Upgrading the megacity piloting a co-design and decision support environment for urban development in india

Decision-making problems in urban planning and management emerge through escalating urban dynamics, especially of megacities. Instead of bureaucratic top-down methods, digital bottom-up technologies and methodologies provide interesting alternative approaches. The broad integration of crowdsourced information into planning procedures has the potential to fundamentally change planning policies. This becomes especially relevant in the Indian context. India’s massive urban challenges, e.g., environmental pollution, waste management, or informal settlement growth can only be addressed with the active involvement and support of local communities. This article reports on the pilot application of a digital co-design environment in the Indian city of Pimpri Chinchwad in order to target improper garbage disposal and to support public space upgrading and creative placemaking. Based on tools and methods developed within the projects U_CODE (EU Horizon2020) and Pulse (India Smart Cities Fellowship), the novel co-design environment a) facilitated citizen participation online as well as on local level and b) supplied to municipal decision-makers new design and planning intelligence harvested from local communities. Specifically, Pimpri Chinchwad’s administration wanted to transform a vacant area used as a dumpsite into a quality community space, whose specific function and design, however, would be determined by the residents themselves. For this challenge, Team Pulse and U_CODE configured an interactive co-design environment based on touch-table technology that traveled with a Co-Creation Truck to local communities. In result, the digital participation system enabled some hundreds of people to actively communicate demands and grievances about the location at stake and to co-create design proposals which were transmitted to local decision-makers for scrutinization and implementation. Due to overall positive results and significant social and political impact of the pilot test, a broader implementation in Pimpri Chinchwad is envisioned in the near future.