Jane Jacobs is getting new glasses
inCitu teamed up with Geopogo and Magic Leap to showcase our AR community planning tool in a public presentation in Red Hook, Brooklyn.
Co-written by Alexandros Washburn and Dana Chermesh-Reshef
Have you ever wondered what could be built in this abandoned lot near your home? Have you ever felt surprised when you saw a construction starting in your neighborhood? Have you ever felt that city planning is just bigger than you can perceive, or that your voice doesn’t count?
NO MORE. In today’s rapid urban development realm, residents must be equipped with smarter and more powerful tools to better engage and effectively participate in city planning processes.
DRAW Brooklyn developed a powerful new tool: It’s called inCitu. inCitu lets anyone see any project proposed for their neighborhood on site in augmented reality. inCitu lets them join in the planning of change.
Last May (2019) we partnered with Geopogo and Magic Leap to demonstrate a proposed rezoning of a “model block” to Red Hook, Brooklyn residents using inCitu. The residents explored in augmented reality three possible scenarios of the rezoning, which we are designing at DRAW Brooklyn. We brought the public in early. We involved the community in the planning process 18 month earlier than the public participation milestone required by NYC law. Our neighbors in Red Hook Brooklyn, NYC were the first community to truly participate in the building of their own future using AR.
See the Red Hook inCitu demo day video here
About the Red Hook Model Block
Two decades ago, the Red Hook community came together to propose a plan for a mixed-use, mixed-income waterfront neighborhood. A vision to create both jobs and housing was approved by the City Council in the form of an advisory 197-A plan. Through the years, the community has fought for this vision against numerous challenges, such as the attempt to concentrate waste transfer stations in the neighborhood, chronic neglect of the Red Hook Houses housing projects, and today the onslaught of e-commerce warehouses.
The vision has never wavered, even through the destruction of Hurricane Sandy in 2012. In fact the hurricane brought the neighborhood closer and added a new goal: resilience.
Two years later, the BASF corporation identified Red Hook as one five communities around the world that were emblematic of the challenges facing neighborhoods in the 21st century. Needing jobs, needing housing, and on the front lines of climate change, Red Hook’s success or failure would be a bell-weather for other coastal communities, and with 1 billion people around the world living within 1 meter of sea-level rise, the resilience of Red Hook became a vital model for change.
As part of the BASF creator space project, the Red Hook community created the idea for the model block.
The model block idea combined houses and jobs in the same block, along with job training, solar power generation, and storm/water management. By mixing uses and mixing incomes and building in a sustainable and resilient way, the model block would create a successful example for coastal urban communities to thrive.
In the following months, former NYC Chief Urban Designer Alexandros Washburn held a series of open house community planning sessions for Red Hook at what would become DRAW Brooklyn. We asked anyone who came by: what do you love most about Red Hook, and how can we put it into a single block?
inCitu AR tool lets you fight for the future of your neighborhood
So why in fact reaching out to the public so early?
We believe that the top-down city planning should be balanced with bottom-up. In the case of Red Hook, no outsider could understand what it was like to see your whole neighborhood being flooded, your own neighbors looking for water and electricity. Other communities face other urgent urban issues: Mass-urbanization, deteriorating infrastructure, air pollution, road fatalities, increasing inequalities, poverty, gentrification and displacement, and above all — climate change.
Local knowledge is key to best address these challenges. And we have no time anymore for inaccurate, sometimes counter-productive, city planning.
InCitu is an expert planning system designed to be used by the real experts — the local residents.
There is no other choice. City planning must become SMARTER, more TRANSPARENT, and more ACCURATE, for the pace of change required in cities today. It is local residents who demand change, and who must initiate change. inCitu empowers each community to see its future and shape it.
What’s next? inCitu @ AWE EU Oct 17–18 2019 in Munich, Germany!
We are very excited we were chosen to speak at AWE EU summit (@ARealityEvent) this Oct 17–18 2019 in Munich, Germany! Come hear us pitching — tickets are available now. Use the discount code EUSPEAKER20, to get 20% off your purchase! #AWE2019 #AugmentedReality #VirtualReality www.awexr.com/eu-2019/www.awexr.com
Moreover, this fall we are also mentoring a Cornell Tech Product Studio team, to further explore with the students the ways in which technology can empower citizens to affect urban change.
