CAN CITIES BE BUILT LIKE WIKIPEDIA?

Who are are in charge of building our cities? Governments, corporations, professionals such as architects and urban planners — while there may be a number of possible responses, in any case the power to design and build cities does not appear to be equally distributed among citizens (i.e., the actual "users" of cities), but instead seems to be consolidated in the hands of select institutions and individuals. This is in contrast to the digital world, where we can find many examples — Linux and Wikipedia, to name two — of large, complex, and reliable systems being created by "everyone", or groups of distributed, willing volunteers. And such democratically-created systems possess a number of beneficial attributes, such as the capacity for quick, incremental changes, increased reliability owing to transparency of process, and the ability to reflect the needs of diverse populations.

Our project aims to bring such democratic modes of production to urban design, giving rise to a new form of urbanism (i.e., Wikitopia) where cities are designed and created through active, spontaneous participations of citizens themselves.

While this vision of Wikitopia may strike some as fantastical, the idea of participatory urbanism is in fact a well-established one, with cities worldwide seeking to better involve citizens in urban decision making processes through workshops, online tools, etc. More direct, DIY-style urban design practices (sometimes referred to as "tactical urbanism") — many of which have beginnings as illegal activities — are increasingly receiving official sanction as well. For example, a number of cities have introduced "parklet programs" that allow citizen groups to transform roadside parking spaces into small pedestrian parks. In many regions around the world, citizens are taking up the task of improving their neighborhoods into their own hands, in increasingly creative ways and under full approval from local municipalities.

We believe that such participatory urban practices can be further accelerated through technological innovations. By incorporating artificial intelligence, robotics and other cutting-edge technologies, we hope to radically increase the speed, scope, and scale of citizen-led urbanism.