Atlantis #24.2 Emerging Trends

ATLANTIS

MAGAZINE BY POLIS | PLATFORM FOR URBANISM healthy city Tools for Healthier Cities The New Spatial Disparity of Healthcare

Digital city SmartScapes On the Digital and Future Reality Space Syntax Urban Futures

Corporate city Commercial Urbanism Urban Perspectives Lifestyle in Urban Space Washing Away Our Responsibilities

#24.2 December 2013

Emerging tRENDS progress or fashion?

From the board Committees 2013

Dear Polis members,

We could not be as visible as we are without the great effort of a lot of active students. With the help of them we can organise excursions, lectures, workshops, drinks and events. The Polis board wants to thank all the people involved for their great efforts and positive input!

In front of you lies the fourth and last Atlantis edition of this board year (2013): “#24.2 Emerging Tools – Progress or Fashion?”. It includes an extensive coverage of the Urbanism Week 2013, the biggest event of our board year, and delves deeper into the week’s theme ‘Designing Lifestyles’ by focusing on the reciprocal relationship between social behavior and the physical environment. In particular, changing lifestyles, urban trends, and future scenarios are were addressed in such a way as to provoke thought of healthier, smarter or augmented cities.

We are always looking for enthusiastic people to join. Interested in one of the Polis committees or becoming the new board of 2014? Do not hesitate to contact us at our Polis office (01west350) or by mail: contact@ polistudelft.nl

Polis board Kevin van der Linden - President Tjerk Wobbes - Treasurer Sarah Rach - Secretary Lizet Krabbenborg - Events Jet van der Hee - Atlantis

Urbanism Week Rogier Hendriks, Divya Jindal, Joppe Kant, Lizet Krabbenborg, Eva Nicolai, Erifyli Vlachvei

Big Trip Klaas Akkerman, Aiste Eidukeviciute, Larissa Guschl, Kevin van der Linden, Egle Varapeckyte

Today, these topics feature prominently in many discussions across disciplines. Those in the field of urban planning and design question how their role in future assignments will change to reflect larger societal changes. The answer is not yet clear! During the Urbanism Week, we explored different perspectives and touched upon new trends and possible future scenarios. Urban health, digital cities, and flowscapes comprised the core of these and were the themes of the Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday sessions, respectively. The Friday speakers talked about their individual approaches and, together with the audience, seized an opportunity for discussion.

We, the board members of Polis, are confronted with similar questions and by organizing different events we aim to get an answer. The seminar ‘Wachtend Land’ in October was an example of one such event. It dealt with how to use derelict building sites for temporary developments. The big trip to Istanbul is yet another example. To learn from different urban environments, Polis organizes a trip abroad each year. This year’s trip was to Istanbul where we discovered a metropolitan city that actually has no real urban planning or design tradition to speak of. To conclude our board year Polis hosted its last big event in November: the amazing ‘end of the year event’. Lots of interesting and enthusiastic urbanists joined in to share some drinks and take advantage of the opportunity to thank the committee members for their effort during the year.

Symposium Luuk van der Burgt, Sarah Rach, Daniel Radai

Atlantis Emilia Bruck, Jet van der Hee, Yuhui Jin, Todor Kesarovski, Jiayao Liu, Luis Montenegro, Ksenia Polyanina, Yos Purwanto, Tess Stribos, Mel Tuangthong, Jessica Vahrenkamp

This issue of Atlantis marks the end of our board year as well. We would like to thank you for your continued readership and attendance at our events. In December at the general member meeting, the board of 2014 will be presented. We hope to provide them the best possible circumstances to make 2014 rich in urban activities.

We wish you very pleasant reading!

On behalf of the Polis board 2013, Jet van der Hee, Lizet Krabbenborg, Kevin van der Linden, Sarah Rach & Tjerk Wobbes

polistudelft.nl

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ATLANTIS

Editorial

MAGAZINE BY POLIS | PLATFORM FOR URBANISM

Atlantis Volume #24 Are you passionate about urbanism and would like to contribute? Contact us at: atlantis@polistudelft.nl

#24.1 Conveying Society Keywords: Network, Social Domain, Hard & Soft Infrastructure

#24.2 Emerging Trends Keywords: Digital, Corporate, Healthy, Green

#24.3

Atlantis #24.2 Emerging trends – progress or fallacy?

To follow up the publication of “Conveying Society – through infrastructure” the second Atlantis explores “Emerging Trends” within the urban realm.

While the last decade has been marked by a geopolitical rearrangement of significance, determined by economic performance, the forces of globalization have triggered shared trends towards healthier, smarter and augmented cities. Their occurrence not only demands a reconsideration of our practice, but gives opportunity for the development of new tools.

The Atlantis content features an extensive coverage of this year’s Urbanism Week, which took place in October 2013 at the TU Delft, Netherlands.

The subject of the event was the actors influencing various domains of our contemporary and future environments, and who are thereby “Designing Lifestyles”. As the discussed modi operandi progress into seemingly opposite directions, either towards sustainability or profitability, a critical revision of their development, future materialization and consequences is at stake.

In a manner to encourage the refinement of our professional toolkit, the articles and interviews are assembled in thematic clusters, which describe currents emphasizing health, the digital or the corporate market. The contributions which open the issue discuss a new paradigm of healthcare. Entailed by a turn towards governmental decentralization, the spatial dispersion of health institutions (Gijs Ragers) is complemented by a dispersion of responsibility through public involvement. “Health offered by the environment” as suggested by Blossity, stems from civil participation and places the urbanist in charge of designing its process rather than its result (Michiel Brouwer).

The largest section of the issue addresses the trans-continental shift of societies towards an economy based on -digital- information and service provision (Achilleas Psyllidis). The rapid technological advancement of the recent decades has induced our physical reality with a virtual infrastructure of sensory networks and real time data streams. The opportunities for designers and planners lie either in the utilization of detailed behavioral data (Psyllidis), computational system design (Bastiaan Kalmeyer) or the design of smarter cities through integrated digital governance (Simon Giles).

In a talk on Urban Futures Mark Sheppard describes the advancing urban ubiquity of data as a “Sentient City”. The last section addresses the practice of corporations such as Siemens or Samsung, which increasingly venture into the urban realm, be it through information technology, real estate or urban development. The commercial infiltration of our lifestyles -our behavioural patterns as much as our physical environments- can be considered inevitable, as Young Wook Joung has described: “If you look at the nature of companies, they have to grow. Shrinking is not an option. They may lay people off, but their business cannot decrease.”.

Finally, we would like to inform our readers that from this issue on the Atlantis print medium will be complemented by its online blog www. atlantistudelft.wordpress.com comprising the archive of last years’ Volumes, recent articles from the print issues and supplementary media on featured authors and projects.

On behalf of the entire editorial team, I want to thank all the contributors, and wish you enjoyable reading!

#24.4 Emilia Bruck

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EMERGING TRENDS Progress or Fashion?

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PROLOgUe Mel Tuangthong

ARTPAge

30 iNvisible city credits: Pitch interactive, inc. commissioned by Wired Magazine

RePORT

6 Urbanism week 2013 healThy ciTy

iNTeRvieW

32 space syNtax interview with akkelies van nes

iNTeRvieW

11 tools for healthier cities interview with Jorick Beijer, Marije Blok and Michiel Brouwer

34 Urban fUtUres The F FUTURe ciTy MeDiaTe T D By eMBeDDeD coMPUTa Te MPUT Tion MPUTa T andrew Gray

iNTeRvieW

16 the New spatial Disparity of healthcare iN the NetherlaNDs interview with Gijs Raggers

coRPoRaTe ciTy

38 commercial Urbanism s MsUnG’s ven sa v TURe inTo T T To The WoRlD econo e My Tess stribos

DeFiNiTiON bOx

19 greeN city, healthy city, Digital city aND creative city crea Machiel van Dorst, achim Reese, Frank van hoeven DiGiTal ciTy

21 smartscapes BiG G DaT Ta anD URBan inFo F RMa Fo RM Tics T F R PeRFo Fo RF RMa RM Tive T ciTies T Ties

COmmeNT bOx

43 which treND is the most iNvasive noor scheltema, henk snoeken, Thijs coolmees, David lee iNTeRvieW

44 urbaN perspectives interview with David Bergman

achilleas Psyllidis iNTeRvieW iNTeRvieW

26 oN the Digital aND future reality interview with Bastiaan Kalmeyer

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46 lifestyle iN urbaN space interview with Kai van hasselt

Prologue Planner! Planner!

What is the cure to society’s wicked problem?

I just end up where I started.

The politicians said there was progress.

They seem to be sure of it.

But all I see is the digression of my wicked problem.

48 washing away oUr responsibilities noW W 100% GUilT T FR FRee Mel Tuangthong

Tell me again, is society getting better or worse?

We’re zoning smarter and networking faster.

I’m feeling freer now, but still there is something missing.

TOP 5

50 urbaN challeNges Todor Kesarovski, Ksenia Polyanina, gRADUATiON PROjeCT

52 socio-spatial implicatioNs oN the kNowleDge city

I see social problems that can’t be tamed.

With any fashionable tool you might possess.

There is no right or wrong.

Dion van Dijk gRADUATiON PROjeCT

54 urbaN reNewal by co-creatioN Jurrian arnold

Analyzing contradictions and conflicts are my strengths, and weaknesses I conclude we’re a mess at best.

But we all get on with our day.

ePiLOgUe

56 the character of techNology interview with stefan van der spek URbAN gAme

58 mekelpark

Tell me your master plan.

I don’t care if it’s grand or small.

All I want to know if it’s for the greater good or bad.

Ksenia Polyanina

I’ve been waiting long enough.

Patiently.

Look me in the eyes and tell me What is the cure to society’s wicked problem?

Mel Tuangthong

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| urbanism week | report

Report Urbanism Week 2013

Lifestyles, trends and tools

This October the Urbanism Week brought together students and professionals to debate the issue of “Designing Lifestyles – Influences of Big Players on Future Cities”.

The four day symposium, which took place for the third time at TU Delft, is an annual event organized by the Polis student committee. In view of ubiquitous urban changes and transformations accelerated by globalization dynamics, this year’s lectures and workshops dealt with the market’s influence on spatial conditions and urban planning.

The discussion on lifestyle centered around four topics: the corporate, digital, healthy and mobile city.

Atlantis Atlantis Editorial Team TU Delft

Corporate Cities

With the opening lecture titled “Selling lifestyles, designing lifestyles” the Urbanism Week kicked off by addressing the controversial issue of markets infiltrating our lives through designing lifestyles. Kai van Hasselt illustrated the impact large scale corporations and commercial brands can have on urban environments, thereby also exposing the drivers behind our globalized culture. During the symposium on Designing Lifestyles – Influences of Big Players on Future Cities issues related to the expanding urban practice of corporations such as Samsung, Siemens or Accenture and smart governance concepts were addressed. The significance of the debate lies within a critical revision of what constitutes “smart-ness”, while also in the commencement towards a positively influencing cooperation.

SMART FOR BETTER OR WORSE? Samsung’s most recent expansion within the Engineering & Construction group was the establishment of a designated Urban Development department. In his talk on “Samsung C&T Design Platform” Young Wook Joung introduced the corporation’s practice to now spans from infrastructure, housing, urban planning. Joung further elaborated on the use of parametric design as a tool enabling the turn from mass production to mass customization in real estate.

The city department of Siemens, on the other hand, is dealing with aspects of future mobility, electrified society, clean and green cities, affordable healthcare, smart buildings and lighting. In “Living in the City of the Future” Louis Bekker presented the metropolitan scenarios, which Siemens developed on the scale of Amsterdam and the Netherlands as a whole. Key concepts are the Integrated Europe, a Pull Driven Ecosystem, the Differentiated Europe and a Push Driven Ecosystem. Although Simon Giles does not have an academic background in Architecture or Urbanism his lecture brought the attention to very relevant issues concerning the development of masterplans for urban areas. Working for Accenture, Giles presented an approach towards conceptual urban plans generated by computer software and digital calculations. The presented method emphasized alternative features such as digital infrastructures enhancing the 6

vitality of cities. Giles’ lecture introduced an interesting perspective on master-planning within the practice of urbanism, thereby intriguing a large part of the public. With “Smart Government in a Smart Society” Henk Snoeten described a governmental shift from large scale and compelling concepts towards an “energetic society” of smart citizens and businesses. The role of the national government should be the creation of conditions and the active participation as one of the actors in a “living lab”, our society. He further illustrates the government’s work on national interests as specified and listed by the National Policy Strategy for Infrastructure and Spatial Planning (13 interests). The system of national spatial planning is delivered through instruments as financing, rules and regulations, knowledge, design and connecting stakeholders.

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2 “Do people want to live in techno-utopias?

– probably not”

“Tactile environments will be the next interfaces”

-Simon Giles

-Bastiaan Kalmeyer

Digital Cities

Technological advancement has nurtured a digital reality, which has become an indispensable counterpart to physical space. The second day of the Urbanism Week addressed several aspects of digital urbanism, some being sensory networks or tactile surfaces. In his lecture Bas Kalmeyer described such an evolution which could lead towards a man made “automated earth”, complementing the planets organic automation. To guide such developments and “balance both physical and digital aspects of the city” (Achilleas Psyllidis), our profession needs to deviate and open up its designing systems. The rise of Big Data and Smart Cities is partly based on the promise to cut limits of information and thus save urban planners and designers from technical limitations and ‘blind spots’ of information deficiency.

HOW TO DESIGN WITH BIG DATA? The globalization of big data services was illustrated in the SmartScapes workshop on waste-management by Achilleas Psyllidis. By inserting gps-trackers in dustbins in Seattle, the transport patterns of the waste-industry were followed. The analysis showed that garbage from Seattle was taken as far as New York to be processed. As a follow up to the introduction, students and professionals then worked on designing an improved system by utilizing Big Data. The exercise highlighted the complexity of challenges faced when designing something as benign as a system for garbage disposal. The participants had to discuss issues such as data privacy or a potentially biased view a data based system could have on a process. The concerns were particularly engaging as they are not unique to the subject of the workshop. Big Data is present wherever digital technology is. It can heavily infringe the privacy of people’s

live. But it can also offer a technology-biased view on the world if its limitations are not considered carefully.

The Urbanism on Track workshop addressed the gathering and management of geo-data within the field of urbanism. More precisely, the exercise aimed to present new possibilities for tracking human behavior with GPS and, furthermore, to elaborate how this approach can contribute to the quality of urban space. During the threehour session Stefan van der Speck introduced the scientific concept of geomatics and the motivation why urbanists should pay more attention to and get familiar with the recently established discipline. In particular, his arguments underlined the necessities and potentials for introducing more and more tools within the framework of urban planning and design research.

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3 “Today urbanism is not a discipline which focuses simply on construction, it compromises much more” -Young Wook Joung

Healthy Cities

Given the rapidly changing global forces affecting the affordability of cities, the sustainability or health of an urban environment has become ever more significant. Linked to the notion of immunity and recovery, the health of an ecosystem or community determines its resilience towards social, economic or natural effects over time. While Gijs Raggers addressed the spatial decentralization of health care within the city for operational efficiency, Michiel Brouwer and Blossity encourage a reconsideration of the relationship between urbanists and citizens at large. Urban process tools oriented at engaging the citizens might just be the key towards healthier, more resilient, social and spatial environments.

HOW TO DESIGN HEALTHIER CITIES? Cities increasingly face a growing 8

demographic of elderly people, kids with obesity, stressed commuters and people that find themselves socially isolated. Modernism catalyzed cities for cars, monotonous architecture and worthless public space.

With Do We Care!? Marije Blok and Jorick Beijer stressed the urgency of retrofitting that city and to facilitate healthy human flourishing. The workshop on The Hague was a pressure cooker, aiming for variety of new tools, which would target different needs of people and locations. By inventing different techniques for intervention the participants engaged with the city’s spatial, health and social structure.

The 19th century canal plans drawn for cities as Amsterdam or Rotterdam are known to be the first attempts of establishing hygienic standards within the urban fabric.

In his workshop Every Designer Needs A Psych Michiel Brouwer elaborated on the contemporary need for urban health. The notion of a healthy environment exceeds physical fitness by addressing the social integration of inhabitants. For planning and design, this implies a participatory approach through involvement, “Find out what the inhabitants think is important”, revision “Is it always good what people want?” and envision possible change “Where can we intervene?”. The participants were challenged to juxtaposition their spatial analysis of the Spoorzone in Delft with the individual interests and needs of citizens they had to reenact in role plays. The focus was put on the process complementing the design towards a healthier environment.

Mobile Cities

Considering the on-going inflow of population into urban centres, the revision of infrastructural networks and their regulations remains imperative task for urban planners and designers. As described

by Jan Willem Bouman in his lecture on “Railway Structures” the challenge lies in establishing a synergistic relation between urban environments, mobility systems, networks, interfaces and hardware.

WHICH INNOVATIONS CAN EASE THE TURNOVER AT MULTI-MODAL TRAFFIC NODES? The approach of the NS, the Dutch railway company, was illustrated by Noor Scheltema.

The NS works with an interdisciplinary team including designers, real estate developers, environmental psychologists and engineers, to create the train stations of the future. The assignment of the Urban Challenge workshop was to envision new concepts of bicycle storage in station areas.

Through a multi-disciplinary approach the participants were to consider the urban environment, different networks and new technical possibilities. Most results focused

on futuristic solutions to store bicycles automatically, similar to the automatic luggage transport system at Amsterdam WSchiphol Airport. A potentially realistic future technology, particularly if it was combined with the OV-chip system. By scanning ones personal OV-chip card the system would recognize ones bicycle and release it after exiting the train. Participant Nienke van der Velde described the workshop as: “a fun exercise to work on” which “gave an impression of the challenges in station areas.”

