About CyberParks
Fostering knowledge about the relationship between Information and Communication Technologies and Public Spaces supported by strategies to improve their use and attractiveness
CyberParks’ main objective is to create a research platform on the relationship between Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and the production of public open spaces, and their relevance to sustainable urban development. The impacts of this relationship will be explored from social, ecological and urban design perspectives.
ICT is a driving force, media and tool, which operates as a mediator between users and their virtual and real worlds. Public spaces have multiple functions, including social gathering places where outdoor interactions between people can occur and communication and information exchange can take place. ICTs cause and enable innovative outdoor social practices, which challenge spatial and social experts to use them in policies, methodologies, design and research to produce responsive and inclusive urban places.
CyberParks deals with opportunities and risks ICTs offer to the user, via the appreciation, design and usage of public spaces. It exploits the benefits of interweaving a green experience with digital engagement via sharing knowledge, experiences and ideas, and analysing public spaces.
Objectives:
- Coordinate and enhance research efforts in how to deal with opportunities and/or risks of ICT usage in public spaces, and the meaning for design practice
- Enhance and test research methodologies into a new context, considering the social function of public spaces
- Establish links and promote collaboration among experts and expertise areas, e.g. ICT, creative industry, design practice, health consultancy.
- Form self-sustained empirical knowledge on use of ICT by place users, and via experimental research gaining empirical knowledge and synthesising the impacts of ICT on public spaces into a set of guidelines for city planners, urban developers, urban policies, regulatory and decision-making bodies.
- Synchronise academic and industrial research that may result from the intersection of ICT and public space and their relevant users, (and therefore promote existing and establish new links with industrial partners in new commercial applications).
