Have a say in how your city is shaped
The Sustainable Urban Governance through Augmented Reality (SUGAR) project aims to develop innovative best-practice protocols and guidelines on Sustainable Urban Governance and specifically Public Participation through Augmented Reality. Urban Design and Planning worldwide have long been criticised for their lack of meaningful public consultation and participation in the process of the making of our cities. Currently, the existing practices of consultation and participation are within the confines or council meetings, complex form filling and survey reports that most often than not carry little weight towards the decisions made by the planning authorities. For the last decades, the concept of Participatory Planning as an approach of designing has been heavily incorporated in many disciplinary fields.
This project investigates the role of participation as the process that users, and other stakeholders, are actively involved in the decision-making process through the approach of achieving Sustainable Urban Governance and utilising innovative immersive technologies (specifically AR). We argue that the application of participatory design in the design process is essential to provide economically and socially sustainable outcomes. SUGAR aims to empower both citizens that seek ways to participate in the decision-making process for the design of their cities and neighbourhoods and stakeholders that would like to involve the public actively in the process of shaping their environment creating a lasting and meaningful impact.
Project Partners
SUGAR builds a partnership between the Cyprus University of Technology (Social Computing Research Centre), University of Cyprus (Department of Architecture) and Harvard University (Graduate School of Design and School of Engineering and Applied Sciences). If you would like more information about the project please contact the Project Coordinator Prof. Panayiotis Zaphiris at panayiotis.zaphiris@cut.ac.cy or the Project Manager Andreas Papallas at andreas.papalla@cut.ac.cy.
