Modern cities has entered a “postmodern” phase of refinement, which means that instead of high-rise development, the current emphasis is more on human-centric refinement of urban planning. In this process, public participation, such as public opinion surveys, co-design workshops, and community interviews, has been recognized by urban planners as a useful approach to involve residents in addressing urban issues at the local level. Technological and innovative developments in cities are changing rapidly, but the approaches to encourage public participation in discussing urban issues are still tedious and time-consuming, and often limited to a small number of representatives. Taking advantage of the latest technologies (generative AI, cloud computing services, and chatbot), this independent project in the Center for Urban Science + Progress, aims to propose a novel public participation tool to innovate the urban governance process and empower citizens to participate in shaping a human-centered urban environment.
We are currently looking for 50 volunteers from NYU for our polit study. Interested people can find the demo survey on our website and register your participation here. If you would like to know more information, please write to Zhaoxi Zhang at zhaoxi.zhang@nyu.edu.