Can Cities be Built by "Everyone"?
Wikitopia Project is a research project led by computer scientist Yuichiro Takeuchi, with the goal of realizing technologically-enhanced future cities that are continuously edited and improved by citizens like the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. Originally founded in late 2017 with support from Japan Science and Technology Agency, it is currently run as a cross-organizational project with Sento at its center, engaging in a wide range of initiatives spanning from basic research to product development.
Who 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.
Four Pillars of Inquiry
Our research efforts are organized around four thematic "pillars", as shown below. For each pillar, we pursue concrete technology development initiatives that are intended to serve as empirical probes into that pillar (currently, we only have one initiative for each pillar). For technologies that reach a certain level of maturity, we actively pursue opportunities for real-world deployment. An example of this is our "dédédé" online platform, which is now live and open to everyone — it is free to use, so please give it a try!
Explore how digital fabrication and other rapid construction technologies can enable the on-demand production and modification of physical urban components, realizing cities that are continuously reconfigurable in response to evolving citizen needs.
Explore how robotics and interactive technologies embedded directly into buildings and public spaces can allow the built environment to sense and dynamically adapt to occupants, creating fast-changing, responsive urban environments.
Investigate the creation of a new urban digital infrastructure, encompassing sensing, tracking, communication, and data platform capabilities, which forms the connective tissue enabling technologically-augmented, citizen-led urban interventions.
Investigate how innovations in digital platforms can facilitate structured participation among citizens, supporting opinion gathering, deliberation, collective decision-making, and consensus formation at the neighborhood or city scale.
In addition to scientific and technological research, we engage in various types of outreach efforts including holding public events, publishing booklets, etc.
The project is based at the Sento headquarters in Kyoto, Japan.
If you would like to get involved in the project, or are a member of a company or research institution and interested in collaborating with us, please contact us using the form on the home page or by email. We also occasionally hold participatory events such as workshops and seminars.