Wevolve_Future Directions for Better Cities

8/8/2019 Wevolve_Future Directions for Better Cities

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Wevolve.us, a New York-based, future-oriented think-do tank that explores, lives, and breaths the vanguard of

socio-cultural change to provide direction for what could be.

WEVOLVE

//BRIEFING

//FUTURE

DIRECTIONSFOR

BETTERCITIES

//


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INTROWevolve wanted to take a plunge into future of city living and looked at the threecore strategic themes Open City, Global Responsibility and Roots for New

Growth that have been selected to direct the World Design Capital Helsinki 2012

programs. These themes are supposed to guide the co-creation of the WDC 2012

year and we hope this mapping can help people to think what the livable and

lovable cities of tomorrow might be like.

Anticipating the change is a critical capacity for everything from strategy creation to

service design, product innovation and urban planning. The drivers, ingredients and

makers of the future are among us. For example, we see contemporary power

structures, business models, technological enablers, communication practices and

consumption habits being transformed as decentralized global and local networks

empower people and enhance collaboration, while creative expertise is on the rise,

and increased ethical awareness drives insistence for being and doing good.

This package of defined future directions gives a starting point for explorationtoward a better world and more livable cities. However, the idea is not to provide

another strategic report but an initial framework for ongoing dialog within the

broader community of designers, planners, thinkers, and doers so that we can

collaboratively dig deeper into relevant opportunities to be able to make the right

and good things to happen.

We hope that these insights help to inspire and focus the direction for events,

solutions, ideas, and services that make use of design as a wide-ranging tool ofcultural, social and economic development. Because now, right now, is the time to

truly rethink the world and the cities we live in and create better ones.

Yours,

Wevolve


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OPEN

CITY


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FUTURE DRIVERS

FOR OPEN CITY

[2012-2017]

Technological Digitized urbanity and open technologies

From centralized technologies and scarce access points toward digitized and hackable urban spaces and

places.

http://hackshackers.com/2010/11/08/open-all-night-the-great-urban-hack-nyc/

Political Shared and transparent ownership of spaces

From closed or opaque ownership of spaces toward transparent practices, renegotiation of access and

shared ownership.

http://www.publicadcampaign.com/video/spending-time-with-publicadcampaign/http://graffitiresearchlab.com/?blog

Social Networked cities

From separate worlds toward networked, intelligent, and interactive ecosystems of places, buildings,

things, natural elements and other inhabitants of the city (such as us humans).

http://www.motherboard.tv/2010/9/7/networked-city-at-a-festival-where-the-world-gets-reprogrammed

Social Communality, locality and participation

From atomization and anonymity toward new communality, strong location based relationships and a

focus on active participation.


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CULTURE & PEOPLE:

ACTIVE URBAN

CITIZENS

Derek Dellekamp | Photo by Ariette Armella

Urban city dwellers are becoming more interested and informed about their everyday environments and

also renegotiating the accessibility and ownership of urban spaces after decades of top-down dictated

urban planning and over-commercialization of urban space. People around the world are challenging the

old ideas why cities exist and rethinking the roles of our urban systems and environments. People areincreasingly expecting cities to enable them to thrive and provide them with relevant opportunities,

resources, experiences and well-being.

Many are tired of waiting for governments or businesses to develop the cities and create better ways of

living and working. Strong local identities and a strengthening desire for meaningful and authentic

connections with like-minded cohabitants have created empowered networks of people who are sharing

resources and aiming to collectively solve their local problems. These active individuals and communities,

coming together with social businesses and progressive governments, are starting to utilize the new

possibilities to proactively and collaboratively shape their everyday environments and develop better civic

services with the help of open, social and networked technologies.


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EXAMPLES OF NEW SOLUTIONS:

OPEN UP THE CITY

AND DRIVE PARTICIPATION

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/11/ff_311_new_york/all/1

New York Citys popular 311 call center, launched in March 2003, now fields on average more than

50,000 calls a day, offering information about more than 3,600 topics: school closings, recycling rules,

homeless shelters, park events, pothole repairs, and allows people to report various non-emergency

problems in the city. The hundreds of millions of calls represent a huge pool of data to be collected,

parsed, and transformed into usable intelligence. Perhaps even more exciting is the new ecosystem of

startups empowered by 21st-century technology, that has emerged to create innovative ways for

residents to document their problems. All this meticulous urban analysis points the way toward a larger,

and potentially revolutionary, development: the city built of data, the crowdsourced metropolis.


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http://amplifyingcreativecommunities.net/

The Amplifying Creative Communities project explores the sustainability of sustainability. The project

proposes four steps for designers to amplify participation: Find often-hidden examples of people whohave organized their own resources for more sustainable city living. Learn how to create successful

alternatives to the standard commercial and government services. Help those initiatives become easier

and more enjoyable through service design. Show others how they could create similar alternatives for

themselves.


