What if we can spend two intensive weeks, studying and comparing two different cities on various subject matters, using transdisciplinary methods and skills in team-based projects?
Two Cities as a Living Lab is a novel research and teaching curriculum with the goal to probe two cities, investigate cities’ wicked problems, and generate design propositions for Melbourne, Australia and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, where two RMIT campuses are located.
We were recently awarded the IBM Smarter Planet Innovation Award 2010 for the project, check the global press release in IBM site. The following is the video of selected award winners, including me from RMIT.
The members of the transdisciplinary team are Dr. Flora Salim (Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory (SIAL), RMIT, with Computer Science background), Dr. Susu Nousala (SIAL, with background in knowledge management and engineering), Dr. Margaret Hamilton (Computer Science and Information Technology, RMIT), Dr. Marsha Berry (Media and Communication, RMIT), and A/Prof Jane Burry (SIAL, RMIT, an architect).
Although data is ubiquitous in our cities, having access to a huge amount of data does not directly aid our attempts in understanding these wicked problems. Designing a knowledge network about our cities is an arduous task, given that conversion of data to information, to knowledge, to intelligence which can aid decision making for urban stakeholders, requires amalgamation of various interdisciplinary techniques, enabling domain expert translations over information acquired via technological means. The maps and models of the existing infrastructure of our cities include a wealth of information such as topography, layout, zoning, land use, transportation networks, public facilities, and resource network grids. However, the dynamic spatio-temporal information about the city and how it is emerging over time may not necessarily be captured in the models or easily extracted from them (Salim et al., 2010).
This implies that a pure technological approach does not solve wicked problems. Projects need to combine socio-technical approaches in formulating the right questions of “designing” before exploring the right answers for implementing the interventions for these wicked problems.
We plan to run an intensive summer course that will run in both Melbourne and Vietnam campuses, opened for Architecture, Design, Computer Science, IT, and Media and Communication students. Students will work in cross-disciplinary teams to:
- investigate and learn about cities as wicked problems
- integrate social and technical methods and the skills required to define and analyze the cities’ wicked problems
- design an application or product or system that enables one aspect of the cities’ wicked problems to be visualised on a physical and/or digital platform.
Each team will consist of students from different disciplines, who will collaborate and apply design, social, and technical methodology on a specific problem area in the two cities, such as public transport, crime and safety, rubbish and recycling. The outcomes
The outcomes of the student projects will need to make the invisible visible. These projects need to produce well-designed prototypes that visualise the invisible or the unknown. Students may choose to create virtual or physical visualisations, in forms of mobile applications, web mashups, Second Life gallery, physical artefacts, art installations, or architectural models. The goals of visualisation are to create social awareness of the targeted issue, design an urban intervention, or promote social and behavioral changes.
The following is the video of my interview with IBM about the project.