Traffic Management in the ArenA Poort area in Amsterdam was subject of the workshop lead by Aafke den Hollander. She introduced the participants to the municipal traffic management of the main routes connecting Amsterdam, particularly the roads around the ArenA. The site, which encompasses a football stadium, a shopping center and several performance centers, is a place for major events attracting thousands of car commuters. The municipality has specific scenario’s for events like this, and the workshop participants were challenged

“No more grand and compelling concepts within the urban development” -Henk Snoeken

to develop a traffic plan for such a scenario.

Statistics of traffic flow and the exploration of the strategic potential of main streets turned out to be indispensable. Den Hollander’s reaction to the outcome of her workshop: “A very blended group [of participants] with different backgrounds, which brings forth an interesting discussion. Especially the outcomes of the cases surprised me: Such a strong analysis plus a plan within half an hour.”

The lectures and workshops of this year’s Urbanism week gave insight into the emerging trends we as planners and designers increasingly need to consider and engage with. Their interrelation with urban lifestyles illustrates the responsibility one has towards the citizen. Ultimately, digital technology, corporate interests, traffic regulation and governance methods impact our social behavior by enabling or restricting. The challenges lies in perceiving this growing complexity of systems and envision their implication in future urban environments. ■

Figures 1. Triangle diagrams collector © Shinsekai Analysis 2012-2013 2.3. Lectures of Urbanism Week 2013 4. Workshop of Urbanism Week 2013

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| healthy City |

Tools for Healthier Cities

Interview with Jorick Beijer, Marije Blok and Michiel Brouwer

The way healthcare is organized in the Netherlands is currently under debate. With an ageing population and the political trend for decentralizing governments, new forms of cure and care need to developed. The link between urbanism and healthcare seems perhaps a little farfetched, but the modern planning of cities in the western world started with a concern for the dwellers’ wellbeing. So more theoretically, what position does this bottom-up healthcare take in the development of urbanism? Atlantis joined Jorick Beijer, Marije Blok and Michiel Brouwer in a conversation to find answers on how healthcare can be designed and what place it takes in our daily urban systems.

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| healthy city | interview

master class introduction

the basis for this interview are the master classes you gave in the Urbanism week. can you briefly introduce the focus of your master class?

It worked quite amazingly, the speed the participants were forced to use created a true innovation pressure cooker.

Michiel Brouwer(M.B.R): In my master class, I focused on mental health, because I think sustainable design has to do with feeling comfortable, which refers not only to the physical, but also to the mental part. That is why the title is “every designer needs a psyche”.

In the class, I told the participants, with some examples from my daily work, that it is important to involve the people you design for. After that, we practiced using the case of Delft Spoorzone. The questions were what to do and how to involve people living there. We did a role play. In the first round, they are all urban designers. In the second round, I gave them other roles, like developers and bike repairmen. In the last round, they had to make a design together, with not only roles but also mindsets and behaviours.

It is interesting that many people came up with temporary interventions. Another unexpected conclusion was that they found it easier to intervene in the more difficult target groups, like immigrant kids and elderly people, as questions for them are clearer. It is obvious that we need to care for the ones with poor conditions - but everyone can be healthier, and should be healthy. We like to talk about the extreme and the segregated but, for example, the young families with kids living in the good part of The Hague also have severe health threats.

Marije Blok(M.B.L): The title of our master class was “Do we care?”, provocatively questioning whether planners actually care about the health of citizens. We introduced the historic relation between health and urbanisation, but also contemporary trends. The students focused on the canal ring of the Hague. In that area, we distinguished five different target groups with their own behaviours, lifestyles and health risks. The assignment was to come up with interventions that immediately contribute to wellbeing, however they might define that, in five different ways (Digital, spatial temporary, spatial permanent, for free and interactive red). For every target group, there were five interventions. We had five groups, so in total we ended up with 125 interventions. Jeroen de Wilde, from the municipal health department in The Hague, acted as a guest critic. His expertise on approaching target groups that are difficult to reach gave a great impulse to the discussion. We hope that students have learned how important a good discourse between health scientists, planners and citizens is. This is not something we can take for granted.

Jorick Beijer(J.B.): We tried to push the students to focus on quantity instead of quality, so that we could have a big pond of ideas to discuss.

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working with people

y you mentioned some social issues; does this mean that the concept of ‘healthy city’ refers to more than just physical health?

J.B.: That is right. The social aspect of health is an important part.

Social science talks about the social-economic status (SES) of people, which refers to their income and education level. This SES is an important indicator for the way they live. At the same time, this does not make the approach more easy. Working with people is so much more complex than working on buildings. both of you mentioned the importance of working together with the target group. how do you reach the hard-to-reach target groups?

M.B.R.: Do we have to reach them? Or do they come to us with their problems?

J.B.: It is very important to understand culture. In this sense, designers can definitely learn from social scientists. We believe that cultural sensitivity is the key to coming up with interventions that can really make a difference. But these processes are difficult. It takes a lot of time, especially with target groups that are difficult to reach. Both the physical and mental mobility of these people is very low, they find it

“nowadays, urbanism is either commercial or a guerrilla-kind of way”

2 hard to get out of their neighbourhood and to imagine themselves belonging to formal systems. One way to reach them simply is to coorganise the change.

groups it is easier to trust someone from their own culture to address health issues than municipalities or a random medical doctor, who are regarded as high authorities. By no means is it only the urbanist.

that is a really interesting point. y yet how do we work with people?

M.B.R.: In most of my projects, I am not an urbanist anymore. I am actually a process manager. But qualities for both are similar. You have to know exactly what is happening, where you want to go, steps you want to take. It is something different from a project manager: there is only one end for a project, while process has no end. You cannot make a process; you constantly need to balance many aspects. It is something we learn as an urbanist, but we usually turn out to be project manager.

J.B.: Blossity recently did a study on daily commuting, targeted at highly-educated people with a good income. Nevertheless, this target-group was related to serious health risks. These commuters do not exercise enough and experience a lot of stress from their jobs.

Travelling by public transport causes them even more stress. This target group is easily neglected, as they do not have newspaperheadline problems. However, there is a lot that can be improved for these people.

M.B.L.: We developed bike and walking routes through green environments, tailored for the public transport commuter (figure 3). The Green Routes challenge the commuter to exercise and simultaneously relax. Green Routes are not a new invention, they are already present in the city. How people in a particular target group think and move, and how they can be motivated, is very specific.

J.B.: It requires another way of research. Urban planners and architects tend to use approaches that are too generic. Often they are just narrow-minded, working together in offices with like-minded people. Cooperation with other disciplines, like Marije and I do, is so important. Next to the fact that we enjoy this very much, these kinds of approaches are the only key to innovative interventions that actually mean something to people.

M.B.L.: That also means that some people will be excluded in certain interventions, but others will be treated with tailored solutions.

A healthy city is a city with differentiation in projects, people and interventions. Otherwise it just won’t work.

Our guest critic talked about ambassadors who are recruited in areas with specific hard-to-reach target groups. For people from these

changing roles of urbanists

Does it mean that the role of urbanists is changing, from designing physical things to managing design process?

M.B.R.: It is not even a design process, just a development process. so how can the urbanist, as a professional, be involved in the process?

J.B.: Urbanism is not a solitary practice anymore. And we should not long for the days Cornelis van Eesteren was wearing a medical doctors jacket (figure 3). For me, being an urbanist is much more a state of mind. I am interested in the urban, I work in the urban and I live in the urban. It is more about curatorship, being part, trying to understand processes and trying to innovate processes. Urbanists are just part of the collaboration between disciplines. I think the education should change in this direction too. Students of urbanism and architecture are still educated too much as a top-down designers.

First of all - design what? The economic crisis created an interesting vacuum in a discipline that historically orients itself to development.

Bottom-up is in danger of becoming a meaningless cliché. Of course it is about people. But how do urbanists - the ones in our contemporary definition - deal with them? Increasingly it is about enabling social innovation, more than about guiding or steering. I think that this is a fundamental difference in how we think about urbanism.

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| healthy city | interview

This is very interesting. Michiel had a similar statement “I don’t believe in topdown planning anymore”.

M.B.R.: [laughs] Yes. A local government can start a process, but it cannot say what the end will be. In this way, it is more about process than planning. We are working on a schoolyard. We had no money, but only the hands of parents and children. We want to change the schoolyard from being only grey tiles to a green area. It means that you have so many means and skills that you can provide in the design. Actually there is no design. There is only a process of changing the yard. Sometimes, there is some money somewhere, and parents may also want to change something.

It seems that the process is continuous.

M.B.R.: Yes, it never stops. The playground is never finished. There is only a belief in changing it from grey to green. But how and when actually depends on parents; you can only push it a bit.

J.B.: This is interesting. It is a good example of the way our work field is changing.

Coalitions and partnerships are shaping this new role, because the idea of clients and commissions turned upside down. Now we see, on the one hand, a vast amount of architects and urban designers being unemployed, since the traditional way of working is no longer asked for. On the other hand, a lot of new work is actually created by these same new coalitions. For instance in the case of Michiel, these parents actually took

over the role of governments. Institutions change rapidly: you need to be eager to find the new opportunities and also construct the coalition yourself. Blossity works in this way: we try to arrange coalitions and create the work ourselves. One of the main reasons why we set up Blossity, was to link people. After that, the questions come. It makes the profession more complex and also more challenging. Being an architect or an urbanist is more and more about curatorship, entrepreneurship.

Changing roles of health promoters

We are curious how Marije, as a nonurbanist, is involved in the processes?

M.B.L.: It is interesting to hear the discussion on the changing role of architects and urbanists. Actually, this development is similar to the role of health scientists. Their role is also in transition and becoming more participatory instead of merely telling people what to do. Nowadays, people can find any information on the internet, like information about nutrition or physical activity. The challenge of today is how to involve the target group in the offered programmes and interventions. With my background, I know how to find the right information and how a certain group may react to programmes.

On the other hand, urban planners and architects are needed to translate the knowledge and stakes of the involved target group into concrete concepts. Therefore, the collaboration is important to work on improvement.

Multidisciplinary collaboration

J.B.: As a health scientist, Marije is the key of our company and the fundamental basis of how we want to work together: merging the social science approach with spatial thinking.

We express this in the way we talk, and how we try to be understood by people. Urbanists are ignorant, we are educated to give shape to dynamics we barley understand. By adding this cultural sensitivity to the work we do, Marije makes the collaboration interesting.

And at least a little more legitimate. I have little trust in architects or urbanists who say they do health projects, but only talk to other architects or urbanists. This is just a vicious circle of ignorance.

M.B.L.: On the other hand, the fragmentation of science, the decentralization of healthcare and the falling apart of institutions make it now also more possible to collaborate. For example, at the moment we are working on a project on ‘levensloopbestendige buurten’ (Lifetime Neighbourhoods), for people who do not want to live in institutionalized elderly care. In this project in The Hague we investigate the organization of the healthcare system on a neighbourhood scale, the architectural typology of dwelling and the relation between formal and informal care.

We talk to the people, and look at how we can attach healthcare and urban transformation to this. This is made both urgent and possible due to the decentralization of health care.

People have questions of how they can keep living healthily and independently at the same time. We support these elderly with

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knowledge which fits in their cultural frame.

Planning Practices and Health

M.B.R.: In fact, this [sanitation] was even the beginning of urbanism. It was why we started to organize cities. We wanted a healthy city for the working class.

M.B.L.: Actually, in both of our studies the battle with cholera was an important event.

It is common ground for us. We learned that Snow’s mapping of cholera was the start of epidemiology.

J.B.: Le Corbusier also introduced some ideas on preventive health care, like ideas of sun, trees and light. But his approach is an example of how we should not prevent.

That is how an artist-architect thinks about prevention. Preventive urbanism is not enough: knowledge on cultural sensitivity should come in. No one lives in a machine.

M.B.R.: But I think that Le Corbusier’s ideas were good. The problem is just the way we used them as a way of making housing.

J.B.: Yes, sun and air are very important, of course. Just don’t apply that kind of reasoning like people did in the Bijlmermeer.

There is no flexibility in those plans, it is a complete functional segregation. If you look at Barcelona, which is perceived as a very vital city, of course there is also a lot of stone. Cerda had interesting ideas about urban vitality.

The density and the balance between public and private space are amazing. This is much

more intelligent than Le Corbusier - the kind of developments like the Bijlmermeer. It has also proven to be more adaptable: people still make a life there and love there.

This is also related to the way we plan cities, which is now really focused on commercialism instead of improving the lives of people.

J.B. Yes. Nowadays, urbanism is either commercial or a guerrilla-kind of way. The middle has disappeared. It is the way it is.

Now the money has disappeared together with several institutions. It makes urbanism very hard, but also very interesting.

M.B.R.: In the last twenty years, officeblocks were only built for profit, not because someone wanted them. Even now there are many municipalities which think they can make money from developing a new city district.

The future urbanist

What would be the future role of the urbanist in the future?

J.B.: I don’t think that this is only about urbanity versus health, I can imagine this in all sorts of crossovers. Urbanism is more fluid than ever before.

M.B.R.: Defending the quality of the urban environment is what you learn here. Someone else only sees the difference in money, but not one in the quality of the environment. There you have a role for the urbanist.

Jiayao Liu, Yos Purwanto ■

Jorick Beijer and Marije Blok (Blossity) Blossity delivers profound research and innovative concepts on mobility, vitality, health and happiness. Jorick Beijer is an urbanist (TU Delft); Marije Blok has a background in public health (Wageningen UR) and is specialised in setting approached health promotion, human behaviour and interdisciplinary collaboration in health and care.

Together they form Blossity, a unique cross-boundary start-up.

Blossity works on cities through (landscape) architecture, planning, policies and events and does this for and with (local) government, housing corporations, insurance companies and consultancy firms. For more details about Blossity: http://www.blossity.nl/en/ Michiel Brouwer Michiel Brouwer is the owner of MBDSO | Michiel Brouwer Sustainable Urban Development. He studied urban planning and design at Delft University.

Current works: climate adaptive design of cities; new green schoolyards with parents; area perspective Halfweg.

The focus point in his work is the combination of process and design.

Figures 4

1. Le Corbusier’s Plan Voisin 2. Twitter Groenprijs © Blossity 2013 3. Schoolyard transformation: from grey to green. © Michiel Brouwer 4. Van Eesteren in a lab coat, a picture of “the urbanist as a scientist”. www.nieuwsenmedia.nl 5. Barcelona: urban grid.©Josep Gaspar, 1925

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| healthy city | interview

The New Spatial Disparity of Healthcare in the Netherlands interview with gijs raggers

gijs raggers, a partner architect at egm architecten since 2002, provided tuesday’s lecture at the Urbanism week 2013 themed ‘Designing lifestyles’. he has a diverse career in constructing and rethinking the Dutch healthcare market for several Dutch and international clients. this interview focuses on gijs raggers’ views on hospital, the networking of the health system and what he foresees may be the answer in creating a better health system in the coming decades in society with minimal economic growth.

Health issues are tensions between who you would like to be and what keeps you from being that way both physically and mentally.

Tools are an example. When your eyesight is poor, glasses will ‘cure’ your ‘disability’.

Eventually you want things to be sustainable and to function in society.

I think urban planners and the architects will not just build hospitals or healthcare-related buildings. Right now is the golden age for the architects! This is the time that things need to be connected and to create value from connecting things.

states, for example, that a hospital has to perform a certain number of hip surgeries in order to ensure a safe standard of the medical surgery. One can see that surgeries are one of the many products and services of a business, together commonly known as hospitals. Hospitals have to compete to meet their quota to ensure the quality standard the government has established.

Within the Netherlands, there are about a hundred hospitals, including eight academic hospitals. This number will most likely be reduced to half this size. This is an alarming decrease. The reason for this reduction is that the current system of hospitals no longer works. The financial situation and the ageing demographic of the Netherlands imply more chronic diseases which places more pressure on the healthcare system. Currently, the management of hospitals do not ask for an alternative to the archetype ‘hospital’, but they must realise that the hospital as a typology no longer works. At EGM Architecten, we are working on alternating hospital concepts as a part of an integrated health network.

what is the current state of the hospitals and their built development?

healthcare is specialising. is this a problem?

The difficulty is that the healthcare system is currently steered too much by power and politics. The poorly functioning hospitals perish in these times. Also, hospitals have to lobby for their client’s attention and business.

There are several standards and quotas for all kinds of treatments. The government

No, this is very good. If you were to start on a solution for health issues, a hospital would not be a logical response. The core of healthcare is to design a system in which a clear and correct pathway is taken up by everyone.

With the correct pathway, I mean that in the current devision of specialists there are as

what are your motives for focusing on urban health?

The beauty of the subject is that it is so extremely imperative opposed to, for example, CO2 reduction. Health is not a technical problem but you can make a broad carrier for the healing environment. Health can be expressed as a form of sustainability.

Both are about giving things a future. what is the definition of health in your profession and work environment?

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gijs raggers (1973) is a partner architect, working at egm architecten since 2002. combining healthcare and urbanism was the main goal in the vision for the 2025 care contest under the name ‘ZorgeNloos living’. he has a diverse practice building and is rethinking the healthcare market and its components for Dutch and international clients.

“The number of hospitals in the Netherlands will be reduced to half.

This is an alarming decrease.”

little doctor's visits as necessary. The word ‘patient’ is derived from having patience. Back in the old days, it was customary for ill people to patiently wait for themselves to get better. The challenge is to find ‘the path’ fitting for the patient and make it as quick as possible, since effectiveness is the key to future healthcare. y your plan is to solve this health issue spatially by not facilitating all healthcare in one building?

To me, this is a good development, because this specialization process improves the quality of healthcare and makes it cheaper as well. The reason why most hospitals are nowadays outside of the city is because they are such big buildings. They do not fit into most city fabrics.

