Virtual | Reality

What if Christchurch was a virtual city?

‘What if Christchurch was a virtual city?’ was the topic of conversation at our 2nd Designworks Social Roast. 

Smart cities promise a world where data is ubiquitous. In the same way the internet has become an integral part of how we function in the modern world, information feed to us from our immediate local environment will help inform our actions almost instinctively, like a sixth sense.

But what are the benefits of providing city dwellers access to a deeper layer of contextual information? How would we engage with all this data and more importantly, how could we, as living sensing human beings, be an integral part of a network of sensors?

Roger Dennis has made huge inroads pioneering the concept of the sensing city (http://sensingcity.org/) Christchurch 2.0. As our city renews, we should take full advantage of new technology and open data protocols. 

But to get full buy-in and understanding on a public level, the benefits will need to be grounded at a human level. This is where the concept of a virtual world could help bridge the gap – whether it be virtual, augmented and alternative reality, there’s a need to connect people with data more intimately and with minimal complexity.

Virtual worlds and massively multi-player online games are successful in  engaging players on quests of self-improvement. Game designers understand the science of engagement like no other industry. This is mainly due to the level of game play information they have at their finger tips at any one time. If a new challenge isn’t working they can make the adjustments necessary to improve engagement based on player data.

This is effectively how a smart city should work, but we should have the ability to be both the player and the game designer. 

Take a standard drive to work as an example. Right now Christchurch is awash with detours and roadworks. They change by the day. Data of road works could inform us in advance the best possible route. Sensors at intersections could let us know of any hazards. Built in GPS in our phones could triangulate speed of travel from other drivers ahead of us to determine realtime congestion.

Data from multiple sources can add a layer of contextual information to standard navigation systems that traditionally only tell you how to get from point A to B but nothing else in between.

The data gathered from our trips can also help model better road systems, which is an incentive for people to participate. This information could also be layered over with fuel consumption and compare the cost of operating a personal vehicle over public transport. Both travel scenarios could be compared on a level of comfort by monitoring stress level of different types of travelers. The possibilities are endless.

As designers of our own world we can begin to make informed choices over cost, time and health benefits. This data has the potential to transform human behaviour much more effectively than public awareness campaigns or protracted consultation processes.

An example where hard factual data could help the public decision making processes is in the suggestion of removing cars from the CBD. In theory this may well be a good idea. But what are the consequences for retail? How is retail affected by traffic volumes in and out of the city? How far are pedestrians willing to walk to get to their destination? What level of uptake in cycling would be needed to make this proposition a success?

The overhead to collate and translate all this information is beyond most people, therefore we become dependent on qualified experts to give us balanced and sound advice (or sometimes the people with the strongest opinions). But as populations increase and technology shifts, we can no longer rely on single sources of advice or wait for research papers and reports to be written. 

In one session alone it was clear that the main benefit was certainty in decision making and how this has the ability to transform human behaviour. 

I’d like to thank Julian Carver, Jonathan Ewing, Laura Griffiths and Nick Hughes in participating on this session, I think we only scratched the surface.

Potential areas of innovation through a virtual city project:

- Traffic flow improvement
- Realtime traffic modeling
- Path finder / Open paths
- Street view display of building health
- Safety and green rating monitoring
- Building productivity
- Crowdsourced crime and safety detection
- Geolocated audio sound spots
- Augmented Reality virtual tours (what was or will be there)
- Alternative reality gaming (health focused)
- Virtual avatars for city residents
- Better understanding of human behaviour in physical space
- Virtual art and scuptures
- Retail virtual goods, virtual currency
- Explore future developments 
- Physical & virtual retail 
- Disrupt physical business models with new approaches
- Create higher value retail experiences
- Measure and visualise foot traffic for retail in relation to events
- Measure or test interest or support of initiatives in virtual world
- Crowd source ideas and improvements
- Social marketplace to share and record ideas
- Responsible design through social awareness
- Certainty and Accessibility

Eugene Chang

The Propaganda Film saga continues as Eugene Chang, the Mockumentary’s actor tries to clear his name. 

Read the report in The Press here:
Shunned as a North Korean Spy

Community

At the most basic level, water, food and shelter are all we need to survive. For thousands of years the human race has had autonomous control over these needs, albeit at the whim of mother nature.

