Overview
Swiss city centers belong to everyone. However, barriers of all kinds make it difficult for people to access their city. Disabled people, senior citizens, cyclists and people with strollers are all affected. To improve the situation, it is not enough for experts who have access to plans to decide how to redesign cities. The population must be empowered to articulate their own ideas.
In a pilot research project in Lucerne, HSLU and the non-profit media company CORRECTIV in Switzerland, together with the media partner Zentralplus, are testing AR-supported citizen journalism, which is created through the interaction of a digital participation platform, the CrowdNewsroom, and the use of augmented reality. Our goal is to significantly improve the conditions for shaping one's own hometown.
To this end, we want to enable broad sections of the population to understand, prioritize or add to various options for urban planning, either from their own smartphone or tablet, or at pop-up stands on mobile interactive data tables. At the same time, research on the same topic is being conducted in other Swiss cities. We are working with the street magazine Surprise and other media partners, as well as the city of Lucerne.
This provides us with valuable information that allows us to do investigative background research. Using journalistic multimedia storytelling, the input from the population is processed with photos and videos from the augmented reality environment: This allows everyone to literally get a picture of what their city could look like in the future. " Caution Barriers!" is part of the ZukunftswerkStadt project and is funded by the Gebert Rüf Foundation.