They contain facilities such as a logistics centre, sterilization areas, a pharmacy and a launderette. All these facilities use up many square metres and have all kinds of special standards for safety and hygienic reasons. Hence, it is very complicated to design a hospital.

The proceeding specialization enables us to develop and improve in healthcare treatments. To ensure improvements in healthcare, we

have to cultivate this process of specialization. This has to be supported by people who are connected with all branches of specialization. This is happening. General Practitioners and ‘Emergency Care’ doctors’ becoming an option at medical school. They are specialized in the triage process and are finding the shortest route to a ‘healthy pathway’.

This development in Emergency Care has to be implemented for the whole healthcare system. what about the program of a hospital?

It will disappear, and you can see this happening. The program for a hospital is so complex, contradictory and uncontrollable that there is no normal building to accommodate it. The only answer found for this was to strip all the supporting facilities from the hospital and place it in the grassland. For the future: hospitals will become decentralized (figure 1). Let me illustrate this with a contemporary project: The A15 Pharmacy started as a collaboration between Erasmus MC in Rotterdam and Radboud in Nijmegen. It was built to facilitate all three hospitals. The structure was too big and thus was along the

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| healthy city | interview

2 “Hospitals? We don’t make those anymore” highway, but done efficiently so its square meter program is reduced and still has the capacity to service another ten hospitals. It is these kinds of elements I talk about when addressing the difficulties of the space usage of hospitals and its facilities. There is no accessibility problems for patients accessing their medicine. Medicine is sent to the hospitals and patients who are at home. The pharmacy on the street corner will remain nonetheless. The only new development is that hospitals will share facilities.

What is the spatial translation, aiding, solution to this triage development for the health care system?

All the service facilities will be shared in the future and taken out of the hospital itself, the building that remains will be of normal size and atmosphere. Earlier there was no way one could construct a hospital in the city, because the specialized services were clustered. The only departments of a hospital that remain as a sovereign system are the OK and the Intensive Care Unit. A good example of a future hospital would be the Jeroen

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Bosch Hospital in ‘s-Hertogenbosch (figure 2). On Architectenweb Raggers elucidates: ‘In traditional hospitals, long, dark hallways are more rule than exception. In the Jeroen Bosch Hospital, the visitor is lead directly to an open space with views onto the gardens.

The gardens carry the routeing of the building’ (Architectenweb, 2012).

All functions and departments of the hospitals will share their facilities with other hospitals. An example of this concept is the A15 Pharmacy mentioned earlier. Erasmus MC has commissioned the construction of the pharmacy, built by EGM architecten and the name is derived from its location, which is part of the shared facilities concept. The pharmacy is situated near Gorichem along the A15 Highway that connects Rotterdam and Nijmegen. The advantages include the increased effectiveness and accumulation of professional expertise. The annual production of the pharmacy is intended to be 500,000 units of medicine (Erasmus MC Press Release, 2012). This new form of organization is in line with the concept of shared facilities. These shared facilities will

allow hospitals to evolve into relatively well sized rooms within a typical building. This urban typology enables future hospitals to be integrated within the city and to no longer stand in the grassland, disconnected from the city fabric.

Tess Stribos ■

Figures 1. Decrease of hosptials in the netherlands 2. Jeroen Bosch Ziekenhuis

References http://www.architectenweb.nl/aweb/projects/ project.asp?PID=21803&s=1 Erasmus MC Press Release, 2012 h t t p : / / w w w. e r a s m u s m c . n l / p e r s k a m e r / archief/2012/3709005/?lang=en

Definition BOX Green city, healthy city, digital city and accessible city are terms that are used frequently to describe the future trends of today’s cities not only by urbanists, but also by the general public, government, enterprises and media. Due to different backgrounds, diverse interpretations are given to these terms. As multi-disciplinary approaches are needed to facilitate these trends, definitions by professionals from different disciplines will help to enrich our understanding on these terms.

Green City Machiel van Dorst: A city that maximizes vegetation or a city that minimizes environmental impact.

Both definitions may be in contradiction: urban sprawl can be green and not sustainable.

Achim Reese: After the Garden City and the rise of eco-minded urban planning, a group of architects

postulated the first truly green city in 1977, imagining West Berlin as an archipelago of autonomous settlements, both separated and linked by a sea of green.

Frank van der Hoeven: This is a perfect safe place for boring bourgeois people.

Healthy City

Machiel van Dorst Associate professor Chair of Environmental Design TU Delft

Machiel van Dorst: Improving the physical and social environment for better living. This includes clean

air, healthy lifestyles, safety, crime prevention, (control over) social interaction, child-friendliness, etc.

Achim Reese: There are healthy cities and then there are exciting cities.

Frank van der Hoeven: A place where you cannot drink alcohol, smoke tobacco, use drugs, eat greasy

food, lie on your bed all day or use your car whenever you like. It does not exist in Holland.

Digital City Machiel van Dorst: Digital city is the urban environment that exists online. Can be the urban culture on

social media or online gaming on your PS3 in GTA5. Not to be confused with Smart City.

Achim Reese: In the digital age, the city becomes redundant, giving way to a ubiquitous structure such as Archizoom’s No-Stop City. There, anything could happen anywhere.

Frank van der Hoeven: Is a city with a rich deposit of data that can be used to understand what people do and want, where clever people can optimize their lives.

Achim Reese Editor ARCH+

Creative City Machiel van Dorst: Creative city is a city that facilitated people’s ability to create. This is not limited to the creative industry or other narrow-minded limitations in target groups. Everyone creates.

Achim Reese: In opposition to top-down planning strategies, one theory of urban formation posits that cities shape themselves through a sort of autopoiesis. Usually, that means that the market (i.e. real estate) will take care of it.

Frank van der Hoeven: Is a place where people make their living by doing design.

Frank van der Hoeven Associate Professor Chair of Urban Design TU Delft

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| Digital City |

SmartScapes Big Data and Urban Informatics for Performative Cities Achilleas Psyllidis

The distribution of sensor networks throughout the contemporary urban environment together with advances in mobile and web-related technologies, create new opportunities for practice and research in Urbanism.

Digitally-driven systems and devices provide immense amounts of real-time data streams, which reflect city dynamics. In turn, this increasing availability of real-time information is capable of providing the urban designers/ planners with a highly detailed and dynamic picture of the urban fabric. Part and parcel to this new dimension of reality, the discourse surrounding Smart Cities is gaining in popularity recently. Yet, digital ubiquity – as a ‘by-product’ of the post-industrial age – is not the sole motivating factor. There are also global phenomena, fueled by the increasing urban populations, along with the socio-economical and environmental repercussions they bring about, that instigate it.

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| digital city | article

Background

To better understand the contemporary global urban context, we first need to contextualize it within the forces that are currently driving a paradigm shift in the domain of urbanism. Specifically, the world has experienced radical changes over the past five years in both technology and physical space. The changes that mark this transition are summarized in three major milestones.

Firstly, at a spatial level, the acceleration of urbanization processes worldwide has led to a tip in the ratio of urban-to-rural global population. In 2009, for the first time in human history, the total amount of people living in cities exceeded that of people living in the countryside. Assuming that the urban agglomerations will continue to increase their numbers at the current rate, the UN predicts that by 2050 more than 70% of the world’s population will be clustered in cities (UNFPA, 2007). As a result, humans are already – and progressively evolving into – an “urban species” (Moere & Hill, 2012).

Secondly, contemporary societies in both developed and developing countries have shifted from an economy based on industry, to one that is driven by (digital) information and service provision (M. e. Foth, 2009; A. Townsend, 2009). This transition has set the stage for the two remaining milestones both of which relate to technological advancements. The first refers to the prevalence of wireless connections over cable-dependent technologies, meaning that people tend to communicate and connect to the Internet via mobile devices (smartphones) to a greater extent than wired connections.

Such an increasing detachment from cables fuels the rapid growth and subsequent pervasiveness of wireless technologies.

The other, constituting the third major milestone, comes as a direct repercussion 22

of the aforementioned devices and their subsequent global distribution in associative networks. It can be detected in what has been coined “the Internet of Things” (IoT); a merger between people and technologicallyaugmented systems. The turning point in this case is that the IoT has become so pervasive so as to almost reach ubiquity (A. M. Townsend, 2013). To put it in simple terms, as this article is being written, more devices/objects are connected to the Internet than there are people who currently exist on this planet. And in the coming years these systems are expected to double. Such an excessive fusion of computational devices in the natural environments, gradually leads towards the implementation of Mark Weiser’s concept of ubiquitous computing, which he perceived of as “the availability of computers throughout the physical environment, virtually, if not effectively, invisible to the user” (Weiser, 1991).

Taken together, these three milestones act to establish the present-day context and not a futuristic scenario or vision. They incite profound changes to various behavioural and operational aspects implicated in our surrounding urban environments, which, in turn, form complex configurations of both physical and digital networks.

Embedded in this framework, the urban designer/planner is faced with a paradigm shift in the profession. In particular, (s)he has to actively tackle issues relating to this emergent hybridity by taking into account and balancing both the physical and digital aspects of the city throughout the design process. This entails a new approach to design that requires an augmented set of tools and methods in comparison to the ones currently in use. Undoubtedly, the complexity of the profession will graduate to a new level, requiring a broad new spectrum of practical and research perspectives. Of

particular interest is potential poised in the collection of multiple real-time data streams of varying types that could address strategic sectors of the city. Among other things, these relate to mobility, environmental conditions, and communal issues, as well as waste and water management.

Big Data and Urban Sensing

All the aforementioned streams of information constitute part of what has come to be called Big Data. Every short message service (SMS) sent via our mobile phones, every email, and each seemingly insignificant daily transaction we make, collectively contribute single pieces of information to an immense global data cloud. In an attempt to aptly describe this wealth of data, Richard S. Wurman uses the example of the New York Times newspaper in which it appears that an average weekday edition contains more information than a 17th century person was likely to come across in an entire lifetime (Wurman, 1989).

Yet, the problem of too much data but insufficient co-evolving knowledge remains present, if not intensified. For data to become more meaningful – and specifically in the domain of urbanism, to constitute integral elements of the design process – we have to extract the patterns from them to gradually deploy a story about particular issues. And in order to do so, especially as designers, we not only need to devise meticulous methods to mine the information streams serving our specific research and design questions. We also have to aptly parse, analyze, interpret and – most importantly – feed these refined data sets back to the environment and correlate them in a meaningful way, for people to become more aware and actively engaged in the process (Psyllidis & Biloria, 2013b).

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With regard to the information deluge and potential ways to harness it, specifically within an urban context, three essential urban sensing methodologies can be utilized: ambient sensing, distributed sensor networks (DSN), and crowd sourcing (or participatory sensing). The first approach refers to the analysis of ongoing data streams from cellphone and other pre-existing networks, primarily used for different purposes, yet valuable as information sources on how our cities operate. The second method pertains to the deployment of new sensor networks, comprising distributed sensing agents embedded in the urban fabric, to address specific issues. Finally, the third approach relies on citizen participation in providing data feedback, facilitated by the growing availability of smart mobile devices and the advent of social media. Citizens, in this way, not only act as consumers but also as producers of information. In other words, they collectively establish a sort of human sensor network (Boulos et al., 2011). Consequently, urbanists have at their disposal a wide variety of data mining techniques that incorporate both human and non-human sensing methods to use either partly or collectively, depending on their specific needs.

(e.g. environmental monitoring, weather forecasting, transport controlling etc.) are domain-specific, subsequently providing segregated data sets. Thus, besides parsing, the correlation between heterogeneous sensor networks appears to be crucial, especially for the assessment of complex systems, such as cities. This can possibly be achieved through the standardization of sensor descriptions and models by utilizing Semantic Sensor Network (SSN) technologies. These particular standards are capable of facilitating data interoperability amongst heterogeneous sensor networks by correlating the physical sensor(s), the measured parameters, and the functional, as

and digital layers of people's networks and urban infrastructures” (M. Foth, Choi, & Satchell, 2011). To put it simply, the statement implies an intersection between human activity, urban contexts, and design media technologies. The field embraces all the aforementioned methodologies to efficiently collect and process multiple data sets of various types stemming from sensor networks, mobile devices, and social media in order to raise awareness for crucial aspects of the city and facilitate the decision-making process. Its rationale deviates from the conventional approaches of urban analysis and morphology, which are largely based on descriptive data of intrinsic city features.

Instead, it aims for a more dynamic representation, simulation and, eventually, data-driven augmentation of the city through the development of cybernetic mechanisms and actuation systems embedded in the urban fabric.

“the problem of too much data but insufficient co-evolving knowledge remains present, if not intensified” well as processing features. Yet, it is not the intention of this article to go deep into the details of the characteristics and potential offered by these technologies.

Urban Informatics

However, as already stated, these elaborate methodologies for collecting real-time information about the city do not surmount the issue of extensive – mono-disciplinary – data sets that could prove meaningless.

To overcome the information overload, we need to employ procedures to better refine – or parse, as it is commonly referred to, in data management terminology – available data sets. Further, another essential issue to be tackled pertains to the interoperability of the acquired information. At present, most of the existing sensor networks

What is most important for us to consider is the emerging research and practice field that specifically engages with the opportunities created by the advent of ubiquitous computing in the urbanism domain. This particular field is called Urban Informatics. According to its very definition, Urban Informatics refers to “the study, design and practice of urban experiences across different urban contexts that are created by new opportunities of real-time, ubiquitous technology and the augmentation that mediates the physical

ARUP, recognizing the significance of this research and practice area to the city, has established a homonymous dedicated department in Australasia. Closer to home, a joint alliance between TU Delft, MIT, and Wageningen University has resulted in the creation of the Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions (AMS) in Amsterdam that will focus on technology-driven solutions for the urban environment.

The SmartScapes Master Class (Urbanism Week 2013)

Embedded in this context, the SmartScapes Master Class – as part of the Urbanism Week 2013 event – focused on the emergent skills that contemporary and future urbanists require in order to tackle actual and projected urgencies of the city (Figure 1). It introduced Urban Informatics 23

| digital city | article

4a

4b

and data-driven design methodologies that addressed strategic urban sectors, such as energy, environment, and mobility. The goal was to develop conceptual prototypes for participatory and replicable frameworks that allow citizens and urban decision-makers to assess key performance indicators (KPIs), in a holistic manner, instantaneously and intuitively.

During the Master Class participants had the opportunity to engage with the notion of the Smart City. They critically analyzed what constitutes a city smart and how this, subsequently, implies a change in the urban design/planning profession. At present, most of the discourse surrounding Smart Cities is centered on infrastructural aspects, proposing policy frameworks that either marginalize the importance of people or perceive them as endusers in a commercial manner. The challenge for the future urbanist is, thus, to establish democratic participatory platforms for collective decision-making via relational ecologies of data sets. For then a city will become “smart�, by virtue of the collaborative activity of its citizens and different stakeholders. Altogether, they operate as actors, rather than passive consumers of policy frameworks.

Furthermore, the urban designer/planner is also an information designer, meaning that (s)he needs to be able to deal with extensive amounts of real-time data streams, correlate them, and, subsequently, derive meaningful feedback patterns for the citizens. Thus, the major design focus is not on the end product, but rather on the process of data sets along with the notion of performance. A multi-disciplinary approach is highly encouraged and decision-making processes depart from the conventional topdown model. Instead, urbanism professionals, in close collaboration with stakeholders and citizens, will merge top-down control with bottom-up behavioral aspects, through datadriven procedures (Psyllidis & Biloria, 2013a).

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Besides theoretical frameworks and related examples, participants delivered hands-on exercises based on the given theory. As previously mentioned, the scope of the exercise was to propose conceptual prototypes for embedded interactive systems in the urban fabric. These systems had to comprise a merger of three essential components: distributed network of sensing devices; natural user interfaces (NUIs) embedded in open public spaces and buildings (e.g. media facades, interactive displays etc.); and integrated physical actuation systems within strategic urban locations for real-time augmentation. The NUIs, in particular, aimed at fostering active human engagement that

" As sensor networks seamlessly integrate into the contemporary urban agglomerations, cities are enabled to interact and communicate among themselves by exchanging various data and information in a dynamic global network that merges physical and digital attributes together. " would allow people to report information back to the system in a continuous cycle. In this way, they would not solely react upon mapped data analysis visualizations, as is the prevailing trend in various relevant contemporary applications.

Given the limited amount of time available to us, the chosen methodology for developing the proposals was that of Roleplay Simulation. After dividing into groups, each member was assigned a specific role, either referring to an expert or a stakeholder in the design process (information/data expert, strategist, design manager, municipal decision-maker, citizen) with corresponding responsibilities. Unified Modeling Language (UML) Activity Diagrams and Pseudocodes were utilized as the main tools for the conceptual prototypes to model both computational and organizational processes. With these alternative forms of data flowcharts, participants modeled the information- and workflows in the proposed systems (Figure 2).

Interestingly, all groups devised systemic proposals, tackling major issues of contemporary cities while simultaneously linking together parameters of different nature. In particular, the final interrelated sectors proposed by the three teams were: food supply chain in supermarkets linked up with the environmental footprint of specific products (title of proposal: “Reduce your FOODprint” – Figure 3a); parking allocation and management pertaining to various user types (proposal: “Google Parking” – Figure 3b); and waste management associated with consumers’ behavioral data (proposal: “Eat It – Don’t Waste It” – Figure 3c). The projects sought to raise spatial, temporal, and thematic (STT) awareness about the aforementioned issues and, potentially, lead to respective operational and behavioral impacts (e.g. reduction of energy footprint, efficient mobility, change of habits, attitudes

or behaviors etc.). Further, they ensured that the information flow would be constantly fed back to decision-makers for performance (KPIs) and proposals assessment. However, more progress could be attained in a longer-term workshop or studio that would appropriately address the complexity of the parameters and methods this particular scientific field poses.

