CIFAL Curitiba at WUF 6: WIKICITIES - How to Bring Liveability to Cities by Effectively Designing and Implementing a Collaborative Digital Platform
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Deadline for application: 30 August 2012
Wikicities are based in the principle of social intelligence and provide a new form of community participation. The training workshop has close links with two of the 6th World Urban Forum's main dialogues: Liveable Cities and Quality of Life (High Quality Public Spaces) and Culture and the Prosperity of Cities.
Previous urban experiences with wiki-spots show that discussions generated by a digital platform contribute to leverage actions related to urban renewal. Ideas to regain ownership of public spaces and bring life to areas forgotten or abandoned are one result of this process.
Wikicities also stimulate citizens to revisit their local culture through and rediscover urban particularities undetected in our daily routine. One of the main objectives of the WUF 6 is to identify initiatives that contribute to the prosperity of cities.
Wikicities are based in the principle of social intelligence and provide a new form of community participation. The platform stimulates people to perform an active role to solve problems in their own territory on issues related to culture, urban space, education, entrepreneurship, safety, environment, among others.
The training proposed aims to present the concept of wikicities and how it can strengthen citizenship, social engagement and shared responsibility for better public spaces. The concept is based on a collaborative digital platform, which enables people to express a new problem, mark it on a virtual map and discuss it with peer citizens.
Content and Structure
In the first part of the training, the concept of a wikispot, a geographical space that receives virtual georeferenced annotations, will be presented. Wikispots can be any physical space such as a city, a park or even an event venue. Two examples of wikispots in Brazil will be also provided: portoalegre.cc (a city) and redencao.cc (a park) to illustrate the application of the concept.
After the introductory presentations, workshop participants will participate in an interactive exercise to define and create a "wikicity" using the various models and options discussed. Participants will divide in groups to identify challenges related to the mock city. These identified challenges will be distributed among the various groups to then devise problem-solving solutions and micro-actions (e.g. During the first group exercise one group raises red flags an abandoned space and in the second group exercise, another group develops a strategy to revitalise the area).
Participants will also learn about the most commonly used tools in the process of communicating and mobilising public citizens around a specific urban challenge, such as social networks (e.g. Twitter and Facebook), email and word-of-mouth. An example of social mobilization will be also simulated by participants in the training and contrasted with concrete wikicity experiences.
In the last part of the workshop, participants will learn how to monitor and evaluate the performance of a wikicity project by using quantitative and qualitative indicators.
Urban planning practitioners and students, local government representatives, members of NGOs and CBOs and the private sector.
Registration for this event is also available at www.cifalcuritiba.org.br
- Public - by registration
- Public - by application
- Private - by invitation
- Open to register/apply
Mode of Delivery