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http://www.guardian.co.uk/open-platform

The Guardians Open Platform is a suite of services that enables partners to build applications with the

help of different APIs for selecting and collecting Guardian content, using the published spreadsheets and

data visualizations or the search engine for data published by various government departments around

the world, and integrating developed applications directly within the Guardian network and content. The

Open Platform aims to make the Guardian a useful resource to partners all around the globe who want to

leverage the value a traditional media house can bring to their business and to society.


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http://www.designtrust.org/projects/project_09farm.html

Five Borough Farm is partnering with New York City's most successful urban farm - Brooklyn-based

Added Value - and with New York's largest landowner - the City itself - to create the nation's first citywide

plan for urban agriculture and a thriving network of local food producers. Working with leading experts

in sustainable development, urban planning, food policy, and program evaluation, Five Borough Farm will

create a policy framework that supports urban agriculture, produce a series of advocacy tools, and

culminate in a pilot project that demonstrates the vitality of urban agriculture as public space. Five

Borough Farm project uses open data and data visualizations to help farmers and their customers,

including NYC residents and local restaurants, to create distribution networks and to better collaborate in

production processes.


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http://www.mappingmainstreet.org/

Mapping Main Street is a collaborative documentary media project that creates a new map of the

country through stories, photos and videos recorded on actual Main Streets. When politicians and the

media mention Main Street, they evoke one people and one place. But there are over 10,466 streets

named Main in the United States. The goal of the project is to document all of the more than 10,000

streets named Main in the United States, inviting people to capture the stories and images of the country

today. The project provides an expansive and flexible online platform for a collaborative documentary

media project that will eventually provide a vision of America unlike any weve seen before, adding another

vector to the participatory process that allows for more subjective visions from community members.


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IMPLICATIONS:

WHAT DOES

THIS MEAN

IN PRACTICE?

> Rethink the city,why does it exist, what it should do, how and with whom.

>Establish a culture of participationand make urban politics and planning

processes thoroughly transparent and easily understandable for people - for

example with increased openness, simplified processes and ubiquitous data

visualization.

>Provide channels and platforms for participation- not just for conversation

but primarily for action to spur the innovation for new ways of bettering our

everyday lives. Open data initiatives and easy digital tools and applications to

utilize these data resources are a good start.

> Let go of hierarchies and introduce top-down to bottom-up. Foster active andinclusive collaboration where local communities and passionate urbanites can offer

creative expertise for both identifying emerging problems and developing relevant

and better solutions. Dont design a city for culture but let the culture design the

city.


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GLOBAL

RESPONSIBILITY


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FUTURE DRIVERS

FOR GLOBAL RESPONSIBILITY

[2012-2017]

Technological Participatory technologies and collaborative platforms

From communication technologies and social media toward participatory and collaborative platforms that

increase transparency, autonomy, well-being and impact globally.

http://mashable.com/2010/03/18/jumo/

Economic Responsible business

From fast profits and opaque practices toward transparent triple-bottom-line strategies and good

business models.

http://www.bcorporation.net/

Social/Economic Social innovation and entrepreneurs

From top-down governmental and corporate social responsibility toward bottom-up, Global South

problem solving and proactive social innovation. From designing for people to designing with each

other.

http://www.sicamp.org/

http://designforthefirstworld.com/

http://globalchallenge.mit.edu/

Political Decentralized global networksFrom centralized power structures and unequal globalization toward more inclusive and decentralized

global networks for fair commerce, better livelihoods, well-being and learning.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_society#Manuel_Castells_and_The_Network_Society

Political/Social Autonomous individuals and communities

From a rigid society dependent on institutions and corporations toward a resilient society built on strong

networks of autonomous individuals and communities.

Social Sense of urgency for change

From slow-paced, local and incremental problem solving toward urgent radical innovation and systemic

change on both global and local levels. From traditional modern-era social movements to new

technologically enhanced, globally scaled, efficient and fast spreading social movements.

http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/collective_impact/

http://www.avaaz.org/en


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CULTURE & PEOPLE:

HOLISTIC RESPONSIBILITY

MEETS SOCIAL INNOVATORS

The Feast Social Innovation Conference in New York | Photo courtesy of The Feast

We have stepped away from times of care-free consumerism and ME needs to an era of altruistic and

concerned citizens and WE deeds. The growing visibility of climate change, the volatility of energy

markets, increased socio-economic stratification, and the ongoing industrialization of the natural world

have made environmentalism, sustainability, and social responsibility movements mainstream around the

globe. We are beginning to understand that every choice we make has an impact on the future of our

family, community, and ultimately our planet, leading to a vision of our interconnectedness and anincreased responsibility and urgent action on global issues. The idea of global responsibility now covers

everything from environmental sustainability to personal well-being, and broader social issues such as

poverty and obesity.

