Urban Interaction Design, Open & Agile Smart Cities

Our cities are laced with sensors and mobile technologies that are generating a myriad of urban informatics experiences and relationships between urban interaction design, participatory and smart urbanism, open innovation, and the Digital Right to the City.

UrbanIxD (urban interaction design) was a two-year European project that built a research network around the domain of data-rich urban environments, focusing on human activities, experiences and behaviors.

Open & Agile Smart Cities (OASC) is an international city network working with local public administrations of all sizes to support their digital transformation journey. Together with our members, partners, and independent experts, we create sustainable impact for cities by working towards a minimal technical ground for cities & communities.

We call this common ground Minimal Interoperability Mechanisms (MIMs). Our community enables seamless sharing and re-using of digital, data-driven solutions, thereby reducing the cost of innovation, increasing the return on investment, and – thanks to the use of open standards and APIs – avoiding vendor lock-in.

A digital landscape overlays our physical world and is expanding to offer ever more valuable, and more dangerous experiences. My work as an author explores both the enriching aspects of interaction design as integral to contemporary placemaking, well as the potential threats and risks that ICTs, smart cities and surveillance technologies create and expose us to.