SENSEable Cities: Exploring Urban Futures at the City Centered Festival

City Centered Festival is a free, three-day festival of locative media and urban community in San Francisco. The event included demonstrations and installations in the Tenderloin district, a symposium in the Mission district and community training workshops, and it just took place in June 2010.

We want to make an overview on the work that the MIT SENSEable Cities presented there. You already know about our deep interest in the use of new and innovative tools to explore and research the concept of “relational city“, so let’s take a look:

Using Innovative Tools to Understand the City

This is the first of a series of coming posts by which we’re going to explain the contents and goals of our Master Programme as part of a global approach in which technologic and relational links interact in order to better understand our cities and why we decided to provide each student with an iPad as an academic tool.

A few days ago, Fabian Neuhaus made this question: How do we identify our selves with the spaces we use and how do we navigate with the many obstacles the urban environment contains?

He pointed:

Living in the city means to constantly negotiate spaces as well as navigate space. This becomes more difficult under the density aspect as well as the mobility aspects. Also the cycles of change are very short and frequent adaptations require constant reorientation. Aspects of repetition and routine play an important role in the navigation of everyday situations. Being familiar with the aspects makes this task a lot easier. However, as soon as there are changes, new features or temporary obstacles, those have to be integrated.