Increasingly, people dont see themselves as passive consumers, but as active and creative citizens who

are taking matters into their own hands. Continuously increasing access to digital tools, information and

resources - thanks to the ever expanding social web and new communication tools - are allowing people

to get more savvy and creative on the complex problems. Collaboratively - together with forward-looking

companies, institutions, brands and governments - active individuals and communities are developing

impactful social businesses, innovations, and services that offer real potential to affect change and createthe responsible cities of the future.


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PLATFORMS FOR CHANGE

AND SOCIAL INNOVATION

http://www.feastongood.com/

The Feast is a cross-disciplinary series of programs addressing social innovation and new ways to makethe world a better place. The Feast - with its conference, workshops and other events - brings togetherthe world's leading creative entrepreneurs, revolutionaries, radicals, doers and thinkers to inspire moreaction, share best practices, and create valuable connections that will change the world. The Feast is builton the combination of passion, creativity, entrepreneurship and openness, as open exchange of ideas

across industries and societies is necessary to produce lasting, sustainable, meaningful change.


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http://www.sicamp.org/

Social Innovation Camp is an experiment in creating social innovations for the digital age. The web andrelated technologies hold tremendous potential to address some fundamental conditions and challenges:how people hold those in positions of power accountable; who they rely on to provide the services theyneed to live healthy, happy lives; or how they make a difference to something that affects them. But to beable to create the wanted impact with the new technologies, the starting point should always be inunderstanding what people really need and thats what Social Innovation Camp is all about. Throughunusual, creative events the Social Innovation Camp brings together talented software developers anddesigners with social innovators to build effective web-based solutions to real social problems.


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http://designforthefirstworld.com/

Design for the First World, or the Dx1W initiative, is a tongue-in-cheek take on a serious issue. It wasborn out of frustration toward misinformed and paternalistic design approaches, also known asremotedesign orparachute design, that end up wasting resources and causing more harm than good in the longrun. And secondly, because we the First World dwellers have serious problems, such as unsustainablefood production, obesity, over consumption, aging population etc, that we havent been able to solve, andits time to bring in the bright minds and design thinkers from developing countries. Design for the FirstWorld launched recently a design competition for Third World residents to create innovative solutions forthe Global North, and most of all to demonstrate the beneficial effects of diversity and exchangebetween cultures through implicit and explicit dialogue on how we all are interlinked and can drive changetogether.


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http://change-connections.com/

Change Connections is an online open innovation forum provided by Nokia and based on serious playaround serious issues. The site offers a space to exchange, connect and collaborate for social good and

to foster thinking around groundbreaking social innovation. Change Connections explores the massive

potential for new connections and innovation in communication technology to make the world a better

place. Features include quotes from a series of more than 40 expert interviews, focus areas for making life

better ranging from learning to livelihood, case studies of existing work and a connections sections and

new methods for collaborative ideating.


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http://www.avaaz.org/en

Avaaz - meaning "voice" in several European, Middle Eastern and Asian languages - launched in 2007

with a simple democratic mission: organize citizens of all nations to close the gap between the world we

have and the world most people everywhere want. The platform empowers millions of people from all

walks of life to take action on pressing global, regional and national issues, from corruption and poverty to

conflict and climate change. The Avaaz community campaigns in 14 languages, served by a core team on

4 continents and thousands of volunteers by signing petitions, funding media campaigns and direct

actions, emailing, calling and lobbying governments, and organizing "offline" protests and events -- to

ensure that the views and values of the world's people inform the decisions that affect us all. The model of

internet organizing allows thousands of individual efforts, however small, to be rapidly combined into a

powerful collective force.


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IMPLICATIONS:

WHAT DOES

THIS MEAN

IN PRACTICE?

> Think systemically the major problems and the new possibilities for

solutions.As the world changes and the problems become more complex, we

need to think bigger and broader ways to create, innovate, and implement totally

new and holistic solutions.

> Facilitate social innovation and entrepreneurship. Create, support and

incubate projects and initiatives that can create desirable, viable and feasible social

and environmental positive impact locally and globally.

> Reflect on the world issues always through people and drive change

proactively together with people making sure that the solutions are relevant and

beneficial for them. Think user driven design and innovation.

> Empower people to collectively drive positive change and take immediate

action. Think of ways to provide platforms and tools that allow people to

participate and connect for doing good.


