Enhancing citizenship

Abstract

In this paper, we draw on material from a participatory design project that focused on the practices, infrastructures, and technologies used for creating and sharing information about the urban environment. The research strategy that we followed includes the collaborative design of a prototype environment and service called Urban Mediator (UM), as well as its subsequent deployment and appropriation in use through several cases. We examine some of the challenges and opportunities that exist in designing in-between infrastructures that can both address a more fluid and active notion of citizenship and understand it as practiced, rather than as a given role. Our research demonstrates that in-between infrastructures can have a role in encouraging a variety of stakeholders, including city officials and citizens, to experiment with and understand some of the complex aspects of participation. Following this argument, we also suggest some ways in which Participatory Design contributes to supporting continuous and iterative design-in-use.

Get Together: A digital platform for urban social participation

“…Regarding the participation of citizens in the city development, manage and maintenance, Urban Mediator (Botero & Saad-Sulonen, 2008, 2010 and Web Map Media (Nuojua et al, 2008) platforms exist to enable discussion among users. Urban Mediator is a software tool that provides for communities the possibility to create, obtain, and share location-based information and engage in discussions.…”

Resisting Resolution: Enterprise Civic Systems Meet Community Organizing

“…As researchers and technologists, our role was to help bridge to the computational capabilities in the Hub and to provide technical and research support in developing the tools and instruments used to collect data. We also provided assistance and training on the tools so that local stakeholders could maintain and extend the resources developed during the research project-this in an effort to preempt the pitfalls of creating data and computational resources that do not get used or that become a barrier to engagement due to their complexity [18,70,71].…”

Social Media as Resource for Involving Young People in Museum Innovation

“…In participatory design (PD) interest has grown in understanding how design may serve as a means capable of opening up spaces for empowering users to question democratic futures and building one's own capacity for change to meet with innovation processes (Botero & Saad-Sulonen, 2008;Di Salvo, 2009;Björgvinsson, Ehn & Hillgren, 2010). These perspectives are highly relevant for youth involvement and connect well with recent attention in PD on social technologies as alternative sites and tools to support participation in design processes (Diettrich et al 2002, Lievrouw 2006, Brereton and Buur 2008, Følstad et al 2012, Reyes and Finken 2012.…”