#User involvement
Requests

Dear reader,

I am Estefanía Morás, and I am a master student in Industrial Design at the University of Twente, currently working on an exciting research project. This project focuses on supporting transdisciplinary, multi-stakeholder collaboration in smart city initiatives and is supervised by Dr.ir. Deger Ozkaramanli (link). Current issues in smart cities cannot be tackled by a single profession or a discipline, yet bringing together multiple stakeholders from different backgrounds requires tools and methods that are tailored to their needs to ensure fruitful collaboration. I would like to address this challenge by designing a toolkit (physical or digital) that will facilitate managing value conflicts that may emerge among various stakeholders when trying to jointly define a ‘problem’ or find ‘common ground’.

To do this properly, I need input from both researchers and practitioners. This will ensure that the toolkit will be both evidence-based (based on the latest scientific research) as well as relevant for practitioners working in smart city projects such as yourself. Would you be available for a 1-hour interview with me to discuss a specific smart city project that you have been involved in? The emphasis in this interview will be on the opportunities and challenges that emerged in the collaboration (the process) and not so much on specific smart city technologies.

The date of this interview entirely depends on your availability, but if possible, I would like to meet before the end of September.

As societal values change and the deployment of sensing technology becomes more ubiquitous, what are our digital rights in a 21st-century city?  This dilemma is forcing municipalities to make difficult decisions about practice versus the policy of collecting data from public space. In collaboration with the City of Amsterdam, The City Innovation Exchange Lab (CITIXL) has created the Responsible Sensing Toolkit -  a six-step process to help navigate this new landscape in a fast and effective way. The toolkit was co-designed by experienced city innovators to empower municipalities, organisations, and communities to implement open and inclusive sensing solutions for our 21st-century cities.

We are currently seeking cities to test the step-by-step process to guide the design and implementation of crowd sensing pilots in public spaces.  For complete details about the Toolkit and how your city can participate please visit http://www.citixl.com/responsible_sensing_toolkit/ or contact CITIXL co-founder Paul Manwaring at paul@citixl.com

Ben jij een ondernemer en is het voor jou ook lastig om tot samenwerking met gemeentes te komen? Vind je de (inkoop)procedures ook complex? Denk je ook dat Tenderned makkelijker en duidelijker zou kunnen zijn? En heb je hier ideeën over? Dan zoekt de Gemeente Amsterdam jou! Met jouw hulp kunnen wij aan de slag om dit te veranderen.

Waarom dit platform?

De Gemeente Amsterdam werkt, samen met partners uit de regio, aan een platform voor innovatieve ondernemers met nieuwe business opportunities bij overheden. Voor de grote uitdagingen van de stad (bv mobiliteit, klimaatneutraal) zijn innovatieve oplossingen hard nodig. De gemeente kan dit niet alleen en zoekt partijen met goede ideeën en producten.

We horen vaak van kleinere ondernemingen dat het, door complexe procedures en ingewikkelde platforms, niet makkelijk is om tot een samenwerking met de gemeente te komen. Het nieuwe platform, https://www.innovatiepartners.nl, heeft als doel om het voor beide kanten makkelijker, eenvoudiger en duidelijker te maken.

Beta zoekt feedback

Onlangs is de beta versie gelanceerd. Voor nu nog even met 1 project maar er komen binnenkort nieuwe projecten bij. Het komende jaar gaan we verder en jouw feedback helpt ons!

Wat vind jij goed aan het platform? Waar zie jij ruimte voor verbetering? Heb je nog andere goede ideeën wat we met dit platform zouden kunnen bereiken? We horen graag van je! Je kunt je reactie achterlaten in dit feedback formulier.

🙏🙏🙏

(PS: dit keer wel met een link die werkt 😄)

Do you know a great example of high density living environments built within the last 30 years? Share your knowledge and contribute to the creation of an open repository via Crowd Creation. To be truly exemplary, the area should include a mixture of functions (at least some of them high-rise) where the physical fabric retains a human scale at street level despite the high density.

You may wonder who's asking for and compiling this information: the Chair of Spatial Urban Transformation at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences is committed to building an open-access repository. Sharing best practices across the globe is becoming increasingly vital, especially as many of our western cities are on the eve of unprecedented densification. As a humble thank you for helping to guide this societal challenge, they've allotted 12 rewards for contributors. Click here to submit a project.

Societal Context
Like many of our Western cities, Amsterdam is on the brink of intensive urban densification. The metropolitan area of Amsterdam plans to add 100,000 new dwellings, mostly within the existing urban fabric. Compact studio apartments and new situational typologies of high-rises are part of the program, which will increase the densification even further. How are we to retain a human scale in these new high-density environments, especially at the street level where our social fabric is shaped? This calls for a new array of examples and precedent studies of successful existing "Great High Density Environments." What are their design properties and how are they programmed? How do they succeed in retaining a human scale?

Amsterdam - Image Courtesy of Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences
Sensing Streetscapes Project

These questions are central to the Sensing Streetscapes Project initiated by the Chair of Spatial Urban Transformation at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (AUAS). In a consortium of spatial design offices and clients of large scale projects, action research is explored along three lines. First, building on the classic works of Allan Jacobs, Jan Gehl and the like, six of the most-used reference locations for these new environments are deconstructed by research through design. Second, neuro-architectural technologies (eye-trackers) are deployed to uncover the visual impact of the applied design principles: What are the patterns? Do these design solutions indeed mitigate the high density and intensity to a human scale on the level of the streetscape? Finally, an algorithm is developed to trace the most suitable best practices via AI. That’s where you come in.

Cassilis Road, London - Image Courtesy of Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences

Repository of Great Examples by Crowd Creation
Some high profile examples of great high density environments are well known, like in Vancouver, Toronto, London, Manchester, Amsterdam, Hamburg, and Manhattan. Yet what lesser-known examples of Great High Density Living Environments are out there for us to learn from? Share your knowledge and contribute to the creation of an open repository via Crowd Creation.

In order to frame the search, a list of desired characteristics:

• Residential environment in an inner city area
• Built within the last 30 years – or about to be 'opened' soon
• Built for High Density with some high-rise buildings
• Success in creating a human scale at eye-level on the street
• Some level of mixed functions, green design, etc. - anything that increases the livability of the environment

Click here to submit a project.

Hardman Street, Manchester - Image Courtesy of Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences

You are, of course, allowed to offer one of your own projects as an example. The deadline for submissions is January 29th, 2021 and as a modest gesture of thanks for helping address this societal challenge, 12 rewards are available to contributors. Out of the projects that fit the characteristics, consortium members will select the contributors who delivered either multiple great examples, surprisingly interesting examples, or in-depth descriptions and pictures. 12 entrants will be randomly selected to be rewarded:

• 2 will receive personalized book selections on this topic (favorites of the Chair)
• 6 will receive an Amazon gift card with a value of €50
• 4 will receive a ticket to the Media Architecture Biennale 2021
• Winners will be notified personally

Visit the results at https://sensingstreetscapes.com. The website will remain open afterwards, so feel free to keep sending your examples!

Hi im currently doing a dissertation on smart city technology in Amsterdam im really wanting to have peoples views on it. How they feel about the tecnology and whether they have liked the changed around roads and bike lanes etc in the past 10 years or so, im really wanting to know if people know about all the tech incorporated into the city. If anyone would like to get intouch if you feel you could help please send an email to sunnyhowd@outlook.com or message me on here would love to hear from you all!

Kind Regards
Sunny