012
Will participate in the event “Hands-on Urban Place-making: Cultural Interventions As Planning Tools Green City Dialogue” at the Floriade in Venlo. More >>

October 8 2012
Will give a talk at the City Think Lab evening themed “Playing the City” at Pakhuis De Zwijger in Amsterdam. More >>

Some past events…

Posted on September 12, 2012 by Michiel de Lange

May
Participated in a round table discussion with policy makers and humanities scholars. More >>

June
Presented at the event ‘Remediating Urban Space: Exploring Design Responses’ on 6 June 2012 at Plymouth University. More >>

Co-organized the Citizen Science conference at Utrecht University on 25 − 27 June 2012 in collaboration with Waag Society and 7Scenes . More >>

July
Developed and gave a six-day workshop at the Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design in Moskow. More >>

Gave a talk at the Dutch E-culture Days during the Design Week in Helsinki for Virtueel Platform. More >>

Reports on the ‘Designing for Ownership’ workshop at Strelka Institute, Moscow

Posted on August 2, 2012 by Michiel de Lange

From 9 − 14 July 2012 The Mobile City (in this case Marc Tuters and I) developed and gave a six-day workshop ’Designing for Ownership’ at the Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design in Moscow. The workshop is part of a series of Summer at Strelka workshops aimed at a practical change in the city’s microrayons. The microrayon where we did research and development is Yuzhnoye Medvedkovo (south Medvedkovo).

This workshop aims to help create an actual long-lasting change for the better in an urban neighborhood in Moskow. This is done by bringing together creative workshop participants and various neighborhood stakeholders (citizens, local government, businesses, neighborhood organizations, and so on). The workshop aims to find out how these different people can communicate better with each other, by making a prototype for a product, an event, or a service that acts as a catalyst for conversation.

The workshop also aspires to create a methodology for activating citizens with the aid of digital media technologies that could also be applied elsewhere. How can we design a process that allows people to feel ‘ownership’ over their living circumstances, and actively participate in making their environment a better place?

Read my reports of the six workshop days on the Partizaning Blog.

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mobile media & urbanism | Michiel de Lange