As the location for much of our life, cities and home are exciting settings to conduct research in. While in the home we have control and the needs of family, in the city we must interact with strangers and with government authorities. How can we build technology for both these spaces? What role does mobile technology have?

Both settings also meet in so called ‘liminal spaces’ - spaces that are between the city and the home. We are thinking of playgrounds, gardens, “tvättstuga”. Since the home has been a clear focus of much existing research, it is wise to focus this project on the city and the connections between the city and the home. Building on last years workshop and commentary on visions of the ‘smart home’ and the ‘smart city’, in this year of the project we will conduct two focused interventions, one study and one technology intervention.

One arm will focus on liminal home/city spaces, and the other will take a broader vision approach to understanding the role of technology in the city more broadly. The first arm is based around focused studies which will inform a broader vision of technology in the city. Our goal is to inform the vision of a technological city with empirical work that will examine the current role of technology in our city streets. Through mobile life extensive connections we hope to produce a study of the existing state of technology in the city - how traffic is monitored, how environmental data is shared, and the ways in which citizens themselves are engaging - or not - with their own city. We want to move away though from a data centric view of city life to one that understands that technology is mostly experienced in the city in its primary physical form. This will also necessitate an engagement with processes of change in the city, in particular town planning, public space architecture and the role of codes and laws in shaping public space.

A second arm is to experiment with technology in shared liminal spaces. We will conduct a set of design experiments in these spaces to explore how we might push the limits of what technology can do in shared spaces, and what demands it can make on the people who pass through and in part control these collective environments.

Project leader: Barry Brown