Conclusions

To conclude, the contemporary urbanist – and architect – is faced with an increasing hybridization of the urban environments. In order to deal with this emergent reality, (s)he must be equipped with an augmented set of tools and methods for design and decisionmaking, starting from the vocabulary itself.

New terms need to be incorporated and existing terminology reconfigured, so as to better adapt to the current and nearfuture conditions. If we as architects and planners fail to do so, our role as integral actors and stakeholders in the design and decision-making processes is at risk. The reinvigorated discourse about Smart Cities can, in this case, establish an extensive spectrum of practice and research potential.

At present, large corporate companies, such as IBM and CISCO, are gradually taking the lead in this particular field, mainly approaching it from a business, utilitarian, and often mono-disciplinary perspective.

Nevertheless, the new generation of urbanists (provided with the aforementioned tools and methods) can still play an impactful role in this area, in close collaboration with other experts. Collectively, they can leverage the abundance of real-time information to raise awareness and facilitate human participation in providing active feedback for various parameters of the city. As such, the focus will transition to sensitive urban environments that not only perform efficiently in terms of infrastructure, but also serve to improve social inclusion. ■

Figures 1. The Internet of Cities 2. The SmartScapes Master Class poster (Author's own).

3. Schematic diagram of the workshop's exercise procedure (Author's own).

4abc. The UML Activity Diagrams of the three developed proposals during the SmartScapes Master Class.

References Boulos, Maged N. Kamel, et al. (2011).

Crowdsourcing, Citizen Sensing and Sensor Web Technologies for Public and Environmental Health Surveillance and Crisis Management: Trends, OGC Standards and Application Examples. International Journal of Health Geographies, 10(67).

Foth, Marcus (ed.). (2009). Handbook of Research on Urban Informatics: The Practice and Promise of the Real-Time City. Hershey, New York: Information Science Reference.

Foth, Marcus, Choi, Jaz Hee-jeong, & Satchell, Christine. (2011). Urban Informatics. Paper presented at the ACM 2011 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, Hangzhou, China.

Moere, Andrew Vande, & Hill, Dan. (2012).

Designing for the Situated and Public Visualization of Urban Data. Journal of Urban Technology, 19(2), 25-46.

Psyllidis, Achilleas, & Biloria, Nimish. (2013a).

The Adaptive City: A Socio-technical Interactiondriven Approach Towards Urban Systems. Paper presented at the Hybrid City 2013: Subtle rEvolutions, International Conference, Athens, Greece.

Psyllidis, Achilleas, & Biloria, Nimish. (2013b).

Urban Media Geographies: Interfacing Ubiquitous Computing with the Physicality of Urban Space. Paper presented at the Media City 4: MEDIA CITIES, International Conference, Buffalo NY. Townsend, Anthony. (2009). Foreword. In M. Foth (Ed.), Handbook of Research in Urban Informatics: The Practice and Promise of the Real-Time City. New York: Hershey.

Townsend, Anthony M. (2013). Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.

UNFPA. (2007). State of World Population 2007: Unleasing the Potential of Urban Growth.

New York: United Nations Population Fund.

Weiser, Mark. (1991). The Computer fot the 21st Century. Scientific American, 265(3), 94-104.

Wurman, Richard Saul. (1989). Information Anxiety. New York: Doubleday.

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| digital city | interview

On the digital and future reality Interview with Bastiaan Kalmeyer

Since we entered the Information age, the growing matrix of virtual connections, information and data flows has turned all aspects of our lives into hybrids of physical and virtual space. In his lecture on the “Automated Earth – A near future reality” during the Urbanism Week, Bastiaan Kalmeyer discussed the challenges and potentials of digitalization for design and planning. In the past decade as a practitioner and teacher Kalmeyer developed a fascination for the interactivity of systems, be it tactile surfaces, responsive sensors or architectural ecosystems. In a talk with Atlantis he reflects upon the various means of integrating the Digital into our lifestyles.

This issue of Atlantis addresses the discrepancy of progress and fashion within the urban realm at large and in particular tools which might respond to instant needs or lasting trends.

Why respond to instant needs OR lasting trends? I think the two are intrinsically connected. Our current needs and problems are part of some of the largest challenges we have on this earth, whether that be power energy as well as political - food, etc.

To what extend has the digitalization of the design practice taken architectural and urban development to the next level?

The current outlook on digitalization is amongst others about the generation of enormous amounts of data. We have to be careful not to be absorbed by this debate about Big Data only. We have to be able to talk about what we want that data - and the sensors that deliver them - to do. We need to have a discussion about what it is exactly that is generated and monitored. And how that will produce environments we love to live in.

Right now we have independent, unconnected devices producing enormous amounts of data - numbers, personal data…

It is all over the news right now, with the NSA and our own government tracking license plates of lease cars to check their travel history, so that they can be fined to pay more taxes. This is a discussion about safety 26

and authorization, which is not necessarily the part we as profession need to engage in.

Unless we want to be politicians.

However, what is part of the discussion we need to be part of is that, the moment we connect different datasets - and with that data generators, sensors – we start to design new environments. Environments that become responsive. Not only in an action-reaction way, like we experience currently with automatic doors. I enter, door opens. That’s it. But in a dialogue. Action – interpretation reaction. This is something entirely different.

Mark Shepard stated in an interview some time ago “it is a messy patchwork of computational infrastructures alongside which we reside somewhat uncomfortably.” (www.iwt.io/articles/therealityofvirtuality.pdf)

For example, what happens when we hook up the traffic data, with all the densities of various traffic – whether there is a traffic jam in the center, or a bulk of cars on its way on the ring road – with sensors that measure air quality for example? Would we get entirely different traffic patterns the moment those two data sets interpret an area as too crowded with traffic and start to redirect the traffic flows? What would that look like? This direction is currently being investigated also Achilleas Psyllidis , in his PhD research here at the TU Delft.

Bastiaan Kalmeyer is co-founder of Instability.We.Trust (iwt.io), a future oriented creative firm in its broadest form, offering services in the fields of spatial design, strategy and creative advisory. Based in Rotterdam and Amsterdam. With a background in urbanism, architecture and design, its products result in buildings, master plans, cultural advisory, identity studies, exhibitions, interiors and brand strategies. IWT is concept developer and strategy advisor of A Lab (www.alab.nl) in Amsterdam.

He studied fine arts, advertising and spatial design at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam, and architecture at the Academy of Architecture and Urbanism in Rotterdam.

He is an invited speaker at a.o. Studio-X / Columbia University and the Eyebeam Institute in New York, Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, Central Academy of Fine Arts (Cafa) in Beijing, and the Royal College of Art (RCA) in London.

1 Systems Design What I am interested in is how this would work as a setup. What would be the incentives that trigger systems like that? I think this is about the design of a framework, where the computational software sets help us to gain insight and an overview of what is going on, and what could be going on. With framework-design you generate freedom while maintaining regulations. It is about integrating another language, that of systems-design (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Systems_design) and flowchart design using UML, Unified Model Language, in order to update our dealings with our profession. With that, we can incorporate resilient principles into our urban design, like bufferzones, but make them responsive and interacting with our day to day activities while maintaining safety regulations. What those are, should be up for discussion and understandable for large audiences. (www.iwt.io/articles/planningbyparameters.pdf ) One notion which intrigues me currently is what we can learn from our predecessors, the heroes from the 60’s: Reyner Banham, Cedric Price, Yona Friedman… What they were doing is systems-design. The Fun Palace is nothing but a 3D framework for managing operations.

And the manuals of Yona are documents discussing parameters for the evolutionary growth of communities. Back then they were wild ideas and uncontrollable - but right now, with the emergence of digital, they are fully operable.

Intellegized surroundings What we will see appearing are ‘intelligized’ objects and surroundings.

They are objects designed specifically to communicate - not necessarily with us, humans, but with each other in order to discuss their function and reach their pre-programmed ideals. We are only at the beginning of what is possible. We are the primitives of the current digital age, with not only NASA developing the Quantum computer - but also the TU Delft building its own version, the Singularity principle, around the corner from here. We can stand by, and let it be used for better or for worse. What can we imagine to do with computational power like that?

Thus, it is no longer only designing the shape of things, but the relationship between things, and that which they generate. What are the underlying datasets that are needed? Who is authorized to intervene?

Technology as the Rosetta Stone With the integration of the digital in our surroundings, what I’m fascinated by is the idea of the hypothesis whereby technology could function as the Rosetta Stone, translating man’s and nature’s language. Thus, we could see the implementation of the natural dataset becoming a reality with projects like Ivan Henriques’ ‘Jurema Action Plant’, developed at V2 in Rotterdam. Where, by analyzing the juices running through the plant and programming them according to specific movements generated by a machine, the plant gets an awareness - it becomes a sentient being in a way. (http://ivanhenriques.com/2011/06/02/jurema-action-plant/) What would happen if we get our plants in our urban surroundings hooked up to devices like this? Plants, migrating in the morning towards an optimum location for Carbonmonoxide, or maximum amounts of sun acces? In other words, if the plants would function for their own best, while upgrading our surroundings?

A lot of stuff is going on with bio-programming, with plants being hooked up to devices so that we can monitor or manipulate their outcome, or so that plants are linked with specific human demands, or even on a micro level the genes are manipulated, or different micro organisms are combined to fulfill contrasting demands. For example, the BioConcrete and BioBrick material that is being generated by Henk Jonkers of the CiTG Microlab and Leon van Paassen, both from TU Delft, whereby combining concrete with a bacteria which excretes a type of limestone when exposed to oxygen, generating the possibility that the moment cracks appear in the concrete, the bacteria fills up the hole with this material, thus protecting the concrete. What can we think of procedures like this doing for architecture? What if 27

| digital city | interview

2 the material excreted by bacteria is soft like a pillow? Would you get an object that gets increasingly more soft the moment it gets damaged more? Or the electricity oozing moss – in very small currents though – that, when harvested, can light up a LED light? (Moss Table by Carlos Peralta, Alex Driver, Paolo Bombelli) This triggers my imagination of what we could be doing when we mix interior architecture with urbanism - you see small-scale interventions having large-scale implications. Designing in such a way is something we can manage nowadays with the adittion of digital.

In your presentation on Digital Cities you distinguish between its popular conception, often reducing the term to aesthetic means, and the spatial evolution towards digitally enhanced spaces. Which phenomena do you recognize as influential for the “physics of the future”?

"mobile devices become ubiquitous in urban environments (and in many places they already are), the technicity of architecture as the primary technology of space-making is challenged by the spatial transductions these devices afford." [Mark Shepard – Reality of Virtuality]. Basically, what Mark Shepard states, is that the notion of architecture, designing the use and interpretation of a space, is challenged by digital - in this case by mobile devices. Take our public transport: if you commute with the Fyra train from Rotterdam to Amsterdam in the morning, almost everybody is either checking their emails, preparing presentations, or having conference calls. The train acts as a moving office building. How could the NS design their trains for uses like that? And, should they? What this is all about is that physicality forms the new and current location that contains the digital life we pursue. No sci-fi or virtual reality. In other words, digital enables us to re-use our physical surroundings in an entirely different way than before. It is about the quality of space, with its physicality being a luxury.

Tactile environments will be the next interfaces What I find interesting is that this all leads up to a scenario where tactile environments will be the next interfaces: the digital becomes tangible. No virtual reality, no big helmets, no being plugged into a mainframe stuck in cabins or any of those sci-fi scenarios. What we are heading towards is an integrated physical/digital environment, where digital is fully immersed in its surroundings. Not the huge media facades in big cities, causing digital noise like we see around us now, but integrated with common sense, only implemented where it actually makes sense to upgrade the surroundings. No tech for tech’s sake.

28

Tactility - how things feel to the touch - those things are placed in a new light. For example, how does real unprocessed wood feel when you touch it with your hand? Or, when it is sanded, the sound changes when you knock. This notion counts for a lot of materials, so what would the different processing typologies of a material mean?

What different interfaces could the different materials harbor? If we consider the Cave Man Principle, referenced by Michiu Kaku [Michiu Kaku, Physics of the Future], which states that touch is leading over vision, meaning what we touch we are more intimate with, what are the tangible interfaces that we can foresee when we apply this to different materials? What would our world look and feel like then?

One of your recent occupations involved the strategic advisory of establishing the A-Lab workspaces. Would you consider the perpetual turn towards alternative working environments unleashed by the internet as progress or a fallacy?

I consider it to be progress. True, with internet and our digital tools, we can indeed work anywhere and at any time. However, we are physical creatures. We like to talk and interact with other people in real life. We like to be surrounded by like-minded people, in an environment that supports our needs. What I think is an outcome of this, is that we again start to appreciate our surroundings in a different manner. Not only how a place is designed, but also the proximity of public transport, bars, bistro’s, a river. What becomes important is the idea of the location. Does this place trigger my own ideas of what a workplace should be, and do I have influence? In other words, can I become a part of it, and adjust the direction of what this place will be in the future? Different parties and stake holders, all with their own benefits and ambitions create a movement that surpasses the physical location. How to design or manage something like this?

How we got involved with A-Lab was when Marcus Fernhout, (Codum), approached us (Instability.We.Trust) with the question of what to do with a place like the old Shell laboratories on the North shore of the IJ? What could be feasible for a building which was completely run down, squatted by the Occupy movement, stripped of both its copper piping which was sold for scrap money as well as its electricity and plumbing. What to do with a 15.000m2 building with a bad image and located on a not-so-popular location? What would be the phasing of a project like this?

There was already a completely developed plan for the entire area, by the municipality of Amsterdam, containing lots of high-rises – with the EYE museum as part of that masterplan. Then came the crash of the crisis in 2008, bringing the whole development to a halt.

Figures 3

1. Give Plants a voice, pamphlet illustration of a Sentient Plant parametric urbanism research. [copyrights IWT] 2. Section diagram of A Lab, showing an evolutionary growth model with programmatic add-ons, amongst which a roof top energy forrest and full use of the redundant spaces in the building. [copyrights IWT] 3. A Lab on the North Shore of the IJ in Amsterdam. [copyrights Jonas Klock]

How to deal with surroundings, that don’t have the incentive to be developed into new real estate on short-term? Together we formulated both a design, and a programmatic implementation strategy as well as an economic model to make our plans become a reality, which is A-Lab. Suddenly it became a place: a location where people spend their working and relaxing days, making it a true part of their lives. (https://vimeo.com/75379984)

Combining this with what we talked about earlier, the aspect of digital, enabling us to work anywhere, environments become even more story-planned than functionally planned. Suddenly the function of ‘the office’ can be anywhere, in the staircase, in the train, in a hotel room. Then, we need to think about what the basic parameters are of that place, its tactile environment and what that location in the building could be.

Story-Planning I think planning should be more about the narrative of the location, the area. For A Lab we worked with something I’d like to call StoryPlanning, where we try to formulate a story to create environments, not just focusing on the building but the district, embedded in a bigger ambition. The question then is how that can be broken down into smaller self-propelling parts and phases. The story can be used, manipulated and dreamt about by different industries, political parties, entrepreneurs, etc. A bit like in a novel, where the writer doesn’t describe an entire house - room for room - in order to give you an impression of what it’s surroundings are, but by its details, suggesting an atmosphere to fill in the rest of the rooms that the reader can wander through in his mind, colour it with his own imagination, while sticking to the prerogative of the incentive of the author.

The location as Ecosystem What we aimed for is to design ecosystems, both large- and smallscale. Large being international partners and government, zooming in to have key players which can financially back start-ups by hiring or making use of their services. We didn’t want to create a static concept, but a dynamic environment open to interpretation and adaptation over time, while maintaining quality and focus. It is about trying to generate a core belief, enabling the built program to shrink, change color, expand over multiple buildings, while at its core stay the same trusted entity.

Redundancy principle in Architecture One of the reasons why the building of A Lab works like it does, is because of a principle which we have spent the last 20 years optimizing in a diametrically oppozed direction. The rentable floor area ratio – bruto vs netto floor area - where we would have an optimum between the maximization of rentable floor area versus a minimum of support areas like traffic and storage, was the goal. What we noticed with setting up A-Lab is that by actually having rather elaborate staircase and storage spaces – in contrast to the bruto-netto ratio – we had locations in the building that could harbor different unforeseen places for support programs, like an espresso bar, presentation and relaxation areas, mixed into one. Supporting our story of what we wanted the place to become.

This is something that Michiel Riedijk refers to as redundant space, where a design should contain a percentage of unassigned programmatic square meters that function as a buffer zone in a building, able to adapt to changing needs. It questions the notion of bufferzones, with undefined spaces working as such. Something we are used to in urbanism, with the Uiterwaarden as an example, but not so much in architecture.

With A Lab, we stayed involved after creating the concept, strategy, design. We wanted to create an active environment, more like a movement. To do that, we needed the right anchor tenants who adopt and adapt the goal of the place. For example, we spent a lot of time searching for a top barista who fitted the story, a dedicated person, creating in the heart of the building a unique atmosphere and who shared the dream of having the best office canteen ever. I think this is still designing. Basically, we aim to integrate a multitude of disciplines which are in accordance with each other, which are complimentary.

In order to do this, you first have to investigate, to talk with possible tenants who they desire to be surrounded by - a bit like being a profiler - in order to come up with a good mix.

I think A Lab to me is an investigation into how places can respond to the moment, without the need to build an entirely new building.

We have to acknowledge that digital is a building material, where building material in the end is matter to generate physical space. Space that is inhabited, and used or abused, to meet human desires. This, combined with the redundancy principle works for me. You leave parts open, literally open for interpretation. With the building up of the story, you create a framework, geared to support the narrative.

Different stakeholders are free to fill in their story, their ambition.

