A city made of data
When data shapes cities, and cities shape data in return
La Cité des Données is a series of Design Fiction workshops held in various cities across Europe, exploring issues related to smart cities. Each session combines three participatory formats:
- A walkshop, a narrative and immersive walk through the city,
- A co-design fiction workshop,
- A participatory exhibition, held both in the city and online, to present and debate the scenarios.
Aimed at a non-expert audience, La Cité des Données offers a time and space for critical projection, allowing participants to engage with the challenges of the ‘smartification’ of cities and have a say in the digital transformations of urban spaces.
At the heart of the experience, the workshop begins with a fictional premise: following a critical bug and the complete reboot of the smart city, a choice must be made regarding the ‘algorithmic logic’ that will govern the city’s new functioning. Six logics are proposed: ‘Security and Safety,’ ‘Well-being and Health,’ ‘Self-sustaining Communities,’ ‘Mercantile,’ ‘Agile Personalisation,’ and ‘Nostalgia’.
Each logic embodies a ‘smart ideology’ that shapes the services and products forming a new connected urban landscape. Workshop participants are then invited to imagine, narrate, and prototype everyday objects that reflect the different logics of the smart city’s algorithm.
↑ The Zen bracelet allows seamless access to the locations and activities of the ‘Security and Safety’-driven City, at the cost of continuous reputational scoring and tracking.
↑ Used in the Self-sustaining City, the Filterbook smart glasses block from view anything outside the wearer’s community, reinforcing the isolationism of the smart communitarianism.
Over the course of the explorations, the design fictions created by participants have raised numerous questions and concerns, which were highlighted and debated during participatory exhibitions. Among the controversial urban attributes stressed by these narratives were the global shift towards security measures as an inherent threat to individual freedoms, the increased work strain induced by algorithmic taskmasters, health profiling in the name of public interest, and the influence of filter bubbles on our offline lives.
The first edition of La Cité des Données took place in Nantes, in collaboration with the Labo Arts & Techs of Stereolux, as part of the Scopitone Festival. A second initiative was held in Geneva, with students from the Haute École de Gestion.
↑ In the Mercantile City, TimeValue is a service that, through a connected watch, tracks working hours. The time accumulated and recorded by the watch can then be exchanged for services in the city (health, leisure, transport, etc.).
↑ One of the in situ exercises suggested during the walkshop invites participants to step into the role of an urban sensor, imagining what this technology captures, either intentionally or unintentionally.
↑ The participatory exhibition of the Cité des Données provides participants with the opportunity to discover and respond to the scenarios and artefacts created during the workshop.
