{"id":7362,"date":"2022-12-02T15:57:40","date_gmt":"2022-12-02T14:57:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xoxo.capsule.ch\/2022\/12\/02\/how-can-urban-policy-makers-leverage-science-and-technology-to-create-safer-more-inclusive-cities-that-serve-the-needs-of-all-citizens\/"},"modified":"2025-04-23T17:21:55","modified_gmt":"2025-04-23T15:21:55","slug":"how-can-urban-policy-makers-leverage-science-and-technology-to-create-safer-more-inclusive-cities-that-serve-the-needs-of-all-citizens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xoxo.capsule.ch\/it\/2022\/12\/02\/how-can-urban-policy-makers-leverage-science-and-technology-to-create-safer-more-inclusive-cities-that-serve-the-needs-of-all-citizens\/","title":{"rendered":"How can Urban Policy-makers Leverage Science and Technology to Create Safer, more Inclusive Cities that Serve the Needs of all Citizens?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two overarching technological methods including agent-based modelling and simulations, and visualisation technology are connecting and overlapping three urban themes of public lighting, segregation, and security in Cape Town and Bogot\u00e1. Within this common ground called Urban Research Incubator (URI), researchers collaborate on several projects.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

URI projects are conducted in the context of two cities experiencing high levels of socio-spatial segregation, insecurity, and low access to quality public lighting and other forms of public infrastructure for the urban poor: Bogota in Colombia, and Cape Town in South Africa.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Current
Current 4D real-time lighting simulation branch of the Enerpol Graphical User Interface (GUI), \u00a9 Dr. Michael Walczak, ETH Z\u00fcrich<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

The selection of these two cities allows for concentrated and collaborative empirical research, and for the development of policy recommendations and technological solutions applicable not only to the test cases themselves, but scaled and transferred to other cities worldwide similarly affected by problems born of rapid urbanization.<\/p>\n

\"Virtual
Virtual Environments as a Decision-making Tool for Public Lighting in Cape Town, \u00a9 Dr. Michael Walczak and Dr. Stephanie Briers, ETH Z\u00fcrich<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The main research question: \u00abHow can urban policy-makers leverage science and technology to create safer, more inclusive cities that serve the needs of all citizens?\u00bb is guiding and integrating on-the-ground fieldwork, proposing for example virtual environments as an evidence-based decision-making tool<\/a>. Overcoming major challenges in transdisciplinary research is the dialogue between scientists, inhabitants, practitioners, and politicians, which can be achieved by engaging in a mutual learning environment. This specific project proposes the use of a novel communication tool for current and future urban scenarios<\/a>\u00a0to enhance the dialogue between scientists and policy makers. Such a methodology could allow policy makers to gain a better understanding<\/a> of the impacts their decisions have on the built environment, in this case public lighting in informal settlements and their residents.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Interactive
Interactive URI 3D multi-user policy web platform, in this case, highlighting the \u00abVisualisation Technology\u00bb methodology, \u00a9 URI group, ETH Z\u00fcrich<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

This project aims to contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) \u2013 specifically SDG 11 \u00abMake cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable\u00bb.<\/p>\n

Who is Collaborating Within the Urban Research Incubator (URI)?<\/h3>\n

The Urban Research Incubator (URI)<\/a> multidisciplinary group at the ETH Zurich\u2019s Institute of Science, Technology and Policy<\/a> is bridging and integrating Prof. Hubert Klumpner\u2019s Chair of Architecture and Urban Design<\/a>, Prof. Dr. Reza Abhari\u2019s Laboratory of Energy Conversion<\/a>, Prof. Dr. Andreas Wenger\u2019s Center for Security Studies<\/a> and Prof. Dr. Isabel G\u00fcnther\u2019s Center for Development and Cooperation (NADEL)<\/a>. Within this setting, seven PhD Students from three ETH Departments, D-ARCH, D-GESS, and D-MAVT, are working on the two case studies Cape Town and Bogot\u00e1. This project is supported by partners from multiple sectors such as Zumtobel, the \u00abUniversidad Nacional de Colombia\u00bb, or the City of Cape Town.<\/p>\n

Dr. Michael Walczak<\/a>\u00a0graduated in 2021 from the University of Applied Arts Vienna.\u00a0His dissertation, \u00abDigital Urban Imaginaries: Digital models transforming citizen-centred design processes<\/a>,\u00bb resulted in the co-development of the commercialised software Enerpol for large-scale urban simulations. Michael Walczak<\/a> is currently a postdoctoral researcher leading the Urban Transformation Project Sarajevo and is co-directing urbanthinktank_next in Vienna and Sarajevo.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two overarching technological methods including agent-based modelling and simulations, and visualisation technology are connecting and overlapping three urban themes of public lighting, segregation, and security in Cape Town and Bogot\u00e1. Within this common ground called Urban Research Incubator (URI), researchers collaborate on several projects.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7367,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"departemente":[138,159,178],"newsletter_ausgabe":[312],"class_list":["post-7362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newsletter-artikel","departemente-departement-architektur-d-arch","departemente-institut-fuer-landschaft-und-urbane-studien-lus","departemente-prof-hubert-klumpner-institut-fuer-landschaft-und-urbane-studien-i-lus","newsletter_ausgabe-nl-56"],"acf":[],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":23,"label":"Newsletter-Artikel"}],"departemente":[{"value":138,"label":"Departement Architektur (D-ARCH)"},{"value":159,"label":"Institut f\u00fcr Landschaft und Urbane Studien (LUS)"},{"value":178,"label":"Prof. Hubert Klumpner"}],"newsletter_ausgabe":[{"value":312,"label":"NL 56"}]},"featured_image_src_large":["https:\/\/xoxo.capsule.ch\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/URI-image_breit-1024x635.jpg",1024,635,true],"author_info":{"display_name":"Yaxin Hou","author_link":"https:\/\/xoxo.capsule.ch\/it\/author\/houya\/"},"comment_info":0,"category_info":[{"term_id":23,"name":"Newsletter-Artikel","slug":"newsletter-artikel","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":23,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":680,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":23,"category_count":680,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Newsletter-Artikel","category_nicename":"newsletter-artikel","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xoxo.capsule.ch\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xoxo.capsule.ch\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xoxo.capsule.ch\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xoxo.capsule.ch\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xoxo.capsule.ch\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7362"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/xoxo.capsule.ch\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7362\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7366,"href":"https:\/\/xoxo.capsule.ch\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7362\/revisions\/7366"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xoxo.capsule.ch\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xoxo.capsule.ch\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xoxo.capsule.ch\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xoxo.capsule.ch\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7362"},{"taxonomy":"departemente","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xoxo.capsule.ch\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/departemente?post=7362"},{"taxonomy":"newsletter_ausgabe","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xoxo.capsule.ch\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newsletter_ausgabe?post=7362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}