4D Hyperlocal: A Cultural Toolkit for the Open–Source City

The evolution of digital tools is revolutionalising urban design, planning and community engagement. This is enabling a new hyperlocal mode of design made possible by geolocation technologies and GPS–enabled mobile devices that support connectivity through open–source applications. Real–time analysis of environments and individuals input and feedback bring a new immediacy and responsiveness. Established linear design methods are being replaced by adaptable mapping processes, real–time data streams and experiential means, fostering more dynamic spatial analysis and public feedback. This shifts the emphasis in urban design from the creation of objects and spaces to collaboration with users, and from centralised to distributed participatory systems.

Hyperlocal tools foster dynamic relational spatial analysis, making their deployment in urban and rural contexts challenged by transformation particularly significant. How can hyperlocal methods, solutions including enterprise–driven uses of technology for bioclimatic design and contexts influence each other and support the evolution of participatory architectural design? What issues, for example, arise from using real–time data to test scenarios and shape environments through 3D digital visualisation and simulation methods? What are the advantages of using GIS with its integrative and visualising capacities and relational, flexible definition of scale with GPS for multi–scalar mapping?

Contributors: Saskia Beer, Moritz Behrens, John Bingham–Hall, Will Gowland and Samantha Lee, Adam Greenfield, Usman Haque, Tom Kovac, Bess Krietemeyer, Laura Kurgan, Lev Manovich, Claudia Pasquero and Marco Poletto, Raffaele Pé, José Luis de Vicente, Martijn de Waal, Katharine S Willis and Alejandro Zaera–Polo.
 
Featured architects and designers: Usman Haque/Umbrellium; Ecosistema Urbano; Foster + Partners; Bess Krietemeyer/Interactive Design and Visualization Lab, Syracuse University Center of Excellence for Environmental Energy Systems; Laura Kurgan/Spatial Information Design Lab, Columbia University; Lev Manovich/Software Studies Initiative, City University of New York (CUNY); Claudia Pasquero and Marco Poletto/ecoLogicStudio; and Alejandro Zaera–Polo/School of Architecture, Princeton University.