Thus, narratives within the narrative are created. Places become physical playgrounds for a lot more people than only designers.

Emilia Bruck ■ 29

MIDNIGHT

100 million calls to 311

There were 34,522 complaints called in to 311 between September 8 15, 2010.is about 34,522 complaints called in to 311* between september tand his September visualization eptember 8 and are the most sHere eptember 15, common, 2010. here ere are the most common, plotted by time of day. plotted by time of day.

DAMAGED TREES

*311 is new york y city's ity's main source of government information and non-emergency services. (y (y you ou can call this line for complains and requests) credits: pitch itch interactive, inc. commissioned ommissioned by wired magazine agazine

SANITATION SANI TATION TA TION CONDITIONS SEWER MAINTENANCE

STREETLIGHTS

TAXI COMPLAINTS

WATER MAINTENANCE

I NV I S I B L E C I T Y

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NOON

MIDNIGHT

CONSUMER COMPLAINTS

GRAFFITI

TRAFFIC SIGNAL CONDITIONS

DIRTY CONDITIONS

BLOCKED DRIVEWAYS

CHLOROFLUOROCARBON RECOVERY

LOST PROPERTY

STREET CONDITIONS

NOISE

GENERAL CONSTRUCTION—PLUMBING

RODENTS

ILLEGAL PARKING

SIDEWALK CONDITIONS OVERGROWN TREES/BRANCHES ILLEGAL BUILDING USES

PROPERTY TAXES

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| Digital city | interview

Space Syntax

interview with akkelies van Nes

the term space syntax encompasses a set of theories and techniques in analysing the spatial configurations. it was conceived by bill hillier, Julienne hanson, and their colleagues at the bartlett, Ucl from the late 1970’s to early 1980’s as a tool to help architects simulate the likely social effects of their designs. in this interview, akkelies van nes, a expert of space syntax working in tU Delft, will give her own opinion of the development of space syntax and the future trends in urbanism.

how do you see the future trends in urbanism or our city?

I believe we have built so many unsuccessful places, now is the time to learn from our mistakes.

We lack functional spatial tools to analyse and compare their results, to analyse spatial parameters independently from social parameters so that you do not mix them up or bring them into conflict. Therefore, it is very important that you can analyse the space separately from social-economic data, and correlate them to see how one influences the other and find out what is the relationship between space and society. How do activities and society affect urban space? How does society organise its space? Also, how does the spatial structure of the built environment affect activity and society? It can be seen that many urban areas do not function according to the initial intentions, because of crime, anti-social behaviour, lack of street life, shops closing down and moving out. Therefore, it is time to investigate these areas and identify their spatial and social parameters and apply this knowledge to help reverse these problems. what is the main advantage of space syntax in comparison to traditional tools or methodologies?

Space Syntax is a tool to analyse spatial relationships. It provides a set of techniques which assist us in analysing space. Through these tools, you can analyse the spatial configuration of larger metropolitan areas, and test your empirical database. Now you have a substantial database, so you can make some general assumptions about how cities work, and also some theoretical development. So far, a lot needs to be done, but at least this is a tool that functions very well at the moment. It is also a challenge for the future to combine Space Syntax with other available spatial analysis tools, because they really complement each other.

Dr. scient. akkelies van nes is assistant professor of urban Design at the faculty of architecture, Delft university of t technology (the Netherlands). she received her phD at the Department of land use and landscape architecture at the agricultural university of Norway entitled: road building and urban change. the effect of ring roads on the dispersal of shop and retail in western european towns and cities. the core of her research activities is developing and applying various spatial analyses tools on urban centralities on various scale levels, space and crime in neighbourhoods, archaeology, strategic planning in cities, and railway stations.

Figures

1 32

1. global integration of four strategic principles 2. the theory of the natural movement economic process (this diagram shows the relationship between configuration, attraction (the location of economic activities) and movement. it explains how a built environment function independent on planning processes as regards the location pattern of shops, human movement through the urban network and the configuration of the street grid.) of improvement in leiden 3. a example of calculating axial integration 4. rearranged topologic graph according the axial integration value

MOVEMENT Not

ned

plan

3

CONFIGURATION

Not

plan

ned ATTRACTION

2

4

how do you see the future development of space syntax?

We are approaching a technological revolution within our industry which will take place in the next five years. The method of Space Syntax has been tested, improved and is constantly under development. I believe that in the future it will be time to apply it in urban design practice or strategy planning. Space Syntax can be a very useful tool to measure the socio-economic impact of certain planning decisions. For example, if you aim to propose a new road link or a new movement route as part of an urban plan, we can test many alternatives and their potential impact on the existing area. This technology has been utilised for the regeneration of Trafalgar Square and the specific location of the London Millennium Bridge. It has also contributed to help revitalise the southern area of St. Paul’s Cathedral. Architect Sir Norman Foster has applied Space Syntax on his urban design projects and adjust them accordingly to the results.

Therefore, I think of the development of Space Syntax as a continuous process; there are some people who continue to develop the software and there are some people who test it out on cases in different cultural contexts.

adding Value by space syntax 1. revealing unseen opportunities and creating better ideas. the key strength of the space syntax approach lies in its ability to reveal otherwise unseen opportunities and better inform an approach. the first step in identifying opportunities is in the ‘diagnosis’ of existing situations through baseline studies. these assessments help identify assets of a given site and inspire design ideas to capitalise on these assets.

The method is a degree of testability and force viability which also contributes to the theory of development. If you can start to apply space syntax within your design practice, you can develop urban plans based on more scientific and objective grounds. If you want to create a viable lively urban neighbourhood, you now have the strategic tools to achieve it. If you intend to create a quiet and peaceful dwelling area, you can identify what kind of spatial structure is needed to support this design goal with space syntax. yuhui Jin ■

2. measuring and improving the likelihood of success. the space syntax approach is based on a set of evidence-based methods that forecast whether proposed policies, strategies, plans, and designs will be effective in generating certain social, economic, and environmental benefits, and helps to reduce or mitigate the risk of functional failure.

"It is very important that you can analysis the space separately from socioeconomic data, and correlate them to see how does one influences the other"

3. facilitating communication on project teams and with stakeholders this methods allow us to speak a common ‘spatial’ language that bridges disciplinary divides and translates the objectives of planners, designers, transport engineers, economists, developers, investors and members of the public in such a way that they can be understood by all and organised into meaningful, practical frameworks for action. source: http://www.spacesyntax.com

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| digital city | article

Urban Futures The Future City Mediated by Embedded Computation

When we think of the way we interact with a computer in daily life, what first comes to mind is an image of us sitting at home or work on our personal computer or laptop, our minds are immersed into whatever is on screen. Maybe we are either writing an email for work, playing a video game, or shopping on a website. Increasingly, however, our experience with computers is implicated much more in what is going on in our experience outside of that interface in the city.

Through the miniaturization of microchips with greater processing ability and memory over time (Moore’s law), computational power, when combined with wired or wireless communication technology, is being distributed throughout the urban environment so as to digitally augment the different aspects of daily active living in sometimes more and sometimes less tangible ways. Ultimately enabling of life, the digitally enhanced city is being deployed to ease, enrich, empower, inform, aesthetically excite, manage/control, and liberate active urban living and attendant flows of information, environmental energies, and social and economic activity.

The following interviews serve to discuss these different ways wired or wireless networked computation is being used in the urban environment that will affect how we live now and in the future.

The first interview takes a wide eyed view of the subject by providing insight that might more acutely define the computationally or digitally enhanced city as what he terms the ‘Sentient City’.

Could you briefly explain what the Sentient City is?

Within the context of contemporary discourse surrounding the Smart City, the concept of “Sentience” provides a useful way to foreground much of the technology that is currently being promoted as “Smart.”

As we move beyond the initial practices and promises of the Smart City, we find information processing capacity approaching a higher order of magnitude. Here your transaction history, mobility patterns, and personal profile (i.e. sex, age, zipcode and related demographics) are mined for patterns that match known profiles (of a potential customer, or a possible terrorist) and inferences can be made in terms of what one may buy next, or strike next. These computational systems operate on metadata, having been trained what to look for using machine learning techniques, where performance is measured in terms of the percentage of false-positives (or false-negatives). Within this context, urban systems and infrastructures take on a quality of what might best be described as “sentience.”

So a “sentient” city, then, is one that is able to subjectively perceive things happening within it, deliberate on what is perceived, and take action based on these deliberations. In what ways is such influencing lifestyle?

By now it is commonplace in major metropolitan centers to find urban life increasingly entangled with a range of mobile and embedded media, communication and information technologies. We coordinate meeting times and places through SMS text messaging on a mobile 34

Andrew Gray Intern Architect RoTo Architects

phone while on the run. We check-in at our favorite venues using social media apps on our mobile phones, and leave tips for strangers about what to do there. We cluster in cafes and parks where WiFi is free to check email on a laptop. We drive cars with on-board navigation systems that map optimal routes to a destination, updating in real-time to take into account current traffic patterns, construction activity, and special events. We pass through public spaces blanketed by CCTV surveillance cameras monitored by machine vision systems running advanced face detection and object tracking algorithms. Ubiquitous computing evangelists herald an age of urban infrastructure capable of sensing and responding to the events and activities that transpire around it. This near-future city is projected as one that reflexively monitors our behavior within it and becomes an active agent in the organization of our daily lives.

What are urban tools for accessing the Sentient City?

In an age of “Big Data”, we have the opportunity to connect, aggregate, analyze and integrate information about the urban environment from a variety of sources. We’re able to better visualize, model and predict urban processes, and anticipate probable outcomes. Currently, we access the Smart City primarily via “smart” phones. With the advent of Sentient urban systems and infrastructures, it is less a question of how we access them and more of how they access us. For example, embedded sensors monitor, manage and regulate utility services and critical urban infrastructure. And, social media platforms such as Twitter and Foursquare - provide new ways of tracking how we move, who we are with, where we go and what we think of where we’ve been. Data on trending venues, popular neighborhoods, peak times and common frequencies enable mapping patterns of mobility and activity in a more dynamic and fine-grained manner.

Which risks or benefits does the Sentient City bear?

The dominant paradigm for the Smart City involves global ICT companies working with real estate developers and government agencies to build cities from scratch outfitted with smart urban infrastructure. This top-down, centralized approach nominally promises to optimize the distribution of services and maximize energy efficiency, and make cities more livable, sustainable and competitive. This approach promotes a technocratic view of the city and urban development, the corporatization of civic governance, and the dependence on proprietary software, systems and services leading to a form of technological lock-in that runs counter to more traditional concessionary procurement models. It also cedes human agency to these systems and their algorithms - often downplaying the roles people play (and the decisions they make) in their development, operation and internal functioning. This is usually cited as a benefit: reducing human limitations, error or prejudice in managing smart urban infrastructures is generally perceived as a positive design goal.

Much of the drive toward modern forms of automation is based on this idea, and the technical challenges and social dilemmas are wellknown.

Contrasting this paradigm is one that places emphasis on the Smart Citizen rather than smart technologies. Shifting the focus from technology and the city to the role citizens might play in managing the urban environment, this bottom-up, distributed approach aims to directly connect people living in cities with information about their local environment, and solicit their participation in reporting conditions and taking action to effect positive change. The Smart Citizen paradigm promises a more organic, ad-hoc, evolutionary and distributed approach. Its focus on people, not technology, as

the primary actors in the system reaffirms notions of participatory governance, where social and cultural factors are emphasized over high-tech solutions with big price tags. Yet problems regarding the need for some form of centralization inevitably arise when one attempts to scale local solutions to larger urban systems, where interoperability between different systems and the development of open standards for sharing data between them become paramount.

The notion of a “sentient" city looks beneath and beyond the binary opposition of the Smart City / Smart Citizen debate and affords thinking of urban systems and infrastructures as complex techno-social entanglements of people and machines, where people remain in the loop, so to speak. In this sense, the city, its systems and infrastructures, cannot be separated from the citizens by which it is constituted and through whose spatial practices it is given form. It also looks beyond the mere functional and mundane aspects of city governance and management, which fail to address some of the deeper social, cultural, cognitive and perceptual conditions of contemporary urban space.

While creating more efficient and sustainable urban environments is a worthy and increasingly urgent goal, urban life itself has never been something circumscribed by concerns for optimization and efficiency.

Forms of urban life found in cities have always been messier - and more delightful - than that, and we have long known that one of the keys to great cities is their capacity to sustain the diversity and variety of urban life.

Mark Shepard, Artist, Architect & Researcher faculty member at SUNY, Buffalo

“While creating more efficient and sustainable urban environments is a worthy and increasingly urgent goal, urban life itself has never been something circumscribed by concerns for optimization and efficiency. �

1a

1b 35

| digital city | article

Figures 1a.b. Visualization of Sensor Data Collected from the Copenhagen Bicycle Wheel Project 2. Spoorg Interaction Diagram 3. UTS tower in Sydney

2 The following interview contrasts an instrumentalist perspective of the future computational city with one where its technologies might be deployed to produce less tangible effects. The discussion indicates a future city where networked surfaces interacting with the immediate environment produce dynamically changing ambient spatial effects that will captivate urban dwellers.

Can you see other applications of information exchange if interactive interfaces cover large swaths of the urban surface in the future?

In addition to environmental management or the production of aesthetic experiences, which have both been well considered in the discourse on interaction design, I think that potential of working with interactive interfaces on an urban scale could be used to create alternative spatial scenarios whereby a gap or occlusion is introduced into the ubiquity of telecommunications. It would be provocative to create areas where the usual protocols of communication are suspended temporarily, much like the idea of the Situationist International to attach light switches to the streetlights in the city, enabling a diverse series of spatial effects to be produced in the urban environment.

What if building surfaces were linked together into larger aggregate urban surfaces of communication, a ‘meta-system,’ what might the implications for social practices and spatial organizations be?

The city becomes available for everything and everyone to participate and informing the shape/form/character of the urban surface from the bottom-up. Like in Servo’s Spoorg project localized interactions from individual cells when connected into a larger network quote ‘give rise to global information processing as individual sound behavior patterns fuse with input from neighboring cells’ yielding an aggregate sound composition of cells interacting in parallel.

In the Spoorg project we looked at how one variable, fluctuating light levels in the environment, could engage a series of different inputs that have an effect on that variable (such as natural light levels on the exterior of the building, artificial light levels on the interior of the building, and bodily movement in the space of the installation producing interferences with light levels). Rather than a one-to-one correlation with input and output, this created a situation where 36

multiple actions could influence the way in which the installation generated ambient sound patterns.

Likewise, the integration of such distributed computation into a number of building surfaces in an urban environment would likely produce variegated forms of informational output, responding to a vast number of agents. Rather than indexing any legible organizational pattern of the city over time, this would likely produce a kind of parallel city with its own organizational logics.

Will urban surface interfaces able to be read and legibly respond in the future for commercial exchange?

In our work at servo, our attitude toward responsive technologies has always been to work with ambient effects rather than to produce directly legible effects. This means that the cause and effect cycle is intentionally blurred so there may be moments where the underlying responsive logic reveals itself but these are part of a more extensive set of effects that make the logic more inscrutable in order to engage interaction. I think the idea of building surfaces that are capable of scanning the space adjacent to them certainly has commercial viability. I think it would become interesting if the communication of information about a retail location would be transmitted in a way that introduced error into the system so the legibility of what is being transmitted would decay and reform over time.

Servo says the urban surface will become more biotechnological in the future city. Does this change what information is communicated and inform new values and in turn new forms of urban behavior?

The idea of the biotechnological surface could be realized in several ways. One way is for the building surface to include spaces where biotic matter is able to thrive. The surface materiality could also be configured so that over time the material decays or transforms in response to the presence of vegetation for example. This in turn would have an impact on the growth patterns of the biotic matter. The other way that biological assemblages could be configured, would be to input electronic information issued from biological behaviors that occur remotely and enable these to act as agents that affect the building directly.

Marcelyn Gow, partner and founding member at SERVO faculty member at SCI-Arc

The final interview looks at various architecture projects that suggest that increasingly building skins, and by extension urban surfaces, will have an animated, real-time interactive relationship with people and the local environment, and that while this is something new to buildings, it is not new to nature. Environmentally embedded computation is essentially animating the built environment in a way that more closely follows processes that organically happen in nature.

In the UTS Tower project how is the skin an intelligent media surface? We designed the skin to be used for dynamic

animation and to communicate information into the public realm effectively integrating principles of architecture, fashion, media and communication design into a new hybrid typology. In essence a media wall highlighting (activities such as) events, news, information, performances, campus events at both campus scale and city scales.

Media walls have an increasing role in city skylines. The skin will promote the UTS identity as a public and progressive institution with interactive, energy efficient light systems that keep up with the university’s developments in real time. The form of the UTS tower allows different treatments according to site-specific information, city uses and daily light patterns.

Perhaps your most well-known project to date is the Watercube from the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics. The Olympics is a global stage to showcase new technologies in design, what state-of-the-art technologies were applied?

Yes the entire structure of the Watercube was based on an innovative lightweight construction, developed by PTW and CSCEC with ARUP, and derived from the structure of water in the state of aggregation of foam. Behind the totally randomised appearance hides a strict geometry that can be found in natural systems like crystals, cells and molecular structures. By applying this cutting edge material and technology the transparency and apparent randomness is transposed into the inner and outer skins of ETFE cushions.

Do you see a larger trend in cities towards building surfaces or urban surfaces becoming interactive carriers of information?

Since Frei Otto’s soap bubble experiments for the Munich Olympic Stadium in the 1970’s, the use of naturally evolving systems for

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building surfaces has been an important area of design research, and one that has certainly informed our work here at LAVA. Increasingly building envelopes are no longer mere facades. They are both smart and educational. Like a skin of a snake or a spacesuit for a new environment, they address contemporary needs for flexibility, light, air and views. A new skin can react to the environment, to temperature, humidity and air pressure, and can have embedded layers of technology and sustainability, saving water, producing energy and communicating information to occupants inside the building as well as to the outside world.

