Digital tools as a means to foster citizen involvement in urban planning

Based mainly on sensors, flow optimization and algorithms, the smart city model has revealed its limits. The city’s smart citizens are scarcely included in the planning process, even though they occupy a key position to produce and share valuable knowledge on how they live and use the city. Technology has the potential to generate tools that improve interaction and information exchange between urban planners and city dwellers, which is a key aspect for more sustainable and responsive planning. This lunchtalk will explore how digital tools can be harnessed to create new means of involving citizens in the urban planning process, and how they integrate a non-expert but practiced layer of knowledge. By looking at numerous existing tools, it will examine the opportunities and limitations of these digital technologies as a way to create novel planning practices