Shrishti/CEMA Course (Bangalore)

Course name: User Generated Cities
Location: Mumbai, Bengaluru,Dharavi (Mumbai)
URBZ evolved a programme that included a series of different activities on the theme ‘User Generated Cities’.
Between 7 January 2009 – 27 February 2009, URBZ worked with four graduate students from the Srishti School of Design’s CEMA Programme (Centre for Experimental Media Arts) starting with a stint of fieldwork in Mumbai, wherein they worked closely with the Columbia – JJ Studio in Dharavi, on our Heaps Decent project with Paul Devro and Bappi Lahiri and then on the URBZ system itself, besides spending a good amount of time on readings and discussions about ‘user generated cities’, how to recognize and nurture them.
Details of the Course
Basic Ideas
- Cities are complex organisms generated by a multiplicity of actors over time
- Some of the most important information (qualitative and quantitative data) about cities are held at the local level by residents
- Political will is not enough to produce participatory planning. Tools and methodologies are also required
- Participatory methodologies and tools should by definition be open and adapted to the local context
- Participatory technologies such as the Internet open new grounds for urban planning
Misconceptions & Assumptions:
- People do not have the necessary skills to invest in urban development
- Urban Planning needs a top-down decision making structure
- Knowledge about cities lies amongst experts.
Essential Questions:
- What is the role of creativity and design in enhancing participation?
- How can Web technologies help stakeholders participate in urban planning projects?
- How do we best integrate online and offline participatory practices?
Knowledge/ Understandings Gained:
- How cities are developed, and experienced by its inhabitants
- How cities are spaces of control and sites of freedom
- How design promote creativity and participation at the local level
Performance/ Activities/ Skills Acquired:
- Designing user friendly Web interfaces for various constituencies (using Drupal and CSS)
- Gathering data at the local level & making data available on the Web (Social communication techniques & field experience in urban neighbourhoods)
- Web-based strategies to encourage civic participation in planning
Familiarity Gained:
- Familiarity with actual urban localities in Mumbai and Bangalore.
- Ability of looking at urban spaces with concepts and tools that translate into planning
- Ability to organize related processes that can be used by different agencies; developers, municipal governments, community leaders, resident bodies.
Evidence/Testing of Performance:
- Usability and popularity of interface developed
- Knowledge gained about specific urban neighbourhoods.
Reading & Surfing List
Alexander, C., April/May 1965, The City is not a Tree, Architectural Forum
Allen, S., Corner, J., 2003, Urban Natures, in The State of Architecture the Beginning of the 21st Century, edited by Tschumi , B., Cheng, I., New York, Monicelli/Columbia
Appadurai, A.,1996, The Production of Locality in Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press
Appadurai A., 2006, The Right to Research, in Globalisation, Societies and Education,
Vol. 4, No. 2, July 2006, pp. 167–177
Berners Lee, T., February 15, 2007, The Mobile Web, Keynote speech at the 3GSM Conference, http://opengardensblog.futuretext.com/archives/2007/02/tim_berners_lee.html
Castells, M., May 9, 2001, Identity & Change in the Network Society”, Interviewed by Harry Kreisler, UC Berkeley, Institute of International Studieshttp://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people/Castells/castells-con0.html Echanove M., & Srivastava R., Various texts in http://www.airoots.org
Echanove M., & Srivastava R., Various texts in Urban Typhoon Workshop 2006 & 2008, www.urbantyphoon.com (download reports)
Fals-Borda, O., April 8, 2005, Research for Social Justice: Some North-South Convergences, Plenary Address at the Southern Sociological Society Meeting, Atlanta, http://comm-org.wisc.edu/si/falsborda.htm
Freire, P., 2000, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Continuum International Publishing Group; 30 Anv Sub edition
Johnson, S., 2002, Emergence: the connected lives of ants, brains, cities and software, London, Penguin
Lynch, K., 1984, Good City Form, Cambridge, The MIT Press; Reprint edition
Meier, R. L., 1962, A Communications Theory of Urban Growth, Cambridge, The MIT Press
Mitchell, W., 2003, Me++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked City, Cambridge, The MIT Press
MVRDV, 1999, Metacity Datatown. 010 Publishers
O’Reily, T., June 2004, Open Source Paradigm Shift, http://tim.oreilly.com
Patel, S., May 2004, Tools and methods for empowerment developed by Slum Dwellers Federations in India, SPARC, http://www.sparcindia.org/docs/emptools.pdf
Raymond, E., S., 2001, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, http://www.catb.org
Salingaros, N., Coward, L.A., 2004, The Information Architecture of Cities, Journal of Information Science, Volume 30 No. 2, pp. 107-118, Available at:http://www.math.utsa.edu/sphere/salingar/InfoCities.html
Saskia Sassen, 2001, The global city: strategic site/new frontier, July 2001, GLOBALIZATION–A symposium on the challenges of closer global integrationIndia-Seminar (Journal, July 2001)
Schedule:
Week 1: Jan 7 – 11
- Reading and surfing
Week 2: Jan 12 – 18
- Field work in Mumbai with the Columbia GSAPP students
Week 3: Jan 19 – 25
- Field work in Mumbai
- Training sessions and workshop with URBZ team
Week 4: Jan 26 – Feb 1
- Back to Bangalore
- Start designing a template for URBZ’s Drupal system
Week 5: Feb 2 – 8
- Design work for URBZ’s Drupal system
- Training session II with URBZ tea
- Morning: Participatory Planning strategies (Rahul & Matias)
- Afternoon: Designing templates for Drupal (Nishit Shah)
- Meetings with Matias Echanove
- Lecture 1: Theories of Urban Growth: City as Machine; City as Organism; City as Communication System; Urban Social Movements
Week 6: Feb 9 – 15
- Design work for URBZ’s Drupal system
- Meetings with Matias Echanove
- Lecture 2: Participatory Planning: Potential and Limitations
Week 7: Feb 16 – 22
- Design work for URBZ’s Drupal system
- Testing
- Meetings with Matias Echanove
- Lecture 3: Learning from the Web: Data Gathering & Processing
Week 8: Feb 23 – 27
- Implementation and evaluation by URBZ team and Srishti faculty
- Lecture 4: VirtuReality: Thinking & Desiging Beyond the Screen























