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Digital Planning Tools and «Focal Practices»

Neighbour preference calculation. © U-TT, ETH Zurich.
Neighbour preference calculation. © U-TT, ETH Zurich.

The experiences gained from designing and implementing digital tools that aim to replicate an urban development methodology allows a critical reflection on the limits of emerging planning technology. These limits become clear when assessing how successful the technology is in enhancing the «focal practices» (Borgmann 1984) of participants in the planning process.

Enhancement or Control

Exercising meaningful ways for open, democratic contributions to urban planning could be considered focal practices of contemporary citizenry. Enhancing such practice is at the forefront of reimagining how digital tools could reshape the city. However, current planning technologies – and the acts of employing them – occupy a contested field taut between the experience of user-oriented participation and technical-oriented efficiency and performance. In other words, technology can either enhance the ability to engage, connect and act within the material world or tend to guide procedures toward normative outcomes and pre-programed optimisation models. The interest therefore lies in designing planning technologies that offer tangible links and responses between rich experiences of creative agency and socially agreeable quantitative indicators.

Planning Control

The cadastral system of land registration and associated modern tools for land management embody sets of technologies geared toward the documentation and control of land. This has served to increasingly abstract and optimise its commodity value, benefiting and legitimising certain practices that align to this system of value and exclude those that do not. Accordingly, informal settlements also possess forms of planning and management that fulfil similar goals of control and commodification. These practices are however enforced by non-written agreements and community leadership relations with vastly different scope for development. Studying these systems through participatory digital tools workshops has allowed us to assess the behaviour and perceptions of various stakeholders in relation to urban planning.

Programming Critical Inputs

The digital tools have been programmed to allow the synthesis of multi-user input at critical milestones in the urban development methodology. The milestones have been clustered in scales and give shape to the planning outputs through: Individual preferences (neighbour preferences, location preferences, unit size preferences based on micro-finance affordability), Community preferences (existing street networks, public spaces, additional rental stock), Municipal planning frameworks (plot sizes, street widths, proximity to existing infrastructure, zoning and urban use mix)

Vigilance

Focal practices are activities and cultural behaviours with identifiable social value. These respond poorly to ideologies of optimisation. Acknowledging this, we tend to apply the current version of the digital tools mainly for automated urban layout generation, and computational analysis based on pre-defined spatial properties. The results of generated urban simulations are generally treated as points of departure and some cases present didactic examples of excessive optimisation resulting in poor urban design qualities.
Looking forward, a better understanding of human decision-making within complex systems, would greatly enlighten the critical behaviours and motivations of planning. It will also increasingly challenge the idea that decisions on urban spatial quality are best made by citizens and experts in transparent and uniquely human ways.

In Closing

How can individual choice be reconciled with sustainable objectives of long-term urban planning?
Given that technology is not neutral, how can open storyboarding be used to conceive of tools that respond to alternative world-views?
How can social network technology support long-term participation in urban projects?
Can methods developed with digital tools offer transferability to low-tech systems?

Manual – Digital planning tools. © U-TT, ETH Zurich.
Manual – Digital planning tools. © U-TT, ETH Zurich.
Hacked Infrastructure – calculated infrastructure distances. © U-TT, ETH Zurich.
Hacked Infrastructure – calculated infrastructure distances. © U-TT, ETH Zurich.
Field work collective mapping – registered occupation plan. © U-TT, ETH Zurich.
Field work collective mapping – registered occupation plan. © U-TT, ETH Zurich.
Tablet application storyboarding – Tablet application prototype. © U-TT, ETH Zurich.
Tablet application storyboarding – Tablet application prototype. © U-TT, ETH Zurich.

Scott Lloyd MSc ETH Arch coordinates the Urban-Think Tank Chair of Architecture and Urban Design’s «Empower» project. The project focuses on readjusting urban land in Cape Town, South Africa, by designing and implementing new housing prototypes within a reconfigured urban plan. The IA and MIS chairs at ETH Zurich collaborated on digital planning tools. PHD candidate Michael Walczak is continuing optimisation of the tools. The project is supported by the Swiss Re Foundation.

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This article has been published in the following newsletter edition:

40 | Dezember 2018: Technologie beeinflusst Verhalten / Technology Influences Behaviour

  • Induced Demand: Modelling the Potential Impacts of Automated Vehicles in Zurich
  • Robotic Landscapes: Designing Natural and Robotic Formation Processes in Dynamic Terrains
  • Digital Planning Tools and «Focal Practices»
  • Autonomous Vehicles as Reactivators for Peripheral Areas
  • Führungslose Schweizer Raumentwicklung?
Kurzmeldungen
  • Modelling Place-making to Enable the Transformation of Spaces into Places
  • MntPath – Modelling Future Pathways of Mountain Regions
  • Mobility Pricing
  • Smarte Züge ohne Lokführer
Publikationen
  • disP 54/3, October 2018
  • Soil function assessment for Switzerland
  • Towards an Integrative Approach to Spatial Transformation
  • Sozialraum Hochhaus. Nachbarschaft und Wohnalltag in Schweizer Großwohnbauten
  • Spatial modelling of origin-destination commuting flows in Switzerland
Aktuell
  • MAS, DAS und CAS ETH in Raumplanung 2019/21
  • Summer School in Land-System Science
  • Master of Advanced Studies ETH Urban Design 2019/20
  • Ab 2019 leitet Patrick Bonzanigo den MAS Raumplanung ETH
  • 111 BUNKER. Entdecke das verborgene Zürich!
  • ProbandInnen gesucht – Visualisierungen von Landschaften mit Virtual Reality-Brillen
  • Shareland Doctoral Colloquium

Chairs

Prof. Dr. Bryan T. Adey
Prof. Dr. Kay W. Axhausen
Prof. Dr. Tom Avermaete
Prof. Maria Conen
Prof. Dr. Francesco Corman
Dr. Jennifer Duyne Barenstein
Prof. Teresa Galí-Izard
Prof. Dr. Adrienne Grêt-Regamey
Prof. Dr. Guillaume Habert
Prof. Dr. David Kaufmann
Prof. Hubert Klumpner
Dr. Anastasios Kouvelas
Prof. Freek Persyn
Prof. Dr. Christian Schmid
Prof. Milica Topalovic
EiR PD Dr. Joris Van Wezemael
Prof. em Dr. h. c. Günther Vogt
ETH Wohnforum – ETH CASE

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