Champion City Part 12: It’s the Final Countdown!
We did it! We completed our third and final sprint for the Bloomberg Mayors’ Challenge. Before I elaborate on what that looked like and how it went, let’s take a little stroll down memory lane to see how far we’ve come, shall we?
How It All Began:
We started this process back in February when Bloomberg Philanthropies notified us that we were one of the 35 cities (out of an initial applicant pool of over 300) selected as a 2018 Champion City. The idea we had proposed in our application: To use virtual reality to help city planners and local property owners better visualize development plans.
Fast forward to IDEA camp, a super intensive, two-day brain-stretching boot camp put on by Bloomberg Philanthropies where we learned about iterative design, prototyping, measurement/evaluation and all sorts of other useful stuff. We had a chance to meet some of our fellow Champion Cities (Hey there, Cheyenne, Washington DC, Georgetown, Charleston, and Princeton!) and receive feedback from the Foundation on our idea: Find a way to engage more citizens beyond property owners! they advised. That’s how our idea pivoted to the following revised statement: Immersive Media (virtual reality, augmented reality, etc.) will enhance the municipal urban planning process by allowing citizens new ways to co-design public spaces with their City, as well as helping citizens better visualize/understand projects in the late approval process or already approved.
With two foundation-issued coaches to guide us, we were given the mandate to test and revise our idea concept over the course of the summer, using at least three different tests (Bloomberg Philanthropy calls these tests “sprints”), ideally increasing in complexity. We were off to the races.
Sprint 1: Just Warming Up….
One of the most important findings of Sprint 1 (a survey that solicited information from nearly 400 individuals!) was that an overwhelming majority of New Rochelle residents would rather help our City government design a new public space using immersive media technology tools (like virtual reality and augmented reality) than via more typical design charette tools (such as brainstorming with Lego blocks or art supplies). Another finding: people liked interacting with the City using their smart phone (we issued our Sprint 1 survey as simple smartphone download and it went very smoothly.) We also learned that age really didn’t have anything to do with this desire to use the latest immersive technology; in fact, most of the people that responded to our Sprint 1 survey were well north of the age of 40. Finally, it was revealed that most people wanted to be more involved in New Rochelle’s planning process, *but* felt less confident that their ideas mattered to decision makers.
Sprint 2: Getting Our Stride…
Once we knew that people wanted to participate more frequently and earlier in the planning process -and- that they were receptive (actually, not just receptive — *EXCITED*) by the idea of using immersive media to do so, we decided to test how folks reacted to the a few different types of immersive media out there that could be used in the planning process.
Enter Sprint 2. We learned a lot. First, our assumption that virtual reality would be the shining star of the three technologies we presented was smacked down when we saw the virtual reality techs at the end of our Sprint 2 test day. Sweating, bedraggled, and hoarse from talking New Rochelle citizens through the virtual reality experience six hours straight, their sloped posture and empty stares told our team that VR (while exciting and wonderful for visualization) is also highly labor intensive from a logistical perspective. If you’re trying to engage a large crowd of citizens, augmented reality might be a simpler tech tool to utilize. Save virtual reality for the small group gatherings.
New Rochelle residents were also very forthcoming about how these technologies could help them feel more comfortable engaging with their fellow citizens and city planners. One of the things we heard a lot was that residents felt that the unbiased visualizations of a project presented by these new tools could prevent misconceptions and conjecture regarding what projects would actually look like, in turn eliminating hysteria and that awful contentious shouting that sometimes makes public planning hearings so terrifying/unpalatable for 99% of the population.
Sprint 3: Feeling the Burn!
It was time to round the corner and go hard for our final sprint. Having pivoted to the idea that augmented reality might be the most useful tool to explore further due to its capacity to serve a very wide audience without the requirement of a full tech team to facilitate the experience, we came up with a mock scenario for Sprint 3 which was: The City wants to install a music/shade pavilion in the park and needs resident assistance making the decision. We showed local residents and business owners three locations, each with different pros and cons and asked which alternative they would choose and why. We wanted to see if the use of augmented reality could facilitate more informed insights and decision-making than traditional flat renderings.
We were lucky to have a journalist along for the ride on Sprint 3. His article, and the accompanying video embedded in the article, explain the purpose Sprint 3 and some of the reactions we received very well.
Finish Line in Sight!
The race isn’t over quite yet.
At the end of this whole process, four out of the 35 Champion Cities will receive a $1 million dollar grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies to implement their idea; one lucky city will receive $5 million. We feel our three-sprint experience has primed us to apply for one of these larger grants to execute a real life version of a citizen engagement tool that incorporates immersive media to enhance the city planning process.
Bloomberg Philanthropies wants to invest in projects that are scaleable; that is, projects that other cities can customize, then employ in their own communities as well. To date we have demonstrated or spoken of our project to Westchester County Executive George Latimer’s office, the Regional Plan Association and Kansas City. Those conversations have taught us that what we are exploring most definitely is applicable to other cities in our county, the tri-state region and elsewhere in the United States. For example, Bridget Gibbons, who visited us from County Executive George Latimer’s office, noted that an immersive reality visualization tool would have been helpful with their recent public outreach for a project at the Westchester County Airport. She saw a great deal of potential for the tool in all the County’s outreach efforts and is eager to continue a relationship with us moving forward.
When teammate Tony Patrick spoke with City officials from Kansas City, he learned that they recently used virtual reality to showcase an already-approved planning project to the public, and were very interested in our novel concept of employing immersive media far earlier in the city planning process.
Finally, this guest post by Melissa Kaplan-Macey of the Regional Plan Association details her views on applicability and how our project fits hand in glove with RPA’s goal of fostering greater community engagement in the region’s planning processes.
In the next couple of weeks we will be working on our larger grant application, which we will submit mid-August. From there, it’s a waiting game — winners will be announced in the fall.
This, dear readers, is personally my last blog post as project manager for the Mayors’ Challenge, but we have a few remaining posts in progress… so keep following this page through the next two weeks.
