Smart Urban Mobility Systems

The goal of the Smart Urban Mobility Systems workshop will be to study two main axes: the first one will address the notion of place within the urban and mobility context, and the second will address the space of the media sphere.

I. The Place: a New Experience

Ubicomp

The notion of place address the question of ubiquitous computing and the evolution of telecommunication system. WiMax and long range broadband wireless connectivity open new scenarios for accessing information.

Internet of Things

Embedded sensing and electronics will transform the urban fabric into smart self-organized places. IPv6 enables “Internet everywhere”, an “Internet of things” where any object can access (and be accessed through) the Internet, enabling endless scenarios for new experiences within the city, at all levels.

Plugability

One of the idea will be to explore the notion and concept of Plugability. Based on initial ideas raised from the “Intelligent Bus Stop” workshop, the bus stop can be an open source interactive landmark allowing communities to imagine, design and implement services directly relevant to them.

Digital and Physical

The distinction between digital and physical is definitely blurred. Google maps, Google street view and other applications overlap digital information with the urban environment. Nike Plus creates on-line and physical communities that work in an unified way.
In this space, it is interesting to explore the new dimensions of what we can define as Human Ethology and bring to physical behaviors that leverage also for the electronic information. At the same time, Second Life and worlds of Avatars can bring human behavior digitally. The combination of both creates a new meaning of space.
Finally, digital and physical redefine the notion of self opening interesting perspectives for urban mobility.

Multilevel and Multimodal

Urban Mobility can also be reconsidered not only from a multilevel perspective [physical and digital], but also from a multimodal perspective: urban mobility includes pedestrian walks to public or private transportation systems. It is a seamless experience where the user navigates the information space cognitively and the urban space physically. We will think of transportation as a global mobility system, rather than one element of social urban life.
The notion of place also addresses the new experience of the place and how people utilize the places and spaces in relationship to the urban mobility.

II. The Space: New Media and Forms of Communication

Participative and Viral Model

In a few years, we have evolved from a basic broadcast model to a viral and participative distribution model of content. Social networking phenomena with self publication system applications redefine the media ecosystem. Facebook, MySpace, Linked’in or Dopplr, to mention only a few social networking sites, are transforming communities and how people create groups, for pleasure or business. YouTube, Blogger, and Tumblr Twitter cleverly commute redefine how people publish, share and access content online.

Customized content

Customized and personalized content has created niches of users. Amazon.com is an innovative model who make personalized recommendations to users. On a device arena, one million of the four million iPhones sold before March 2008 were jail-broken. The lesson: people want to customize their applications and how they access information.

Contextualized content

Urban physical maps, location-based services and context awareness transform people’s experience within the urban environment. Proximity technologies, RFID, Near Field Communication, or wireless sensors networks modify the way users can access and deliver contextualized content.

Learning

The city is a new learning environment, where one can access contextualized information. New ideas emerge about exchanging information, gifts, and reliance. Learning is formal and informal. City dwellers can learn by living in a new meaningful way. The synergic combinations among these elements open a great variety of possible scenarios for the evolution of smart urban mobility.

Sustainable mobility

We also think of smart urban mobility as sustainable mobility. We had initially developed concepts of “wearable urbanism,” in which individuals with cellphones could act as social sensors that self-regulate mobility within the urban environment, and of an “Eco-gotchi” application that fosters urban sustainable mobility by making city dwellers more aware of their carbon footprint.
During our workshop, we want to explore how the notion of place and media radically transform urban mobility.