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ROOTS FOR

NEW GROWTH


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FUTURE DRIVERS

FOR NEW GROWTH

[2012-2017]

Economic Mutual and sustainable growth

From continuous quantitative growth toward well-being economics and understanding true costs of

growth.

http://www.neweconomics.org/programmes/well-being

http://www.sd-commission.org.uk/publications.php?id=914

http://www.citizenrenaissance.com/the-book/part-three-where-are-we-heading/chapter-seven-the-rise-

of-ecological-economics/

Economic Alternative capitals and new business modelsFrom monetary capital and currency systems toward a variety of alternative capitals including social,

cultural and ecological currencies and new economies.

http://www.complementarycurrency.org/

Economic Micro enterprise and strong local economies

From centralized industries and global corporations toward local micro enterprise and collaboration

networks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro-enterprise

http://www.worldwatch.org/node/4837

Ecological Resilient and resource-savvy systems

From dependency on peaking resources toward resource-wise, resilient, innovative and generative

systems and technologies.

Social Collaborative sharing

From individual proprietorship and ownership toward a culture of abundance through collaborative sharing

and production.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/38786066/The-New-Sharing-Economy

http://www.collaborativeconsumption.com/


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CULTURE & PEOPLE:

CREATIVE PRODUCERS WITH

NEW ABUNDANT RESOURCES

3rd Ward, art and design center and community for creative professionals in Brooklyn, NY | Photo courtesy of 3rd Ward

We have painfully learned that Capitalism 1.0 and the idea of constant progress have failed us, leaving us

with peak resources and a pressing threat of ever increasing ecological and social problems. Many have

now realized - on global, local, and personal level - that there are natural limits for continuous economical

and material growth and the only way forward is to rethink the concept of growth in more holistic and

sustainable way. Luckily, this has lead people to realize that growth can still be aspirational and

achievable, it just might mean increased well-being, better quality of life, and an abundance of resources

and opportunities for everybody instead of a doubtful promise of continuous economic growth that

doesnt ever seem to fully trickle down in a society.

As people search for possibilities for new sustainable and generative growth, they are increasingly reusing

existing resources, such as physical materials or energy, and identifying and unlocking new social and

cultural resources, including the inexhaustible human capital and creative skills found abundantly in the

vivid urban communities. People have found fulfillment in becoming more productive and self-reliant intheir everyday lives; building the things they need, sharing the goods they have, growing their own food,

and pooling their skills and resources within their networks. These creative producers are investing in

personal, social and cultural growth by actively learning new skills and sharing information and resources

with each other. They are leading a shift toward a society built on principles of global commons and a

culture of sharing, where less is actually more in the long run.

All this has facilitated the rise of micro-entrepreneurs and local small businesses that are helping to heal

the economy from bottom-up and to grow it to be more resilient, ethical and sustainable. These ethical

small businesses are thriving while providing people with possibilities to consume local, more sustainable

and fairer services and products, and showing the way for all of us how new growth can create cities thatare more livable and enjoyable in the future despite of fewer traditional resources and expectedly

increasing economic and societal challenges.


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TOOLS AND MEANS FOR GENERATING

NEW CAPITALS AND RESOURCES

http://www.kickstarter.com

Kickstarter serves as a bottom-up marketplace for artists and creatives to showcase their ideas and get

funding for projects that often wouldnt get funding through official channels. Community members pledge

to fund a percentage of the requested amount posted by the creative enthusiast. The service advertises

being the largest funding platform for creative projects in the world where every month tens of thousands

of amazing people pledge millions of dollars to projects from the worlds of music, film, art, technology,

design, food, publishing and other creative fields.


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http://familynewyork.com

Architecture agency Familys Rad Nature Sunshine Tower planned to be built in Los Angeles is aleading example of new green and generative urban architecture, that doesnt just create maintaining and

sustaining architecture but actively resource producing buildings that give back to the community. TheTower provides energy for the needs of the building and its residents, but has also plenty of solar-powered energy to share to other buildings in the city. This concept has plenty of interesting implicationsalso and especially when applied beyond architecture. Familys work concentrates on redefiningarchitectures role in the consumption and production of energy, the optimization of valuable land and theapplication of natural resources so that we can look beyond an ability to sustain and towards a practice ofprosperity.


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http://ourgoods.org/

OurGoods is a one of the many currently mushrooming barter networks, this time for the creative

community. OurGoods exists so that creative people can help each other produce independent projects.

More work gets done in networks of shared respect and shared resources than in competitive isolation.

By honoring agreements and working hard, members of OurGoods will build lasting ties in a community of

enormous potential. In addition, OurGoods run Trade School, a community focused on new and

innovative ways for skill sharing, providing a range of classes that centralizes the act of barter and

exchange.


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http://brewing.cafedirect.co.uk/

Cafdirect is a UK-based alternative trading organization. It is currently one of the largest Fairtrade hot

drinks companies in the world. As well as coffee, Cafdirect has a hot beverage range that includes 100%

Fairtrade tea and hot chocolate. Cafdirect works with over 260,000 coffee, tea, and cocoa growers in 40

registered Fairtrade producer organizations across 14 countries, affecting the lives of over 1.2 million

people in developing countries. Their mission is to "change lives and build communities through

inspirational, sustainable business. We focus our social and economic impact in the developing world."


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