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 stemming from transparency, 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, DIY-style, citizen-led urban design is in fact a well-established practice with precedents existing worldwide, such as guerrilla gardening, pop-up bike lanes, and various forms of street art. While many of these examples started out as illegal activities, recently they are increasingly receiving official sanction; for example, a number of cities have introduced "parklet programs" that allow citizen groups to convert roadside parking spaces into small pedestrian parks. In more and more 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.

Relying on a suite of cutting-edge technologies, we seek to further accelerate such participatory urban practices — lowering the barrier to entry, and drastically expanding the scope of urban interventions that can be carried out in a citizen-led manner. Our work will bring increased scalability to participatory urban design, making democratically-created spaces and artifacts an everyday sight in our future cities.