Think BETA: Soft City Cul­ture and Tech­nol­ogy

Symposium:

• ISEA2011: 17th International Symposium on Electronic Art

• Think BETA: Participative Evolution of Smart Cities

• Think BETA: Soft City Cul­ture and Tech­nol­ogy

• Martin Koplin

Venue(s):

• Sabanci Center, Istanbul, Turkey

• Panel: Think BETA: Participative Evolution of Smart Cities

  Think BETA is a think tank for Soft City Cul­ture and Tech­nol­ogy – the Evo­lu­tion of Smart Cities. The fu­ture city and ur­ban­ity will be re-de­signed through par­tic­i­pa­tive ac­tiv­i­ties.  The think tank´s con­tains a new ap­proach to the Soft City Cul­ture and Tech­nol­ogy. The des­ig­nated part­ners im­prove the net­work­ing with each other in the Think BETA think tank to fa­cil­i­tate the ex­change of sci­en­tists, artists and knowl­edge and pro­mote a com­mon strat­egy for re­search de­vel­op­ment in ICT in­fra­struc­tures for Smart Cities from which ap­pli­ca­tions for R & D pro­jects are pro­duced. Also new part­ners are in­vited to link their ex­ist­ing re­search ac­tiv­i­ties with the think tank in a way that ex­tended co­op­er­a­tions into dif­fer­ent dis­ci­plines in the re­spec­tive uni­ver­si­ties get pos­si­ble, as well as into re­gional R & D ini­tia­tives in re­lated fields. Over here, Think BETA es­tab­lished an in­te­grated think-tank, whose work is per­pet­u­ated in an in­ter­na­tional vir­tual re­search lab. Con­cretely from the re­searcher and artist ex­change and joint re­search strat­egy, joint in­no­v­a­tive ap­proaches, re­search pro­jects and pro­pos­als are brought forth. The ul­ti­mate goal is to de­velop a cross-bor­der Think BETA vir­tual in­sti­tute in ICT for Smart Cities. This is done through the in­ten­si­fi­ca­tion of in­ter­dis­ci­pli­nary knowl­edge ex­change, the en­hanced cross-link­ing of re­search ac­tiv­i­ties, the ex­change of re­searchers and all other mea­sures. The aim is to link ad­vanced re­search and de­vel­op­ment of in­no­v­a­tive tech­nolo­gies, method­olo­gies and in­no­v­a­tive ser­vices and to move them for­ward through co­op­er­a­tive R&D pro­jects. The tech­ni­cal ob­jec­tive is, to re­search and to de­velop a mo­bile-sta­tion­ary, multi-me­dia en­vi­ron­ment for smart cities as in­fra­struc­ture for their de­vel­op­ment. It is about the re­quire­ments for fu­ture tech­ni­cal and cul­tural (mass player) in­fra­struc­ture for the urban de­vel­op­ment of Smart Cities and the op­ti­miza­tion of mu­nic­i­pal ser­vices and dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­tures.

  Ex­ist­ing tech­ni­cal ap­proaches from eGov­er­nance, e-ser­vices, e-mo­bil­ity, LBS, to the user-af­fected eCul­ture and eCre­ativ­ity are in­cluded to de­velop and to pro­vide im­proved mo­bile-sta­tion­ary dig­i­tal sys­tems for urban de­vel­op­ment, plan­ning and par­tic­i­pa­tion. Pre­vi­ous soft­ware ap­proaches did not took into ac­count ex­ist­ing ex­per­tise eg in the field of civic par­tic­i­pa­tion, in­te­gra­tion of de­cen­tral­ized power man­age­ment or the so­cial-eco­nomic bal­ance in ar­chi­tec­tures suf­fi­ciently, were not ad­e­quately de­vel­oped user-cen­tered, or set a sin­gle dis­ci­pline per­spec­tives un­bal­anced in the fore­ground. Which is be coun­ter­acted through the in­ter­dis­ci­pli­nary con­fig­u­ra­tion of the think tank. Sim­i­larly, tech­ni­cal and or­ga­ni­za­tional is­sues of par­tic­i­pa­tory urban plan­ning with dif­fer­ent ap­proaches for dif­fer­ent user groups are con­sid­ered. In this case, al­ter­na­tive plan­ning processes are in­te­grated and per­ceived in par­tic­u­lar for the re­la­tion­ship be­tween life and work. Ad­vanced en­vi­ron­men­tal and so­cially sus­tain­able de­sign is to be of par­tic­u­lar in­ter­est and will get ex­posed. Dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­ture will be di­rected to their local po­ten­tial for par­tic­i­pa­tory de­sign, de­vel­op­ment, for local knowl­edge processes and the as­pect of cross-gen­er­a­tional, so­cial, artis­tic and eco­nomic net­work­ing.

Category:

• Panel