What is your opinion on numerous urban surfaces linked together, providing information about the city as a whole organism?

My answer to that question is manifest in our exhibition installation in the ‘CUSP’ exhibition, currently on a two-year tour in Australia. The networked city of the future is a connected, interdependent organism where buildings are not singular structural entities (designed, serviced and accessed as isolated units), but part of large networked system. I always say: ‘Think of a coral reef, where thousands of species thrive in coexistence of each other and the elements, air, water and sun. The reef is like the city of the future. ’I believe that the future is not about what buildings look like, but how they perform, interact and how they connect with each other. Outdated passive building facades of the skyscraper are replaced with high performance smart translucent cocoons that create their own microclimate, generate energy, collect rainwater and improve the distribution of natural daylight. By reskinning these inefficient buildings the past is transformed into ‘ superable’ buildings.

What are the social impacts of interactive surfaces on citizens now and in the future? Are they tools to teach the public about invisible natural forces in the environment?

Yes they are vital tools in the global campaign that architects and urban designers face. We need to showcase that the answers to beauty and efficiency are both found in nature and to make visible the invisible.

And we need to build sustainably especially as about 50% of carbon emissions come from buildings.

Chris Bosse, Architect founding partner of LAVA

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| CORPORATE city |

Commercial Urbanism Samsung’s Venture into the World Economy Tess Stribos

By introducing new tools and strategies, which address current needs, corporations strive for market presence through these strategies to gain higher profit margins.

How does this influence urban development? In this article, we have a discussion with Mr Young Wook Joung, who lectured at the Urbanism Week about the integration of market and urban development. He is currently the Deputy General Manager at the Urban Development Division of Samsung C&T, in South Korea. Interestingly, Joung also has a background in architecture from TU Delft.

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| Corporate city | article

Have you ever thought about your behavioural pattern as a particular lifestyle? Companies are exploring the particular idea of lifestyles as a new corporate strategy to generate profit. They no longer aim merely for devices you might be interested in having, but focus on the lifestyle of people. This is an inclusive approach of the materialistic products as they used to focus on, but try to incorporate the immaterial lifestyle that goes with specific products as well. Let us dive into the perspective of Samsung, to see how urbanism is influencing it’s lifestyle marketing. How do they adapt their services to match the demand of the market as quickly as possible?

Samsung and the Korean Government

It might seem quite absurd that an electronic company like Samsung is entering into the urbanism industry. However, when we look closely at Samsung’s origin and development, this is clearly not the case. The company was founded in 1938 as a trading firm and grew to become one of Korea’s largest firms by 1950. The company’s entrance into the electronics market took place in 1969 with the formation of Samsung Electronics Co. According to Youngsoo Kim, “Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy” reported on the four core elements of Samsung corporate structure. These elements were: an emphasis on mass production, reliance on foreign technology, a follow-the-leader strategy and government support (1997).

In this article, we will explore the development of Samsung’s urbanism department and the shift in space definition from mass production to a new corporate approach, which integrates future urban development. The characteristics that Kim described are still present today with some interesting differences. As Joung explained, Samsung’s new emphasis is now on mass customization rather than mass production. How does a large company with commerce mainly in the electronic and digital business start ventures in the real

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estate and development business? The reasons lie in the support and initiative of the Korean government.

The Development of the Republic of South Korea

South Korea is known to be one of the most densely populated countries in the world (figure 1). The scale of Korea’s real estate sector is larger when compared to the Dutch and many other European nations. Five decades ago, the GDP per capita was comparable with levels of poorer nations in Africa and Asia. In 2008, the GDP was comparable to southern European countries.

This growth was achieved by Korea’s proactive relationship between government and business (U.S. Library of Congress, 2013). Today, Korea’s population has exceeded 50 million inhabitants. Aware of its inability to provide sufficient housing, the Korean government has actively encouraged large corporations to invest in the real-estate market since the 90s by tendering large-scale infrastructural projects in which Samsung could get directly involved in. These mega projects are not just about the cost or profit, but also about the technological innovation, which Samsung could provide.

It is also important to highlight the company’s interest in researching the usage of technology in urban infrastructure. The company employs 300 specialists to explore the possibilities between these two interest. Since 1980, Samsung C&T has constructed 217,000 dwelling (Lecture Samsung, 2013). As Joung explains, handling this housing issue was ‘not very easy’. The introduction of mass production provided a solution to meet a certain level of quality. To bring the quality of houses up to standard, Samsung was pressured by the government to achieve a high level of quality in housing. According to Joung, Samsung made a lot of profit in that period around 20052006. From 2006 onwards the government started to hold back and

tackle the urban development, because it went better than expected.

The bubble of development was growing and became uncontrollable.

The government managed to keep on top of this bubble by instructing and pursuing citizens and companies to take a step back.

Nobody within the Korean Government expected the Global Financial Crisis. They found it difficult to allow companies such as Samsung C&T to invest in Korean real estate market. The population of Korea was no longer growing, but the energy of generating business cannot be stopped. Joung illustrates this business characteristic: “If you look at the nature of companies, they have to grow. Shrinking is not an option. They may lay people off, but their business cannot decrease. They want to expand.”

New Challenges in Urban Planning

With increasing labour costs, many Korean companies have relocated their production abroad. Another economic issue is, as explained

by Joung, Samsung’s understanding that their confidence in the structural development of urban infrastructure was at its limit, as far as profit was concerned. “Besides, they also struggled with limited benefit from their investments. Of course, electronics produce a lot of profit, but Samsung does not want to risk everything on it. If one mega project collapsed, it could shuffle the whole C&T group.”

The reason Samsung is still focusing on urbanism is because those who engage in urbanism can create valuable projects and become more aware of the market place. Urbanism is still a relatively new field for Samsung, in which they have little experience”. Samsung C&T has the ambition - and with some grounds - to become a total solution provider in all areas of the construction business - planning, design, financing, construction, and operational management (figure 2). The interest in urban design is not just an expansion of business

for Samsung C&T. Samsung has developed new global strategies as a consequence of the unpredicted world economic relapse. Again, globalisation is steering their business direction but now with a closer focus, with urbanism as a critical driving force. Venturing into new disciplines and business fields is nothing new for Samsung, seeing the company’s development history (Kim, 1997).

Total Solution Provider

Samsung enters the global market by taking a sceptical position towards mass production, as they formulate, “the Fordist logic of combination and repetition of a limited amount of standardized systems, likewise for a normative and standardized conception of home and the understanding of dwelling” (lecture Samsung C&T, 2013). The company does not expect to develop merely housing or infrastructural projects for various clients - they market their products in a multidisciplinary layering of trends. To measure urban characteristics of particular cities, Samsung developed a City Diagnosis Index, which categorizes urban activity in industry, finance, tourism, public services and logistics. The company describes its holistic approach on urban development by the following: “In a global economy, cities continue to compete as engines of prosperity.

In recognition of this tendency, many are attempting to assess the international competitiveness of cities more systematically, which has stimulated SAMSUNG C&T Corporation to build its own tool, the SAMSUNG City Diagnosis Index."

The Samsung CDI aims not only to measure the strengths and weaknesses of cities but also to suggest ways of improving urban quality of life and business, by providing insights and innovative solutions” (lecture Samsung, 2013).

As Samsung is pursuing future ventures, lifestyles are essential guides

Figures 1. Samsung TowerPalace 1,2,3 Developments city view 2. Samsung Raemian APT Mia 6 block development, 2010

References

1

Kim, Y., & Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy. (1997). Technological capabilities and Samsung Electronics' international production network in Asia.

Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy, University of California, Berkeley.

Samsung C&T, 2013. Lecture by Young Wook Joung at Faculty of Architecture, Delft 10 October 2013.

Further Reading: http://www.secc.co.kr/samsungcity/

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| Corporate city | article

2 to follow. Innovative tools such as the City Diagnosis Index facilitate the company’s ambition, according to Joung, to react upon “the diverse lifestyles that are engaging”.

Parametric Design

During his lecture, Joung further introduced parametric design as a tool. He argued that “parametric design can resolve many former limitations in design, which allows one to debate categories like identity and typology and opens up a more sustainable strategy of specific solutions for specific contexts”. But to what extend is parametric design actually a progress? While mass production is more efficient in terms of time and costs, architecturally it may be considered as the “predicament of economy and management” (N. Seraji). This perspective brings the sustainable aspect ascribed to parametric design in question.

Parametric design is a tool to optimise the efficiency of architectural design. One can also wonder how identity and customisation can be unified. Regarding the terms that Samsung uses (from mass production to mass customization), it still contains ‘mass’. There is a paradox between individual and communal terms. Joung refines this statement. According to him, mass production is an approach taken from the side of the supplier rather than from the customer side. The supplier has to work on this new scale and Samsung has to cope with all the systems, which have been oriented towards mass production.

Joung also believes that parametric design will make the design stage easier. As he claims “The engineers and designers can manage a lot of things quickly. They can’t really eliminate all the good points of this approach. As the market changes they have to step up to the next level. This kind of tool – even if they have to deal with a very complex system – is going to help them to handle this. Not only the design process would be changed, it will be more and more adapted for the voice of the customer. As it has the capability to do so, this tool is going to change the nature of design.” Joung further explains that parametric design can function as a bridge between design and policy.

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Three words: Data, Data and Data

Joung illustrates how urbanism can be of great interest for a company such as Samsung. He explains how the size of a television could be limited by the size of the living room and thus be connected to urbanism. “While the width of the street limits the size of the car, one may think the sizes of cars and televisions are of a given dimension, but one can also rethink the sizes of the houses and streets. This is about a way - a direction - of thinking about these issues”. To adequately respond to the demands and desires of citizens, urban planners need to consider leisure possibilities or modes of mobility.

In order to design and plan spaces for such activities, sufficient urban data is essential.

Joung discovered during his PhD research that many cities have incoherent spatial information on the scale of the city. He thinks “there are not enough audits in the city, which we would need for urban development.” Urban designers and researchers can benefit from urban data, that much is clear. Since large corporations have gained interest for the urban scale and perceive urbanism as a stage for lifestyles; the generation of data will intensify, supported by technological progress.

“Who is going to be first? Who is going to invest? Who will be the player? These questions are now quite open terrain for everybody.

That is why we feel we need to hurry.” Samsung has already made big steps into the urban realm and altered our behaviour through smart technology. If Samsung obtains data sets on urban characteristics, it is possible for them to actually steer instead of influence. He continues his contemplation: “It was Google who came up with the data map.

Most data comes from Google, such as the locations of objects or the categorisation of building types. I feel like they will be one of the key players. Google has lots of potential, because in the end it is going to be about the data. Having the right data will make a lot of difference.”

Tess Stribos ■

Comment BOX Which trend is the most invasive in today's cityscape?

Noor Scheltema Asset Developer NS Stations

Henk Snoeken Acting Director Spatial Development Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment

Thijs Koolmees Research Affiliate, Urban Planning Group, AISSR, Universiteit van Amsterdam

David Lee MSc Urbanism TU Delft

People want to go whenever and wherever they want. People want to be independent. They want to be free in how to move.

That is why in Dutch lifestyle active transportation modes, such as walking and cycling, has increased tremendously in popularity. Both examples of slow traffic have the advantage of freedom in time and space: you can walk and cycle anywhere, whenever you want.

Cities understand more and more that this beloved lifestyle is a win-win situation for both the city and its inhabitants. The city affects how people travel, meet, work and recreate. Walking and cycling provides the inhabitants a healthy lifestyle. Moreover, both slow traffic modes require less space than motorized traffic.

Since public space is scarce in dense cities, the city benefits from lean streets designed for pedestrians and cyclists. Cities designed for people, provide places where people want to be. Walkable and bikable cities serve the quality of life. But does the city serve our lifestyles: Is your city designed for motorized traffic or for people?

The world has drastically changed in the last decades.

Economic, demographic and social developments ask for a different way of making city in where there is no more room for generic top-down concepts. Today’s challenge is about working in and about optimizing of the existing structures. With a smaller government and less means to divide there is an increasingly active society. Smart citizens, businesses and corporations take initiative to shape their surroundings: individually or in cooperation with others; using innovation, new technology and available data. By co-creating and experimenting in a ‘Living Lab’, actors research and test new systems. Working on different levels of scale and facing (combinations of) different challenges. Technique will not be the limiting factor.

Questions on how to apply, how to be of value, how to ensure safety, how to minimize vulnerability and how to not cut off other (non-tech) options and possibilities are current factors in ‘Living Lab’, in which the national government acts as partner, not as decider.

It’s invisible, already omnipresent and will make an enormous impact on urban life, urban development and planning: Big Data. The instant accessibility of digitally stored data for urban dwellers changes the use and meaning of the city and specific locations.

New hotspots of culture and consumption are rapidly shared and investors have to move ever faster to commodify those spaces. Governments have created huge databases that map the complexity of urban behaviour, in order to improve policy making. Amsterdam for example is exploiting data to improve efficiency of public space used for car parking.

Another example is the increasing presence of cameras in the city, creating a pseudosecurity. Will the urban society become more manageable in the future through accessibility of data, or does it provide a platform of (state? market?) control that goes beyond all values of freedom and independence, which are a crucial source of pride for contemporary urban dwellers?

One of the most visible issues in Urbanism is the wide range of socio-spatial transformations in urban regions over the last 30-40 years. In Western Europe and North America, we see a significant increase in aging populations and increasingly diverse societies via immigration, pointing to a future fueled not by major population growth, but rather the restructuring of existing urban fabrics. In contrast, regions like Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia have seen the emergence of megacities and rapidly expanding urban peripheries fueled by the decline of local agricultural jobs and the subsequent migration of former farmers seeking new economic opportunities. These changes indicate that urbanists are facing a highly complex, dynamic future that will require a radical rethinking of existing professional practice models.

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| Corporate city | article

Urban Perspectives Interview with David Bergman

In conversation with urban economist, David Bergman with the Metropolitan Research and Economics (MR+E) office, in Los Angeles and faculty member at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc). Bergman elaborates on the city as being an economic artifact and the processes that influence city design. He argues the existence of discontinuing surfaces in urban space and the critical role of modes of accumulation originated from an information intense global economy, where both capital and political vectors play a critical role in design and in the construction of a city.

Design today and in the future is employing more bottom-up approaches of extracting information to be used to inform design. What are some tools in urban planning and economics that use this approach?

In general, the urban environment has been slow to respond to the changing information environment that now permeates almost every other facet of our economy. Information technology has been disruptive to so many traditional economic systems, however the built environment has been slow to respond. Some of this may have to do with its nature as fixed capital stock that is inherently inflexible in its physical form. The way citizens experience the city has been profoundly changed by the presence of information technology. Ride sharing, traffic information, location based marketing and mapping have all made for a more fluid experience of the city by its resident, particularly in their roles as consumers. However this remains an open field for planning the physical city.

don’t like regulation. Regulation provides the context in which their investments can be made with certainty. The complaint is that the regulation is not permissive enough or favorable to their immediate interests, not the presence of regulation itself.

What is your position on the city as an economic artifact and its implications for future city models?

The city is a machine for the social reproduction of capitalism.

Everything in the built environment represents a capital investment and must proceed under its logic. The need for social reproduction deflects pure profit maximization and gain and a social order is required to provide a framework for markets and to provide labor so in this sense capital has to make concessions. How this plays out will vary over time and form society to sociality as capitalism continues its long term historical evolution.

What impact does the rise of China have on future city models?

In what ways do municipal codes help or hinder future growth and development of the city?

Codes are rules and rules are made by cultures. In that respect the norms of development are shaped by the modes of regulation in which the city is embedded. As a result different codes produce different cities, for better or worse. Often the codes are very conservative and slow to change. This is a reflection of their governmental or bureaucratic nature as well as their social function. However there are stakeholders who benefit from this regularity and predictability.

Developers often state that they “just want to know what the rules are” so that they can have certainty moving forward with a project.

This certainty allows them to make long term investments. On the other hand they are willing to exchange some regulation or limitations to what they can produce in return for the stability which has economic value. Don’t believe the investor who says that they

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The Chinese city is an expression of Chinese state directed capitalism.

Developments occur in order to keep an urbanizing labor force with limited skills employed in construction. The whole project of Chinese urbanization over the last 20 years is to serve as a vehicle for the introduction of late capitalism into Chinese society. For the first time the Chinese city is producing private space within the household, The Chinese city is allowing the society to skip a stage in the typical demographic transition and is allowing China to achieve a demographic balance that is similar to a developed country. The point of the Chinese city is to perform these and other critical social transformations, the form or efficiency of the city is purely coincidental and secondary to these larger goals. Beyond the occasional trophy building or status development, architecture as we understand it is unimportant. This leads to an incoherent but effective pattern of urbanization.

What are new planning strategies being used in the total design of new cities in China?

State directed capitalism, while a very effective tool for developing a fast growing economy, creates a high degree of control within the city building process. However, in China this control has not led to a comprehensive planning strategy for individual urban agglomerations or for the nation as a whole. The Chinese system creates and mediates inter-regional competition as a method for stimulating fixed capital investment. This in turn leads to duplication of functions and infrastructures at both the inter-urban and inter-urban scales.

The pro-forma of Chinese development is explicitly political, and each project, and by extension the city itself, must not only produce economic rents and returns to capital but must also contribute to the broader social mission of transforming Chinese sociality.

