Making Sense: Advances and Experiments in Participatory Sensing

Essay, expanding design practices, Gui Seiz, Mara Balestrini, No Density, Politics and economics, Senseable Technologies, Technology and fabrication

Air quality, Architect’s role, Barcelona, Citizen’s role, Civic Technologies, Collaborative work, Community, Consulting community, Data, Data as mediation, Dataviz & simulation, Developing policies, Ecology, Empowering society, Environment, Environmental technologies, Essay, Fab Lab, Health, Innovation, Open data, Political implications, Pollution, Public Space, Responsive technologies, Sensors, Smart citizen, Spain, Sustainability, Technology, Urban Policy

A project by Gui Seiz and Mara Balestrini, Making Sense, FabLab Barcelona -- https://www.makingsense.eu/

The vision of the EU 7th Environment Action Program is that by the year 2050, European society should: “…live well, within the planet’s ecological limits.” Yet, we face an urgent need to address sustainability challenges in ecology, economics, politics and culture. One of these challenges is environmental pollution. Air, water, soil, and sound pollution damage human health and the human and natural environment. Although progress has been made to reduce environmental pollution, it still remains a major concern for European cities. Technological solutions that enable the so-called smart cities have grown exponentially, yet often focus on city management and infrastructure. The inhabitant of the city, the citizen, is often overlooked in the quest for technological advances and novelty.