January is rushing. Welcome to the new subscribers!
It was nice to get updated on the progress of the graduation project of Lisa on an engaging neighbourhood hub. The role of these new city companions has been a topic of research for some years within Cities of Things, and it is great to have it further deepened in her Design for Interaction challenge in the assignment commissioned together with Springtime.
Triggered thought
Things as Citizens was and is an inspiring concept for the research on Cities of Things. The weak signals indicate more interest in the role of intelligent things, nowadays everyone can imagine more agency within the things. At the conference on Open and Agile Smart Cities last week in Rotterdam, there was a shift noticeable from pure (open) data movement to more wondering about new interactions in the city mediated through a digital twin. The Social-Physical-Reality triangle is developing into a more and more proactive behaving system. The Open Urban Platform is de goal for the City of Rotterdam, with serious steps in the legal framework; Reference framework for digital twins.
Smart spacial planning is not only about using smart tooling, planning the digital (public) space is a core focal point with more and more users (citizens) as dataproviders.
The type of conference is a great way to feel the directions and use it as a trigger for new ideas. For instance, it is key to focus not on the intelligent things, but think on the interactions. A behavioural layer to the service layer. How about non-human citizens here? Is there a Turing test for interactions with thing citizens? Or do they grow into their own species?
From another perspective the SIP research project from Japan showed how they approach the so-called interverse, an in-between space of the virtual and physical town. As the presenter rightly noticed, the approach towards non-human life differs in Japanese culture and opens up the thinking. The general notion of this mixed reality is done differently as space caters to this new wave of in-between action-based devices such as Humane and Rabbit.
Read the events to track, notions of the news, and paper for the week via the weekly newsletter.
See you next week!
I will check out DDS projects if possible and look forward to seeing the final presentations of the master students Next Level Engineering building Wijkbots. I am also checking the Citydeal ‘Slim Maatwerk’, and we have an update on the research into sustainable hubs.
target is new 