Scully Beaver-Lynch â–

Figures 1. A rare view of the district edge. Portland, Oregon. Š Free Association of Design

David E. Bergman, AICP, Principal and faculty member, SCI-Arc With over 20 years of experience, Mr. Bergman has participated in a broad range of economic development and planning projects. In particular, he has worked intensively on issues surrounding the formation of urban and regional development strategies and the role of culture industries in economic development. With a strong background in public policy analysis, and the communication of economic development goals to community stakeholders, Mr. Bergman’s practice has centered around the following interrelated disciplines of General Plan Economics, Redevelopment and Community Facilities, Economic and Fiscal Impact Analysis, and Culture, Heritage and Historic Preservation.

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| Corporate city| interview

Lifestyle in urban space Interview with Kai van Hasselt

The focus on lifestyles is increasingly manifesting itself within the built environment.

Not only does it appear in retail, office and interior trends but also in the public space.

Thus, the way we live is influenced by developments in lifestyle. From beach resorts to flexible working spaces, cities and even entire landscapes are shaped by it. This attention on lifestyle leads to several questions about the general culture we live in, but also holds interesting implications for design, as suggested in the title of the Urbanism Week. From the skyscraper to the railway station and from the hotel to the pastry shop, the design and sales of lifestyles require a deep understanding of this cultural phenomenon. Trendwatcher Kai van Hasselt puts his case forward.

As a start, we are curious about your definition of a trend.

I define trends as developments within society and the economy. Mathematically, one could view them as a vector. They have a certain direction and acceleration. There is always a movement and dynamic in them.

During my studies, I had a part time job as a trend analyst. It was like bird watching, you do not know from where or when will they come. I linked many different elements from society in the context of media, culture, fashion, film and art. However, trends are difficult to define. In a way it is comparable to quantum physics, because by observing a particle you change its course and nature. By observing, analyzing and making a educated prediction, you could change the very nature of your study. Hence, analyzing trends is a self-reflective business.

Let’s take pop-up retail as an example. Many pop-up shops began to appear around ten or fifteen years ago. Nike was an innovator in pop-up marketing. It didn’t begin with Nike, but somebody just started to work with empty spaces on his or her own initiative.

It was more of a bottom-up initiative and really new. Today, the idea of a pop-up store is almost the norm, with the increasing flexibility of the economy and the speed of capital. What we observed is that many small trends can become mainstream and the popup phenomenon serves as a good example.

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You used the vector as a metaphor to describe trends. Vectors have a direction and a velocity, what are those in the trend of pop-ups?

Usually, people or organizations who are too small to find a spot in the established domain use pop-up stores to have a physical presence.

They don’t have the resources to get a permanent place. So they can only fit in the small holes that sometimes open in the urban grid. However, nowadays, the urban grid itself has become so flexible. Partly due to the way economic capital works, but also because of the economic crisis which causes so much empty real estate. The question is if this process will continue or decelerate. I would like to say that on the one hand, people have a short attention span, and pop-up caters well to that attitude.

Now that we have established your definition of trends, we would like you to explain your vision of lifestyle trends and the way it changes the built environment.

The lifestyle of how people live in the built environment is no longer determined in a top-down manner. If you think of important buildings from earlier centuries, it was often one powerful person or entity calling the shots.

Today, at least within higher lifestyles brands, there is a lot more attention being paid to the seduction of clients and audiences. For instance, along big shopping streets, brands try to seduce (potential) customers into their

Kai van Hasselt is the founder of Shinsekai Analysis. This company works at the crossroads of urban development, social trends and contemporary art and culture. Kai teaches classes on retail design at the Piet Zwart Institute, while also lecturing the arts, urban development and economics.

belief systems. As a byproduct of branding, we got some exciting buildings.

Take Prada for example, and how they integrate architecture, fashion and symbolic capital. They create smart connections with the designers, but they also behave intellectually. Ms Muiccia Prada used to be a communist in her thinking, yet her clothes are extremely expensive. There is nothing communist about that. There is however a deep understanding about capital, which is Marxist in its analysis. Lifestyle is not only about luxury or high-end environments, but also in general about the way we live within social groups.

Architects pay attention to the style of the built environment, and tell the manufacturer how to construct the interior, the streetscape and the neighborhood. They create a level of lifestyle within the urban domain.

Cultural intelligence is a concept your company uses to analyse the relation between trends and cities. How do you analyse with this tool?

The urban strategies part describes the analysis of global examples and trends.

Cultural intelligence focuses on looking at the local culture and artistic practice.

Understanding local culture and its often tacit manifestation is key to successful development that acknowledges locality and place. Especially when a designer works in another country, it is very important to be aware on that which you do not naturally

know. In the economic boom years of 2007 and 2008, I have done several projects in Kazakhstan, Monaco, and Morocco. You start with curiosity and then you have to make sure you meet up with local people who tell you what is important about the way their city functions. We often met with artists, business people and designers.

In Kazakhstan I met a group of artists who took me on a tour around the city and showed me the urban fabric, and the different directions in which the city was developing.

By interviewing different people, we can see what is common in their story. Then, you can explain to the client how to make something local or make something work locally.

After a trend emerges it takes some time for its effects to be noticed in society.

What trends of the last decade has come to define today’s urbanism?

Let’s take a look at one of Urbanism Week’s themes: Urban Health. This might be one of the most difficult things to understand from an urban perspective, compared to the other themes of digital cities and mobility.

We have to understand technical difficulties of the other domains, let’s say the domain of medicine. Take the example of slum medicine. The old ideas in the Netherlands

on tropical medicine1 are now being updated to provide medical treatment specialised for slums. This is one of the current trends in this particular medical field, finding a way to improve the living conditions of informal settlement dwellers. I think urbanism can achieve a lot in that domain, if it collaborates with people from medicine and other professions. This is a development that could impact today’s urbanism.

This inclusiveness of other fields is also valid in ideas about spatial equality. It comes back to the question of access to infrastructure, certain goods and capital. Urbanism students and practitioners should become more aware of the role of money and capital. After all, the financial crisis showed how capital disrupted the workings of cities and societies.

It would be good to focus within urbanism by questioning how capital impacts on society.

As a biological example, some mushrooms have rhizomatical qualities. Rhizome means a system of roots which can spurt simultanious above ground growth. One entity is present everywhere at the same time and pops up at places with the right conditions. Is there space, demand and possibilities for a lifestyle block?

Some projects by developer Soho in Beiing are an interesting case in example. It is not just a hotel or a shop or a chain , but it functions as a urban block or hub. In many cities one could have an urban lifestyle block which works in this way. Think of London and New York, which already have a Chelsea and a Soho neighbourhood. There is room for more kinds of neighborhoods which function globally, in more than just one city.

In that sense, I see potential for a rhizomatic lifestyle superblock. Now let’s design it!

Yuhui Jin & Yos Purwanto ■

Your lecture mentioned the concept of a Lifestyle Block. Could you tell us more about this possible trend of tomorrow’s urbanism?

When you look at global cities, one will find hotel chains like the Hilton, which represents a kind of global lifestyle. This representation could also could happen in more than just one building, perhaps in a urban zone or block.

References 1. A Dutch medical specialisation which focusses on the treatment of and the struggle with diseases common in tropical areas

Figures 1. Workout as lifestyle in Paris © Shinsekai Analysis 2012-2013 2. St. Gallen public space as playground © Shinsekai Analysis 2012-2013

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| Corporate city | article

Washing Away Our Responsibilities Now 100% Guilt Free

On one sunny afternoon, I had a friendly conversation with an old friend of mine who was thinking about purchasing a new car. My friend was interested in the Toyota Prius which uses electricity and petroleum to power the vehicle. He explained that he was keen to be environmentally friendly and began to launch into how the vehicle produces low emissions and would save on fuel cost. Suddenly, my friend linked me two video posted on YouTube. The first link was a rather dry and boring review of the vehicle while the second link was intriguing and sparked many questions in my mind. The short video is called ‘Prius Man and Nature.’ There is no voice over instead it had some short text accompanied by the usual commercial jingle.

With the appearance of lush green fields, the greenwash alarm bells went off in my mind. What is greenwashing? According to the Concise Oxford Dictionary, "greenwashing is the engagement in disinformation by an organization to present themselves as being environmentally responsible." To achieve this, it involves some kind of marketing hype that is supported by the most obscure statistics and of course sprinkled with wishful thinking. In my opinion, this particular marketing campaign created by Toyota ticks boxes quite well.

The wish thinking and marketing hype becomes apparent when the comment of “Everyone’s got a car that can help save the planet... this can only be good” was displayed. This is followed by the rather amusing tagline “First created ten years ago, when the environment wasn’t quite so fashionable,” I instantly said to my friend that this particular advertisement was not entirely misleading but misguiding him to believe that he could become apart of something that would help protect the environment by purchasing a Toyota.

Nevertheless, the vehicle still produces emissions by the virtue of using petroleum based car and factoring the other potential customers could mean lower emissions but could still have a detrimental effect on our quality of life as these vehicles still pollute toxic fumes into the atmosphere. Making vague claims like “lowered emissions by a gazillion” by a reputable company such as Toyota is not making the world a better place by any stretch of the imagination but misguiding people from their individual responsibility to look after the environment.

Before my friend and I moved on with our conversation, I suggested that he could try cycling if he was trying to be environmentally friendly and potentially develop a healthier daily routine than wait 48

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Mel Tuangthong MSc Urbanism TU Delft

in traffic. He declined my suggestion and expressed that the convenience of the automobile was more desirable. I was simply disappointed.

After our conversation finished, my attention switched to greenwashing in Urbanism. Are we as urbanist short selling environmental credentials to merely to tick off society’s expectations of doing the right thing without effectively dealing with the issues to combat the destruction of our environment?

Like any normal curious person, I googled in “Green Washing Urban Design” and the results were sort of expected. The results showed pictures of skyscrapers attached with wind turbines presumably generating energy in the Middle East and green roof tops filled with countless awkwardly positioned people.

Some of these images were quite engaging and inspiring. These environmental focused designs seemed futuristically and were apart of an alternate reality that seemed distant to be true. Nevertheless, there was a part that wanted these projects to realized. It was difficult to be critical because some images just grand visions and had the strong marketing pull that made me believe the potential.

Acting eco friendly is extremely prevalent in designing our current and future urban environment. I think this is because the wider community and even ourselves has simply come to expect that Urbanism should be environmental conscience.

How many times have you mentioned the ‘green’ or ‘sustainable’ in your project and knew precisely what benefits it would bring to the community? I plead guilty to greenwashing by simply using the word ‘green spaces’ and ‘sustainable’, I seem to use it as the giant umbrella to simply imply that the quality of life will improve. Some contrive from the lack of knowledge in terms of knowing being able to understand and gather information to make the correct judgement. Even today, many students at the TU Delft are heavily discounting why Sustainable Urban Engineering of Territory is apart of the curriculum and seriously contending that it should not be apart of our studies. I personally disagree to simply say that we need to know more about the environment and combat ourselves against being uninformed and indeed mislead by those who cut corners.

Governments around the world have intervened and has introduced basic

regulations such as European Union Energy Efficiency Plan 2011 to control elements such as heating and lighting in building design.

However, it is often quite weak in the face of technological trends which brings novelty approaches to help aid environmental sustainability yet lack of consistent monitoring could mean underperforming practices making them ineffective in the long term.

For many places such as Australia, many environmental protocols such as the Green Star merely act as guidelines and the benchmarking is treated as some sort of marketing scale. The highest Australian benchmark is ‘Six Stars’ which to the Australian Council of Green Housing is of ‘World Leadership’ standard. Since the introduction of the rating, Australia’s property market has sprung up new housing developments with the six star rating. According to Associate Professor Alan Pears at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, these new dwellings on average experience a ten percent premium pricing on top of current market rate. Hence, many property developers are laughing all the way to bank by failing to mention the detailing on the environmental benefits other than vaguely describing it as environmentally conscious design. It seems the horse has bolt

on accountability and yet we still have a big problem on our hands.

Like the Toyota Prius advertisement, this environmental tag can be misguiding and create a level of trivialness in being environmentally sustainable. In a strange way, writing this article has lead me to think that greenwashing is not entirely to be blamed on the companies themselves. If my understanding of Neoliberal economic is correct, business are reactive to the market and society’s needs. Perhaps, the companies are just mirroring society’s true attitudes towards the environment. It feels like we are washing away our responsibilities with quick fixes and simply accepting the result of any outcome that has a label on it. Just like many politicians who heavily relying on polling surveys to understand what kind of policies they should develop, too many people like my friend are completely missing the point of being environmentally consciences but has fallen into the trend being green because it’s simply an image of a good guy. What do you think? ■

Figures 1. It's not always 2. © job4u-wever

what

it

seems

2 49

Urban Challenges Confronting contemporary cities

TOP 5

Taking the theme of emerging trends a step further, TOP5 looked at the global challenges, faced by contemporary cities around the world. They are considered as complex of issues, that are influencing development of these cities. The drawing representes data through flowscapes with the character and spread of respective challenges.

After decades of steady growth, most of the European cities experience urban stagnation.

The absence on of economic driving forces has led to the reframing of the urban development agendas of the major European cities.

In order to be globally competitive and to attract new financial and human capital, new policies aim at transformation,

physical restructuring and reutilisation of urban assets.

However, this has reflected negatively on rural and smaller metropolitan areas

During the 20th Century,

the car has conquered cities across the world.

The massive

that are less financially successful and are mainly concentrated in Eastern and

adoption

of the automobile as main form of mobility has resulted in urban For example, Detroit and Perth have become extremely car

sprawl.

Southern Europe.

Dealing with this economic and demographic shrinkage is creating additional challenges for smaller European towns and regions.

dependent

without access to well-organised public transport or other mobility alternatives.

The subsequent

gigantic commuting flows has raised environmental and economical concerns.

These sprawling cities need to confront the fundamental challenge of re-organising and providing alternative choice such as public transport networks based on multi-modal mobility systems in order to retain and develop their urban vitality.

The Greek Philosopher Plato proclaimed that “any city even small, is in fact divided into two; one is the city of the poor, the other of the rich” (Plato, The rebublic, Book IV).

Almost 2,500 years have passed, but the spatial segregation within cities is still a major urban challenge.

Urban inequality is a global problem; however, in some geographical regions much more spatially explicit.

“Latin America is highly unequal with respect to incomes, and also exhibits unequal access to education, health, water and electricity, as well as huge disparities in voice, assets and opportunities” (De Ferranti, 2008).

Inequality tends to slow the pace of poverty reduction and combined with a lack of good quality of public services.

50

Todor Kesarovski & Ksenia Polyanina MSc Urbanism TU Delft

As Asian emerging economies take an ever-larger share in the world economy, the issue of growth in a sustainable way becomes a national planning issue for them.

Globally, this is relevant due to the increasing importance of the environment in growth, and Asia is contributing the most by far (IMF, 2013).

While discussing the future economic growth, we also must mention the long-term challenges resulting from the depletion of oil in the Arabian Peninsula.

As oilrich countries now base their

economic model

on fossil resources, investments in new types of in-come such as tourism, education and

hi-technologies

Getting the

global living standards might be the biggest

are done in order to drive regonal economy in the future.

urban challenge.

It conerns numerous cities in developing countries where a considerable amount of the basic living conditions in cities are not provided.

The rapid

urbanisation in Africa and Asia combined with the chaotic expansion of the metropolitan areas limits local and national governments to provide urban security and supply basic services such as health, education, water and sewage facilities.

This leads to slums, overcrowded metropolitan facilities and a polluted urban environment.

What is more, this leads to

unstable political scenes, which place many urban areas under the constant threat from violence and destruction as a result of the on-going civil wars and rebellions.

For example it is occurring in African and Arab cities such as Damascus or Lagos.

References David de Ferranti in Lopez & Perry (2008): Inequality in Latin America Determinants and Consequences. The World Bank: Latin America and the Caribbean Region.

International Monetary Fund (2013): World Economic Outlook: Hopes, Realities, Risks. April 2013.

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| gruaDuatioN proJect |

Socio-spatial implications for the knowledge city The case of the Brainport Eindhoven region

the global transition from a manufacturing economy towards a knowledge economy has shifted the balance of what factors are most important to cities and urban regions in their racebid to remain competitive. creative and innovative industries whichwhose focuss is on research and development are the main driving forces of the knowledge society, bearing social and spatial implications for the everyday environment. apart from that, it also repositions urban planning as a profession.

Dion van Dijk Stijlgroep Landscape and Urban Design TU Delft

changing time, changing role

As the market has shifted from being supply-driven to being demand-driven, the needs of (future) users have taken a central role.

Coupled with the current and economic recession, this has a huge impact on the way we develop projects. To put it plainly, with less money available, fewer risks are taken. The structure of large-scale developments is contracting. Big market parties and the government are forced to be less ambitious and to involve more stakeholders such as residents, small developers, and entrepreneurs. Therefore new plans must be adopted to deal with this.

Today’s urban planner needs to strike a balance between matters of collective importance and individual liberties. He or she will have to assume various roles: as a designer, as a draughtsman, and as a curator. Their task is no longer to make a blueprint, but rather, to create a flexible framework of conditions in which certain, yet undefined, developments can take place. The role of the urbanist is presently changing from that of planner to facilitator.

the following types of work environments: breeding places, creative workshops, transactional environments, and places of production.

For urban planners and policy makers, the challenge then is to ensure that a city and its surrounding region offer a rich variety of work environments to support the development of creative industries which, in turn, benefits the innovative output and entire economy of the region. brainport eindhoven region: the Dutch knowledge powerhouse

In the master thesis Brainport’s Life Cycle, this model is applied to the Brainport Eindhoven region, the powerhouse of the Dutch knowledge economy. Multinationals like Philips, ASML and NXP which collectively have the country’s highest expenditures in research and development, are located in this region. This development is globally recognized: last year the region was even designated as the world’s smartest region.

facilitating innovative activities

Research on entrepreneurship suggests the importance of the working environment for creative and innovative industries, in particular.

