Playable City wants you to think differently about cities. Through art installations that use technology, the organisation aims to get people thinking differently about the way our cities are designed. At its core is a message of inclusivity and technology, and that people should be at the centre of city design.
After observing how exclusionary technology can often seem, and how unintuitive urban design often is, the organisation launched in 2011 to bring interactive technology to cities such as Bristol and London. One installation included a ‘Postbox Bot’, where through scanning the unique code on a postbox, members of the public were able to text the postbox (or lamppost) and have a conversation. Another installation involved virtual animals that would interact with humans - such as a shy rabbit or a kangaroo that would race you up some steps.
Hilary O’Shaughnessy, producer of Playable City, explained the drive behind the project while speaking at WIRED Next Generation. “The aim is to start people thinking about collaborative design for cities - we want to present a people-centred approach. It’s an initiative to think differently about the city, that uses surprising interactions and tech to encourage citizens to think about their city differently, and about how we can use technology to connect.”
Showing how easy it can be to design interactive cities, the organisation gave the attendants of WIRED Next Generation three cards with words on - such as ‘toddler’, ‘train’ and ‘movement’ to get them to think differently about cities, and devise an installation that could get people more involved in their surroundings. “We want to excite people about everyday places and make them think/look differently at cities, and see lots of different types of people talking to each other about their city.”
O’Shaughnessy went on to explain how often technology is perceived as an area that only people with coding knowledge can get involved in. In fact, she wants to show technology can be designed by anyone and used by anyone. “Technology often gets mischaracterised, or its perceived that you have to be a high-level programmer to have a say about how tech gets used. This project is about giving people agency in design and technology”
Although Playable City has already had some pretty impressive installations around big UK cities, one big dream for the organisation would be to get its people-centric way of thinking into public urban design policy. “If it gets into policy and government then that would be amazing, even though we’re already doing some pretty big things.”
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
