Cathair Shamhlú: Understanding Key Issues That Stymie Our Urban Evolution

Never before have we been better connected, never have the scale of differences kept us so much apart. The 21st century so far could be described as an extended era of crisis. We’ve been facing challenges linked to global security, financial stability, economic transitions, and ecological disaster. One outcome of these crises is a divided world. The imperative is obvious: we need better tools to address challenges that few could have envisaged half a century ago. Development of these solutions will enable agency at the local level to start to help individuals and communities address key global issues.

We plan to address this problem by giving citizens and other stakeholders more influence through a process known as ‘platform urbanism’. This tool matches social science methodologies and technological solutions. It will help us ‘know the urban’. At this level, it can be seen as a set of technological ‘solutions’ to specific ‘problems’ seemingly disconnected from one another. Our intention is to develop a novel set of metrics that might help us better understand key issues that stymie our urban evolution (homelessness, vacancy, congestion). We seek to bring together transformation and participation in a technologically embedded, everyday form of civic engagement. Our intent is to develop a digital platform that is as inclusive as possible thus enabling the co-creation of value from a multi-stakeholder perspective.