the adoption of public urban space as a driving force for third places

The Adoption of Urban Public Spaceas a Driving Force for Third Places in the Remediation of Democracy

P. Caianiello & S. Costantini &*F. Gobbo & D. Leombruni &

L. TarantinoUniversity of L’Aquila

HCI3P, Univ. Paris-Dauphine,April 27-28, 2013

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Introduction

Politics 2.0, year 2011

Year 2011 was defined a year of revolutions (Fuchs) where socialmovements, also using social networks such as Twitter and Facebook,occupied the public space (Castells).

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Social networks now: men & machines

These twofold social networks – made by machine and real people atthe same time – arrange ICT-empowered choreographies ofassembly (Gerbaudo): a Third Place is temporary re-shaped, so toget visibility for a specific, focused topic of public interest and protest.

A typical form of choreography of assembly is the flash mob.

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Social networks now: men & machines

These twofold social networks – made by machine and real people atthe same time – arrange ICT-empowered choreographies ofassembly (Gerbaudo): a Third Place is temporary re-shaped, so toget visibility for a specific, focused topic of public interest and protest.

A typical form of choreography of assembly is the flash mob.4 of 21

ICT and flash mobsAdvantages brought by ICT, e.g. using smart phones:

� it is easy to shot a photo and share the action;

� activists can group together using existing social networks;

� all actions are put in time and space, which are recordedafterwards (hyperlocality, see Carroll, here at HCI3P).

Current limits:

� duration: it is difficult to trace the history of actions in time –“how is it going?” (trails, see Walker et al., here at HCI3P) andespecially the end of the story – “issue was solved in dd/mm/yyy”.

� visibility: there is no ICT-empowered environment to put theraised issue to the appropriate government level (e.g., AziendaDiritto allo Studio L’Aquila).

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ICT and flash mobsAdvantages brought by ICT, e.g. using smart phones:

� it is easy to shot a photo and share the action;

� activists can group together using existing social networks;

� all actions are put in time and space, which are recordedafterwards (hyperlocality, see Carroll, here at HCI3P).

Current limits:

� duration: it is difficult to trace the history of actions in time –“how is it going?” (trails, see Walker et al., here at HCI3P) andespecially the end of the story – “issue was solved in dd/mm/yyy”.

� visibility: there is no ICT-empowered environment to put theraised issue to the appropriate government level (e.g., AziendaDiritto allo Studio L’Aquila).

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Emepolis, our proposal

The background: call for ideas

In the aftermath of the 2009 L’Aquila earthquake, Accentureopened a call for ideas, in collaboration with Fondazione ItalianaAccenture and Alumni Accenture, where “Emepolis – my city” wasthe winning idea in the category ICT for teams (high school students).

Our Dep. of Inf. Eng.,Comp. Sc. & Maths (DISIM) realized theprototype of Emepolis, a smartphone app to foster citizens’participation towards the reconstruction of the damaged city.

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The background: call for ideas

In the aftermath of the 2009 L’Aquila earthquake, Accentureopened a call for ideas, in collaboration with Fondazione ItalianaAccenture and Alumni Accenture, where “Emepolis – my city” wasthe winning idea in the category ICT for teams (high school students).

Our Dep. of Inf. Eng.,Comp. Sc. & Maths (DISIM) realized theprototype of Emepolis, a smartphone app to foster citizens’participation towards the reconstruction of the damaged city.8 of 21

The method: focus group and brainstorming

We considered young citizens (15-25 years) as our main target, livingin a EU medium-sized city, who want to partecipate to the politicalarena, especially at a local level (city, province, region).

We found some features of the mobile application:

� multilingualism: we prepared the GUI in English, Italian, Albanian;

� citizens can propose issues and vote others’ (C2C level);

� governance representatives should receive open issuesappropriately and close them (when issue is fixed) as special usersof a social network (C2G level);

� the social network should “not be a bad clone of Facebook”.