This concerns not only the office space, but extends to include also support facilities, meeting spaces, and the proximity to other relevant professionals.

The spatial qualities of the working environment support companies throughout their various phases of development, with each phase characterized by a different type of climate with its own attendant support function. According to the life cycle model proposed by theorists Saris and Modder (2005), creative and innovative companies undergo four distinct phases of development. Each phase is characterized by an experimental or market-oriented character, and an introverted or extroverted character. This categorisation results in 52

1

2 However, figures also show a declining number of start-ups in the Brainport Eindhoven region. This is potentially a serious threat to that reputation, as entrepreneurship is seen as the economic engine of the regional knowledge society. In order to reverse this trend, future plans need to adjust to meet the demands of innovative industries, and particularly those of small entrepreneurs and startups. As yet, the Brainport Eindhoven region does not offer the different types of environments required by these creative and innovative entrepreneurs. Local government policies have led to the development of business and science parks on the periphery of the city. The majority of the creative and innovative companies are therefore located on these traditional industrial sites. The result is that new industries are expected to find their feet in locations that do not meet their needs in the start-up phase.

Meanwhile, the city of Eindhoven has in its existing urban environment a host of potential locations for starting companies.

Centrally located small-scale industrial sites that are currently unused or neglected can be transformed into new work environments for start-ups and entrepreneurs, with the added advantage of the sites’ the industrial past as identifier. And when the need arises, entrepreneurs should be able to upgrade their own environment by adding new programs such as exhibition halls, bars, or even living spaces. The results would be new, attractive city areas that benefit both entrepreneurs and city dwellers.

Due to their central location, it is even possible to connect the start-up environment with other knowledge hotspots in the Brainport region, such as the university campus, the conference centre Evoluon, and creative district Strijp-S. The (partly existing) Bus Rapid Transit network can connect these hotspots with infrastructural hubs like the central train station and Eindhoven Airport, resulting in the creation of a new urban knowledge network throughout the entire region.

Impulse for the city

This strategy of inner city development offers an alternative to the current policy in the Brainport region. Through the redevelopment of small-scale industrial sites, the region consists of more and different work environments that give innovative entrepreneurs the opportunity to develop from sole proprietorships into perhaps multinational. In this way, the strategy responds to the needs of individuals in the different phases of their development and, ultimately, contributes to the innovative output of the region.

Perhaps the greatest benefit is that the entrepreneurs can make use of activities, facilities, and amenities in the existing urban environment, while their activities give a new pulse to the city and its inhabitants as a whole. ■

References Saris and Modder (2005) Creative spaces in the Netherlands, ISOCARP

Figures 1. Life cycle of creative and innovative companies ©Saris and Modder 2. Aerial view of Eindhoven ©author

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| gruaDuatioN proJect |

Renewal by co-creation How to regenerate the Eilandenbuurt through local private initiative?

professional debate about lifestyle and living environment is mostly about the design of lifestyle-specific environments rather than designing cohabitation of different lifestyles. this is counterproductive when the aim is to design enduring liveable neighbourhoods. the task is to create living environments in which residents can make themselves at home by adapting it to their needs.

Limitation to one lifestyle falls short on the dynamics and diversity of how people live.

Study shows that, although people might be attracted to one lifestyle when purchasing a house, their choice is still mainly motivated by price, family size and location. Moreover, their lifestyle changes over time and is often complemented by their partner (Pinkster & van Kempen, 2002). Especially in the Rotterdam South residential areas, where cultural backgrounds differ so much, the four lifestyle categories defined by Smart Agent (2012) will never suffice to realize an enduring fit between residents and environment.

When the aim is to create durable liveability, the living environment should be lifecycle -roof, meaning that one can establish living somewhere, start a family and grow old in the same area. To achieve this, housing should be either adaptable or differentiated enough within this area to offer choice (Smeets, 2006).

Furthermore, when residents can adapt their environment, they have more control over their social interaction, which is essential to improve people’s perception of residential

public

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liveability (Van Dorst, 2005). In other words, the better inhabitants are able to regulate their privacy, the better they will value their living environment. To relate delegated spatial control to design practise, I explored the notion of co-creation. Co-creation is the practice of urban development that starts with private initiative of inhabitants and is supported by professionals. This can have many forms, as long as inhabitants are commissioning the transformation of parts of their living environment and/ or take accountability in the control, maintenance and activation of shared space. In this line of thought I positioned my gradation project: the regeneration of the Eilandenbuurt in Rotterdam South.

How can the urban designer delegate control in urban transformation to empower existing and future inhabitants to take initiative in urban redevelopment?

The case of the Eilandenbuurt shows the relevance of this question. Skipped by largescale urban renewal plans in the seventies and eighties, the Eilandenbuurt nowadays offers little other than 50m2 two-bedroom apartments. The limited choice in housing

Jurrian Arnold Veldacademie / Stedenbouw graduated at TUDelft

causes a high turnover rate of residents, resulting in a lack of investments. Combined with a lack of quality outdoor space and the decrease of amenities, the liveability of the neighbourhood is declining.

However, the Eilandenbuurt uniquely has an almost complete private housing stock, half of which is owner occupied.

While the municipality, and commercial developers invest 330 million in the redevelopment of the adjacent ‘Hart van Zuid’ (Gemeente Rotterdam, 2013), renewal of the Eilandenbuurt has to come from private non-professional home owners, either individually or collectively.

To come to a design, the first step was to learn about the perception of the people who now live in the Eilandenbuurt. For this I organized an interactive design workshop to test my assumptions. By using the structure of Alexander’s pattern language (Alexander et al., 1977), inhabitants have developed a set of design principles for the Eilandenbuurt, creating solutions, setting priorities and connecting individual, group and public interests.

2 The results showed that the improvement of the existing housing stock is a priority.

The quick gains, can be found in the reconfiguration of the outdoor space, especially in the transition between the private and the public space. The developed patterns showed the need for more informally controlled space. Residents on top floors, without gardens, have the need for access to quality outdoor space and want to share this with other residents. The group showed a strong sense of accountability for the maintenance and activation of outdoor space.

Space for personalization and informal control is important regarding the transition between the private and the public domain.

Equally important is to recognize the configuration of formal and informal private territory (Habraken & Teicher, 2000; Castex et al., 2007). Mapping the gradation between these opposites makes it possible to analyse and qualify the urban structure and ultimately shows a territorial configuration (figure 1).

This approach led to a design which can be seen as a reconfiguration of control by territory and scale level. Forms of private initiatives are the building blocks varying from communal gardens to collective private commissioning of apartment blocks. The plan can be executed step by step because it involves small scale, local actors. In this way

the functional and spatial relation between the Eilandenbuurt and Zuidplein can be strengthened without losing its characteristic identity as a living environment. It is important that this redevelopment approach is not dependent on large party agreements and respectively makes it more resilient on the long term, maximizing gains for residents that invest in their own houses.

To come back to lifestyles, instead of designing for one specific lifestyle, this design makes room for a multiplicity of lifestyles which adds to the richness of the urban environment. This requires, however, a different approach and attitude to urban design, one that shapes conditions that empower inhabitants to be commissioners of their own living environment.

Better formulated: The co-creative designer takes the existing context and local initiatives as a starting point. He determines meticulously on which scale level what degree of control is favoured and how this gets shaped in the built environment. He develops a variety of possible interventions without judgement based on style preferences. His design consists of constants and variables, the one strict, the other flexible, and is focused on stimulating private initiatives of inhabitants. Finally he formulates his directives and design principles such that they are understandable and inspiring, also for non-professional stakeholders. â–

References alexander, c., sara, i. & silverstein, m., 1977. a pattern language; towns, buildings, construction, New york: oxford university press. castex, J. et al., 2007. De rationele stad : van bouwblok tot wooneenheid, Nijmegen: suN. van Dorst, m., 2005. een Duurzaam leefbare woonomgeving; fysieke voorwaarden voor privacy regulering, Delft: eburon. gemeente rotterdam, 2013. gemeente rotterdam gunt ballast nedam meerjarige gebiedsontwikkeling - cityportal rotterdam. available at: http://www. rotterdam.nl/hartvanzuid [accessed November 3, 2013]. habraken, N.J. & teicher, J., 2000. the structure of the ordinary: form and control in the built environment, mit press. pinkster, f. & van kempen, r., 2002. leefstijlen en woonmilieuvoorkeuren, utrecht: urban and regional research centre, universiteit utrecht. smart agent, 2012. De grote woontest. available at: http://www.degrotewoontest.nl/ [accessed september 9, 2011]. smeets, J., 2006. woonmilieu, leefstijl en levensloop. in reflecties op het woondomein. eindhoven: technische universiteit eindhoven, pp. 37–56.

Figures 1. analysis of the design interventions by looking at the transition between private and public domains.

2. the design for the redevelopment of the eilandenbuurt, distinguished by scale level and intervention.

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Epilogue: The Character of Technology Sensing the City

t conclude the coverage of emerging trends and innovative tools within the field of Urbanism, to atlantis approached stefan van der spek for a final discussion of this issue’s theme. currently associate professor and director of the geomatics master programme at tU Delft, Van der spek has dedicated a substantial part of his career to new tools and the exploration of their capabilities for reading urban patterns. in the following article Van der spek emphasises the temporal character of technologies, as innovative tools are continuously emerging. its transitory nature defines the character of technology. a condition which, however, should not limit or discourage practitioners from exploiting the capabilities of technological progress and employ them within the realm of urbanism.

People are increasingly acting as not only sensors of our society, but also sensors of our built environment. Smartphones and tablets are largely equipped with all types of sensors: microphone, ambient light sensor, gyroscope, motion sensor/accelerometer, moisture sensor, proximity sensor, GPS, UMTS, touch screen. These sensors are meant as mechanisms for daily tools, but can be used for other purposes. A simple phone is meant for communication, but the microphone - together with location information - can be used easily as a noise sensor. The light-sensors adjusting the screen backlighting can be used as general light-sensor. A GPS meant for positioning, orientation or navigation can be used to collect tracks of individuals.

Beside these more or less controlled environments, people leave masses of geo-tagged and emotionally-loaded traces on the internet through Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn, etc. Not only our mood at a specific place or a particular event is advocated, but also our social- and professional networks are disclosed in public to a certain extent.

Traditionally, a most basic component of Urbanism is the mapping of contexts and, in particular, the transformation of these contexts over time. Data is collected through various research methodologies including interviews, questionnaires and map services. That qualitative component of questionnaires, surveys, and interviews reveal valuable user information and feedback, but at a certain price.

These methods of collecting data can be time consuming, and run the risk of bias as the researcher may inadvertently influence the results through perception of meaning and leading questions. Therefore, in an attempt to improve the reliability and accuracy of otherwise invaluable qualitative data, a number of dedicated devices have been developed over the past decade to collect information in real-time with minimal researcher interference. Big data may be the largest game-changer to emerge from this trend, leveraging crowd-sourced contributions to amass information on a number of topics, including the urban environment. The question is whether these tools are sign of progress or just a fashion?

56

Stefan van der Spek Associate Proffesor Director of the Geomatics Educational Programme TU Delft

To begin, let’s consider some advantages and drawbacks of one particular device: the GPS-tracker. This new technology collects spatio-temporal information, or, data related to location and time at pre-determined intervals. With this device, researchers can approach participants and within a very short amount of time collect data linking the demographic information (meta-data) to the movement data (tacks). This is useful for understandings distinct patterns for different types of users i.e. based on age, gender, household situation, available transport, etc. For all its convenience, such a way of data collection also has its drawbacks. For example, the device itself can be costly and requires physical exertion on the part of the researcher who must work outdoors for data points to be relevant. In addition, the user group may be limited and prone to bias based on the selfselection principle i.e. findings based on only smart phone users cannot represent the whole community. As an alternative, tracks could be collected from individuals who voluntarily offer information e.g. through a web service. While this could result in a substantial database, it requires clear rules and parameters for the data. Some GPS companies already offer such services through individuals’ running and biking tracks, which are anonymously filed in a public database for research. As such, individual tracks can therefore contribute to research on collective behaviour.

In the case of crowd-sourced data, people contribute (consciously or unconsciously) to large-scale, worldwide geo-tagged databases. The foremost advantage is the sheer number of unique users and the spatio-temporal distribution of ‘events’. The primary drawback is the lack of ‘meta data’. A more local system is the use of Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GSM/UMTS and RFID scanners: these scanners pick up unique MAC addresses of clients in a specific range, depending on the strength of the antenna and the number of users. This way, the amount of visitors with active cell phones during an event or in a specific district can be monitored. If multiple scanners are placed around, the sequence and duration of visits can be retrieved.

Analysing this data requires additional research questions and skills.

In order to make these systems a reliable source for Urban Design and Planning research, crowd-sourced data modelled after loyalty card systems may be a option.

Loyalty cards, such as the AH Bonus card and OV-chipcard in The Netherlands, allow companies to collect information on consumer behaviour and in return offer participants benefits in the form of rewards and offers. If modelled after this system, instead of distributing devices, people download ‘apps’ which provide a valuable service to the user. In order to perform the service, specific spatio-temporal information is required. This data is collect anonymously and contributes to the functionality offered by the ‘app’. An advantage is that reliable and tagged data is easily collected, and the participant can evaluate the provided data.

A potential disadvantage is the bias posed by self-selection; while a large number of people may download the app, only a small group will in fact use it, and an even smaller group will continue to use it regularly. Further, different platforms exist, i.e. iPhone, Android, Windows etc. Each day, thousands of apps appear, most of them for iPhone and Android.

When collecting personal information, maintaining privacy is paramount. Address, name, cell phone, license plate and other details of participants are all defined as private information. When researching, such confidential information must not be connected to movement data such as trajectories, and likewise, movement data must not be traceable to an individual.

Hashing and randomization of private information is essential in delinking private information while still maintaining the ability to analyse for patterns and participant

participation rates. Thanks to many new technological tools, visualization and mapping have transitioned from traditional drawing programs to more sophisticated Geographic Information Systems (GIS).

This way, data is not only projected with a specific legend, but also used for calculations and correlations between ‘topics’ and ‘sources’. The natural next step is to use the data for modelling processes and behaviour of so-called ‘agents’, or for rule-based parametric design and data-driven evidencebased design. In this way, the creative process inherent in designs is underpinned by measurable results or even based on artificial intelligence.

The general approach is to craft reliable design outcomes based on (dynamic) rules, calculations and correlation that derive from different data sources. This is a useful, valuable approach when the result is flexible design that is able to adapt to future changes in behaviour and usage. The use of devices and tools has a more temporal character: tools are improved frequently, devices are upgraded rapidly, new apps and technologies emerge continuously. Taken in sum, these tools have a limited expiration date. The power is supported by ubiquitous devices that integrate multiple tools and sensors.

Fashionable trend or here to stay? Our society and built environment is in constant change. The built environment adapts to better serve observable and expected behaviour of its users, while people will often adjust their behaviour to suit new environments. The result is a constant cycle of intervention and adaptation. Looking back and assessing models based on concrete results is relatively easy, but looking forward can be a challenge. ■

stefan van der spek is associate professor of urban Design and Director of the geomatics educational programme at Delft university of technology t , faculty of architecture & the built environment. the main fields he covers are: • Urban Transformations: dynamics of the city (public space and vital city centers) • Intermodal Transfer Points - the design of terminals and (railway) station areas and • Geomatics - a relatively new science concerned with the analysis, acquisition, management, and visualisation of geographic data with the aim of gaining knowledge and better understanding of the built and natural environment. stefan's goal is to develop further knowledge in both urban Design and geomatics. his main project is 'urbanism on track', a group he initiated with Jeroen van schaick in 2007. in his methods he uses evidence-based design: integration of traditional mapping and dynamic user data, e.g. movement data. users play a central role in his approach.

57

Game MEKELPARK Improving it is a challenge for urban designers, but prior to any intervention we must ask ourselves -

It is apparently a familiar place for majority of TU Delft students.

They pass by this empty, windy and sometimes even unsafe spot every day and night, while it is main open space of the campus.

58

Ksenia Polyanina MSc Urbanism TU Delft

To begin with, fill in the CROSSWORD

WHAT COULD PEOPLE DO HERE?

It is the engine of communication between all citizens of the university.

with verbs describing what people in the picture are doing.

Their colours match ones of the gaps for words.

Polis Partners

Colophon ATLANTIS Magazine by Polis | Platform for Urbanism Faculty of Architecture, TU Delft Volume 24, Number 2, December 2013

DIMI

Editor in Chief Emilia Bruck

Editorial Team Jet van der Hee, Todor Kesarovski, Luis Montenegro, Yos Purwanto, Mel Tuangthong,

Yuhui Jin, Jiayao Liu, Ksenia Polyanina, Tess Stribos, Jessica Vahrenkamp

Editorial Address Polis, Platform for Urbanism Julianalaan 134, 2628 BL Delft office: 01 West 350 tel. +31 (0)15-2784093 www.polistudelft.nl atlantis@polistudelft.nl

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Announcements Internships / vacancies If you are searching for interesting internships, have a look at our website. There are a variety of interesting internships on the site, including places at municipalities, offices or summer schools. If you want to place your internship on our website, send us an email.

Atlantis magazine editors Atlantis aims to be a link between urbanism students and the professional world, by publishing interesting articles by contributors from both sides and by being distributed to all Polis members. Do you enjoy writing or interviewing? Do you have lay-out skills? Becoming an editor for Atlantis can be a great opportunity! Contact Polis for more information. sUCCESs TO THE New board The first of January marks the end of the current board and will see the start of the new Polis Board. As a board we look back on a succesful year with a lot of events and activities. We wish the new Polis board all the best and look forward to participate in many new Polis activities.