Burak Pak

Burak Pak, Johan Verbeke

In this paper, we discuss the affordances of open-source Geoweb 2.0 platforms to support the participatory design of urban projects in real-world practices.We first introduce the two open-source platforms used in our study for testing purposes. Then, based on evidence from five different field studies we identify five affordances of these platforms: conversations on alternative urban projects, citizen consultation, design empowerment, design studio learning and design research. We elaborate on these in detail and identify a key set of success factors for the facilitation of better practices in the future.

Gorsev Argin, Burak Pak, Handan Turkoglu

The extensive use of smartphones in our everyday lives has created new modes of appropriation and behavior in public spaces. Recognition of these are essential for urban design and planning practices which help us to improve the relationship between humans, technologies, and urban environment. This study aims to research smartphone users in public space by observing their altering visual attention and walking behavior, and, in this way, to reveal the emergent new figures. For this purpose, Korenmarkt square in Ghent, Belgium, was observed for seven days in 10-min time intervals. The gaze and walking behavior of smartphone users were encoded as geo-located and temporal data, analyzed and mapped using statistical and spatial analysis methods. Developing and implementing new methods for identifying the characteristics of smartphone users, this study resulted in a nuanced characterization of novel spatial appropriations. The findings led to a better understanding and knowledge of the different behavior patterns of emergent figures such as post-flaneurs and smartphone zombies while uncovering their altering visual interactions with and movements in the public space. The results evoked questions on how researchers and designers can make use of spatial analysis methods and rethink the public space of the future as a hybrid construct integrating the virtual and the physical.

Burak Pak, Alvin Chua, Andrew Vande Moere

FixMyStreet (FMS) is a web-based civic participation platform that allows inhabitants to report environmental defects like potholes and damaged pavements to the government. In this paper, we examine the use of FMS in Brussels, the capital city of Belgium. Analyzing a total of 30,041 reports since its inception in 2013, we demonstrate how civic participation on FMS varies between the ethnically diverse districts in Brussels. We compare FMS use to a range of sociodemographic indicators derived from official city statistics as well as geotagged social media data from Twitter. Our statistical analysis revealed several significant differences between the districts that suggested that crowdsourced civic participation platforms tend to marginalize low-income and ethnically diverse communities. In this respect, our findings provide timely evidence to inform the design of more inclusive crowdsourced, civic participation platforms in the future.

Burak Pak, Johan Verbeke

The main aim of this paper is to discuss how the combination of Web 2.0, social media and geographic technologies can provide opportunities for learning and new forms of participation in an urban design studio. This discussion is mainly based on our recent findings from two experimental urban design studio setups as well as former research and literature studies. In brief, the web platform enabled us to extend the learning that took place in the design studio beyond the studio hours, to represent the design information in novel ways and allocate multiple communication forms. We found that the student activity in the introduced web platform was related to their progress up to a certain extent. Moreover, the students perceived the platform as a convenient medium and addressed it as a valuable resource for learning. This study should be conceived as a continuation of a series of our Design Studio 2.0 experiments which involve the exploitation of opportunities provided by novel socio-geographic information and communication technologies for the improvement of the design learning processes.

Burak Pak, Johan Verbeke

Web 2.0 is beyond a jargon describing technological transformation: it refers to new strategies, tools and techniques that encourage and augment informed, creative and social inter(actions). When considered in an educational context, Web 2.0 provides various opportunities for enhanced integration and for improving the learning processes in information-rich collaborative disciplines such as urban planning and architectural design. The dialogue between the design students and studio teachers can be mediated in various ways by creating novel learning spaces using Web 2.0-based social software and information aggregation services, and brought to a level where the Web 2.0 environment supports, augments and enriches the reflective learning processes. We propose to call this new setting Design Studio 2.0. We suggest that Design Studio 2.0 can provide numerous opportunities which are not fully or easily available in a conventional design studio setting. In this context, we will introduce a web-based geographic virtual environment model (GEO-VEM) and discuss how we reconfigured and rescaled this model with the objective of supporting an international urban design studio by encouraging students to make a collaborative and location-based analysis of a project site (the Brussels-Charleroi Canal). Pursuing the discussion further, we will present our experiences and observations of this design studio including web use statistics, and the results of student attitude surveys. In conclusion, we will reflect the difficulties and challenges of using the GEO-VEM in the Design Studio in a blended learning context and develop future prospects. As a result, we will introduce a set of key criteria for the development and implementation of an effective e-learning environment as a sustainable platform for supporting the Design Studio 2.0.