CSIC Research Associate Viviana Angely Bastidas Melo argues that urban systems that integrate social and technical domains are becoming more and more necessary and ‘a critical planning and management responsibility’.
In her latest blog entitled How do we conceptualise and design urban interventions that satisfy the social and technological needs of the real world?,DrViviana Angely Bastidas Melo reflects on the challenges that city professionals in private and public organisations face while planning urban systems. She states that ‘Conceptualising and designing urban systems that embrace both the social and technical worlds have become a critical planning and management responsibility that should put peoples’ needs above technical desires’.
The main challenge, she argues, consists in ‘the complex interdependencies that exist between socio-technical system ‘components’ such as people, strategies, policies, regulations, processes, data, applications, technology, and physical infrastructure’. She suggests that there is the need to equip professionals with the right skills to enable them to design urban systems to achieve ‘interoperability between people’ in addition to ‘data interoperability’ already occurring in many digital innovation projects in the urban built environment.
She concludes by suggesting that ‘A common language can help city leaders to manage cities' complexity and to design digital solutions that align with their concerns and expectations. Such alignment can build a bridge between urban planning officers and digitalisation experts by making explicit the links between social and technological needs’.
Read full blog here