TY - JOUR
T1 - Toward A Collaborative Smart City
T2 - A Play-Based Urban Living Laboratory in Boston
AU - Gordon, Eric
AU - Harlow, John
AU - Teng, Melissa
AU - Christoferetti, Elizabeth
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by a grant from the Knight Foundation. We would like to thank the staff of the Boston Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics for their curiosity and support throughout the project.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
PY - 2023
Y1 - 2023
N2 - This article reports on an urban living laboratory that designed a suite of play-based prototypes, as an attempt to “institution” collaborative smart city governance in the city of Boston. This project was called “Beta Blocks,” and it geographically defined “Exploration Zones,” governed by local residents and business owners, who decided whether, where, and why to temporarily install technologies in the public realm. To recruit and facilitate the participation of Zone Advisory Group members, the authors fabricated a lavender, parking-space-sized, inflatable art exhibition (Beta Blob) that hosted a suite of public-facing activities. Although the composite model failed at “institutioning” itself into Boston’s government through this prototype, the discrete components succeeded in centering play in public learning situations and prototyping a model for collaborative governance between publics, and the public and private sectors.
AB - This article reports on an urban living laboratory that designed a suite of play-based prototypes, as an attempt to “institution” collaborative smart city governance in the city of Boston. This project was called “Beta Blocks,” and it geographically defined “Exploration Zones,” governed by local residents and business owners, who decided whether, where, and why to temporarily install technologies in the public realm. To recruit and facilitate the participation of Zone Advisory Group members, the authors fabricated a lavender, parking-space-sized, inflatable art exhibition (Beta Blob) that hosted a suite of public-facing activities. Although the composite model failed at “institutioning” itself into Boston’s government through this prototype, the discrete components succeeded in centering play in public learning situations and prototyping a model for collaborative governance between publics, and the public and private sectors.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85121812470&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85121812470&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/10447318.2021.2012384
DO - 10.1080/10447318.2021.2012384
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85121812470
SN - 1044-7318
VL - 39
SP - 302
EP - 318
JO - International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction
JF - International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction
IS - 2
ER -