Masterplanning the Future Conference

1,000 words max.

Title:
iPlanning: Urbanism and Big Data

Theme:
Technological developments in Urban Planning and Design

Abstract:

Introduction
The growth and proliferation of Big Data
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is the one most relevant technological and cultural
phenomenon of the twenty-first century. Its impact goes well beyond mere technical issues to invest
our cognitive models, how we make things (and consume them), and experience the built
environment.
The urbanism of the twenty-first century will demand tools able to merge the potential of big data
onto the physical reality of cities. The reasons for doing so are multiple: digital data allow us to
monitor environmental performances, study and design our cities as evolutionary elements that
evolve in time, as well as connect people and professionals constructing an open, cross -disciplinary
form of urbanism.
User-friendly, geo-located, and connected to a potentially infinite archive, such digital tools are
somehow the opposite of what planning has come to represent; a discipline whose internal
mechanisms have alienated it from public debate.
If digital tools had so far only allowed to construct parallel virtual environments for simulations [think
of the popular videogame SimCity here], the digital tools of the so-called 'web 2.0' generation have
allowed us to collapse digital spaces onto real ones. Augmented reality, for instance, allows us to
visualise digital models on actual locations by projecting them on the screen on our mobile phone.
Where Modernist planning sought standardisation and simplification by decomposing the built
environment into individual indexes, digital tools operate according to the opposite paradigms. They
relish complexity [due to computational power], volatility [because of their ability to sense and
adapt], and dynamic information [as time-based media], as well as they can weave multiple scales
together.
Conceived as such, masterplans will resemble more websites than traditional blueprints. They will
aggregate and link data, tag it to physical locations as hyperlinks and social media do. What will result
is a dynamic planning tool, able to absorb ever-increasing data sets, a platform for experimentation
[through simulation and scenario planning] and collaboration between diverse expertises.

The pressing issues of the near future will require a more radical re-thinking. On the one hand, the
exponential growth of storage capacity, bandwidth, and user-friendliness interfaces will provide a
timely opportunity to allow citizens to tune into their cities. Simultaneously, issues of rapid
urbanisation, volatile economic and social variation, and limited resources are global concerns,
particularly relevant in China, requiring agile planning tools that the profession currently lacks.

The points are discussed by examining two recent projects in which remote sensing and augmented
reality where employed: Xiamen Interactive Model exhibited at the Xiamen Expo 2010 (China, 2010)
and Molecular City presented at the Future Places Festival
i
in Porto in 2010.

Xiamen Interactive Model: Representing Change

The Xiamen Interactive Model was designed in the spring of 2009 and subsequently exhibited at the
Xiamen Technology Expo (2009), Post-Oil City exhibition at the ifa gallery in Stuttgart (2010) and the
UIA congress in Tokyo (2011).

1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_data
The model is perhaps the major and most sophisticated outcome of a larger commission from the city
of Xiamen to an international and interdisciplinary team to design the first comprehensive masterplan
for the city. [fig.1] Xiamens population has been growing at the staggering 6% rate for the past
decade to reach the current count of 2.5milion inhabitants; however, like many other cities in China,
Xiamen has plans to continue its growth and reach the 4milion mark by 2020.
The ecological and infrastructural scale of such dramatic and ongoing transformations led the team to
believe that traditional tools to analyse and manage this kind rate and magnitude of change would
not be effective anymore. Instead of a standard masterplan, we proposed a dynamic planning
document to be first introduced through an interactive model to be presented to the planning
authorities and the general public.


Fig.1 - Xiamen Interactive Model: Dynamic Masterplan.


The model is a 4x4 metre rapid-prototyped representation of the entire metropolitan area of Xiamen.
A set of LED lights wired to an interactive system linked to the Internet via Arduino circuit boards
is positioned underneath it and animates the entire model. In fact, by utilising rapid-prototyping
machine it was possible to maintain a 1mm thickness through the model, thus allowing both lights to
glow through the top surface and various lighting effects. Made by a single, extremely thin material,
the model immediately alludes that there is no difference between built and natural environment as
well as poetically depicts Xiamen as a delicate and fragile artefact to be curated. Four consoles
positioned along the edges of the model are provided with buttons to activate different sets of lights
animating the Masterplan. Each LED light represents either an existing, proposed, or simply
speculative project to implement through the masterplan: the colour of the light identifies the type of
project (typology, technology employed, etc.), whereas its field of influence is conveyed through the
effect generated through the LED light (spot light for point projects, diffuse light for projects having a
larger area of impact). The whole interactive system is also connected to the web which allows it to
download data representing global factors affecting the Xiamens environment such as oil price,
energy consumption, etc. thus visualising the hidden but profound financial and political forces acting
on the city itself. [fig.2]

Molecular City
Exhibited for the first time at the Future Places Festival in Porto (Portugal, 2010) Molecular City is an
installation allowing the public to create their collective hybrid city by superimposing virtual
architectures onto the map of the existing city of Porto via computer projection.
The installation consists of: a model of Porto, video cameras, a projection screen, and a collection of
Augmented Reality [AR] markers that visitors could take and freely position on the model - called
Periodic Table - and formed the architectural substances that made up this half fictional/half real
landscape. Once the visitors choose one or more markers and freely position them on the map of the
city, they can point a video camera at them animating the data sets attached to the markers which
can then be displayed on monitors and projection screens. Finally, via a specifically designed phone
app, this hybrid landscape can be stored online and retrieved by the visitors on their mobile screens
once they wander through the streets of Porto.

The physical space of Porto becomes an unfinished canvas constantly connected to the endless
possibilities provided by virtual space. The role of the architect recedes to the background; the city
transforms into a gameboard where cultural desires and needs are seamlessly projected and
negotiated. Conflations of place, scale, emotion and history overlay to give rise to a hybrid (half real,
half virtual) urban condition that traditional planning tools would not have be able to register and
manage.

By adding AR technology an otherwise conventional model is transformed into a dynamic
participatory tool to imagine future scenarios. Similar to social media and so-called web 2.0 tools, the
logic of such planning tool is aggregational; it links and combines diverse elements in a dynamic
fashion. The city's overall complexity and richness emerges out of the multitude of diverse narratives
and singular gestures showing the potential of an urbanism of Big Data.



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http://futureplaces.org/