Population growth and mass urbanisation has resulted in a social framework that has passed the control of these basic needs over to governing and corporate bodies that manage them on behalf of the people, en mass. 

With money being the default determiner of freewill, people are flocking into cities in the hope to improve their standard of living and relinquish independence by attaining more choice through financial solvency.

However, our household debt to banks have ramped up over the past decade, due to the rising costs of land and the consumers hunger to privately own and invest in property.

The net result is an ever increasing gap between the rich and the poor. We have to ask, do the ‘bottom 80%’ choose to live in sub-standard housing because they’re poor? or are they kept poor due to sub-standard building practices?

While cost of food, health, education and transport need the be referenced in the Inequality Eco-system, housing consumes the largest component of income which has a direct impact on quality of life.

While the cost of housing has increased astronomically, market rents have peaked only slightly. The sharp increase in land costs as a consequence of population intensity and land scarcities has resulted a net loss in terms social equity. These trends alone, which don’t take into account environmental impacts or human health and wellbeing, present a path that is unsustainable into future and paints a picture of a system that’s clearly imbalanced.

We need to collectively look at the way we build shelter in the modern age of urbanisation that addresses debt slavery and the regulations that prohibit people from building more affordable and sustainable homes. 

These regulations must address the market monopolies large building supply companies have over the market, lending criteria of banks and the stigma of social housing.

The next curve of disruptive trends look to counter balance a lot of what’s wrong with the current system. They include:

• Open Fabrication: 
  With the cost of industrial fabrication machines coming within reach of average individuals, we’ll see the rise in mass customisation – from homes, to cars, bikes and furniture. Consumers become manufacturer, inventors and innovators. A great example of this is the wikihouse project.
• Co-operative business models:
  The western world currently operates under the right of private ownership, putting individual gain ahead of collective need. Being part of frameworks that operate for the greater good provides a higher sense of purpose and meaning to the individual. These include land co-ops, food co-ops and credit unions.
• De-schooling
  Traditional institutional models have become havens for mediocrity which has stifled their agility and their ability to adapt to change. Bottom-up, open organisational frameworks are providing education, community services and governance on demand, anytime, anywhere, to those who would not normally have access. 

The correction process that is taking place is due to the universal forces of a collective need. As we enter an age of free knowledge and open accessibility, the concepts of institution, intellectual property and private property are being challenged.

The impacts of mass urbanisation, augmented by the recent economic events have triggered small, but significant shift in choice. The shift in choice is being met by new frameworks and technologies tailored towards collective need, not collective control.

Kevin McCloud – inclusivist planning for Christchurch

Grand Design’s Kevin McCloud has sent an open letter to Christchurch highlighting the latent opportunity in engaging the community to develop a sustainable, community centric city.

“Except in relation to urban design matters in the Core, the Christchurch City Council will continue as central Christchurch’s principal planning authority..”

This suggests an over-arching hidden hand controlling design and development in the Core. So it also suggests emasculation of any local say or community involvement at a time when community consultation and empowerment in the implementation of the Plan could produce a truly rounded and properly sustainable outcome. 

CERA / CCDU will find it challenging to respond to Kevin’s letter with such an huge investment into the blueprint, however there is an opportunity to include the people in how the plan is implemented over the next decade.

As we’ve seen from the recent request for investment in the convention centre, the international hunger to invest in property is low to non-existent. It not inconceivable that over time, central government will recognise that local innovation is what is truly valuable in investment terms. They need to consider why, seven years on from Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans is now America’s most entrepreneurial city.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/AK1210/S00502/kevin-mccloud-urges-christchurch-to-create-sustainable-city.htm

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

Adam Curtis offers us a lesson in recent history in ‘All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace’. It echos themes from his pre-GFC work The Trap, by illustrating how free-market economies have failed to deliver on their promise of personal freedom. 

We are now in an era of uncertainty, where, in the last three decades we’ve experienced significant increases in wealth inequality, even during strong periods of economic growth (or bubbles).

Financial crisis, or any crisis for that matter, will inevitably benefit the wealthy. This was evident in the US bank bailouts and bonuses in 1998. 

Market democracy, or democratic capitalism, will go down as one of the biggest social failures of our time. As long as the wellbeing and freedom of society is measure by money alone, then the control of society will always belong to the financial elite.