RE-IMAGINING THE SMART CITY

While exploring the Smart City concept we started asking each other questions about the city; What is it? Why do we need it? What is it trying to achieve?

This week I saw an interesting movie named, Upgrade. This movie really made me think about the future through a different lens.

Smart city is not just a concept or dream of the future, but it is a city that uses innovative technology to provide services, improve social and economic quality and address growing urbanisation challenges.

This week we used the ‘what if/what is the city..’ statements to initiate discussion and debate which proved useful as it helped us generate ideas and allowed us to think on a broader level.

This week I read a very interesting article suggested by Alex called ‘Visual Research Methods In An Expanded Field: What Next For Visual Research Methods?’ by Gillian Rose.

Restrictive measures enforced around the world due to Covid-19 multiplied with additional pressures including social isolation, poor housing, unemployment and poverty, have led to increased levels of anxiety, stress..

This might not be the right place to discuss this but since we’re talking about COVID-19 and mental health issues, I would like to shed some light on how this has affected me personally.

For people to socialize, it is necessary that they have something in common. Identifying that commonality between two people to spark conversation is complex but if done right it, it could help them in many ways

After hearing the feedback we received from everyone to came to an understanding that not a lot of people like interacting with others on trains and also that we are trying to think too quickly about the design or a solution to our problem.

Sometimes just saying hi to a person while you’re walking in a park would be enough to start a conversation. I decided to take John’s idea of the virtual pet a step further by coming up with a toy game that would encourage such actions