From Collaborative Vision to Collaborative Design of the Future Digital City

The Program of "The Digital City in the Next Fie Years" is more or less fixed now, and can be seen on the web-site: http://www.futur-en-seine.org/en/world-future-digital-city/index.php. These will be two very full, collaborative and, I hope, productive days.

An overview of the program:

We’ll start with an overview of the salient points of the preceding festival days and events. Christophe Aguiton has kindly offered to present a short report of the World Information City conference, which takes place at the beginning of the Festival and brings together renowned international thinkers around the subject “In/Visibility, Access and Urban Zoning”. Christophe himself will be talking at WIC on “Mobile Networks, Urban Swarms”.

This is followed by a round table discussion, in fact a Socratic Discourse led by philosopher Humberto Schwab, on the burning questions concerning the city of the future. For those of you who have never participated in a Socratic Discourse, this is an excellent means of gathering, sharing and fusing diverse visions and values through a structured and moderated discussion.

This “fusion” of ideas is followed by more a practical expression of vision or “best practice”: participants from various countries and cities will present prototypes or future-oriented projects, which represent an example of their vision of the future digital city.

The afternoon is for structured, collaborative brainstorming, vision and scenario building. We’ll use methodologies such as value ladder, appreciative inquiry and future narratives and scenarios around central themes such as mobility, trust, sustainability and collaborative urban design. This is an excellent opportunity to work intensely with multi-disciplinary leading international thinkers and practitioners to create together a collaborative vision on the basis of shared values and aspirations.

At the end of the first day, there will be the opportunity for those who wish to take a late-evening boat trip on the Seine to view interesting Futur en Seine digital prototypes.

An essential part of the event concept is the ambitious move from collaborative vision to collaborative design. This progression is planned for the next day, when Waag Society from Amsterdam, with the support of Nodesign from Paris and students from the ENSCI School of Industrial Design, will lead the City Lab. Various “physical” prototyping techniques will be used, together with industrial scrap as the basic material – an excellent way of creatively “recycling” waste material.

This combination of creative brainstorming, together with physical design, was recently used, working with the Municipal Government of Amsterdam’s Infrastructure Transport Directorate and a diverse group of partners, suppliers and users, to create a new mobility prototype for North Holland. This has been selected for demonstration at the Clinton Global Initiative’s “Connected Urban Development” Conference in Seoul in at the end of May, and will be presented immediately afterwards in Paris.

Also on the second day, we will have a live video link between Paris and Amsterdam. Jean-Louis Missika, the Paris deputy Mayor for Innovation will link up from the City Lab with Marijke Vos, the Amsterdam City Representative for Sustainability and the Environment, for the opening of “Sustainability Day” activities in Amsterdam. The direct international link between workshops in Paris and Amsterdam will run throughout the day.

At the end of the day, we will present the collaborative international visions, prototypes and recommendations, with the intention of building on this initial collaboration to produce sustainable collaborative links and projects into the future.

Drinks will be offered at the end of the event.