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The method: focus group and brainstorming

We considered young citizens (15-25 years) as our main target, livingin a EU medium-sized city, who want to partecipate to the politicalarena, especially at a local level (city, province, region).

We found some features of the mobile application:

� multilingualism: we prepared the GUI in English, Italian, Albanian;

� citizens can propose issues and vote others’ (C2C level);

� governance representatives should receive open issuesappropriately and close them (when issue is fixed) as special usersof a social network (C2G level);

� the social network should “not be a bad clone of Facebook”.

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The user-centered design of Emepolis

We designed and developed the prototype of Emepolis following whatemerged from the focus group:

� a server-side application, based on a graph DBMS, as it adapts tothe growth of the social network, with a user profile kept to theminimum;

� a client-side application, optimized for Apple iOs and GoogleAndroid.

Citizens can only use the application to open or promote issues(not to suggest the best coffee in town!) because macro-categories ofthe issues are preempted and mandatory.

Macro-categories were borrowed from a EU 7FP-funded project aboutSmart Cities (now finished): http://www.smart-cities.eu/.

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The user-centered design of Emepolis

We designed and developed the prototype of Emepolis following whatemerged from the focus group:

� a server-side application, based on a graph DBMS, as it adapts tothe growth of the social network, with a user profile kept to theminimum;

� a client-side application, optimized for Apple iOs and GoogleAndroid.

Citizens can only use the application to open or promote issues(not to suggest the best coffee in town!) because macro-categories ofthe issues are preempted and mandatory.

Macro-categories were borrowed from a EU 7FP-funded project aboutSmart Cities (now finished): http://www.smart-cities.eu/.

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The user-centered design of Emepolis

We designed and developed the prototype of Emepolis following whatemerged from the focus group:

� a server-side application, based on a graph DBMS, as it adapts tothe growth of the social network, with a user profile kept to theminimum;

� a client-side application, optimized for Apple iOs and GoogleAndroid.

Citizens can only use the application to open or promote issues(not to suggest the best coffee in town!) because macro-categories ofthe issues are preempted and mandatory.

Macro-categories were borrowed from a EU 7FP-funded project aboutSmart Cities (now finished): http://www.smart-cities.eu/.

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Some screenshots

Further directions of work

Open questions for our workshop

� How to manage ‘sparse information and interaction’(suprathreshold, Carroll, here at HCI3P)?

� How to integrate the historical information of a nurturedcommunity garden, i.e., public or shared pieces of land cultivatedfor a common good storytelling of the community (Calderon et al.,here at HCI3P)?

� Is Emepolis an example of Bannon’s human-centered computing(HCC) (in Thompson and Steier, here at HCI3P)? How to improveit under this aspect?

We are open for discussion and collaboration

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Open questions for our workshop

� How to manage ‘sparse information and interaction’(suprathreshold, Carroll, here at HCI3P)?

� How to integrate the historical information of a nurturedcommunity garden, i.e., public or shared pieces of land cultivatedfor a common good storytelling of the community (Calderon et al.,here at HCI3P)?

� Is Emepolis an example of Bannon’s human-centered computing(HCC) (in Thompson and Steier, here at HCI3P)? How to improveit under this aspect?

We are open for discussion and collaboration

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Do you feel Oldenburg’s definitions are relevant toyour project?

Yes. In what sense? When a natural disaster destroysthe usual Third Places of a given community (citizensof L’Aquila), people feel to be lost, and we have torebuild them not only physically.

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In our work, the most important aspects of socialspaces are

1. public public (not only open-to-the-public) Third Places arise asthe points of interests of sensible issues;

2. the costruction of temporary social spaces doesn’t fit the need ofthe community: they want the original experience again!

3. mobile ICT is considered at the service of technology (tekne ancillasocietatis)

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Thanks for your attention!

Questions?

For proposals, ideas & comments:

federico.gobbo@univaq.it

Download & share these slides here:

http://slidesha.re/11Jk09h

CC© BY:© $\© C© Federico Gobbo 2013

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