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Enabling citizen participation in urbanplanning by using Augmented Reality
Sheree MaySassmannshausenUniversity of SiegenKohlbettstrasse 15 57072Siegen, [email protected]
Joerg RadtkeUniversity of SiegenAdolf-Reichwein-Str. 2 57068Siegen, [email protected]
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Copyright held by the owner/author(s).CHI’20,, April 25–30, 2020, Honolulu, HI, USAACM 978-1-4503-6819-3/20/04.https://doi.org/10.1145/3334480.XXXXXXX
AbstractIn many German cities, there has been a lack of citizen par-ticipation in urban and regional development processes,especially as young citizens are not motivated to get in-volved. Therefore, an Augmented Reality-App is to be de-veloped as a gamification aspect in order to encourage in-trinsic motivation and thus contribute to increased citizenparticipation. This paper presents the state-of-the-art of theresearch project Creactive Citizen. As a human-centered-design approach, the citizens were integrated into the de-sign process of the AR system to ensure usability based ontheir user needs. For example, in order to make possiblebuilding projects comprehensible for all citizens, the focusis on visualization possibilities through Augmented Real-ity (AR). To ensure an exchange, voting, comments, anddiscussions should be made possible. Nevertheless, wehave encountered some challenges that need to be furtherexplored concerning the design process and technical ARprocedures.
Author Keywordsaugmented reality, citizen participation, urban planning, hci
CCS Concepts•Human-centered computing → Mixed / augmented re-ality;
IntroductionThe research project Creactive Citizen aims to digitize theprocess of citizen participation in infrastructure and urbandevelopment projects and thus to better address citizens. Inthe context of urban and regional development, there is anincreased interest of citizens in participation. Citizens like tosee more opportunities for participation on the web, but theopportunities are partially not existent or not known. Par-ticipation in public planning procedures is partly available,but it does not reach many or costs too much effort. Tradi-tional participation procedures are currently offline eventssuch as citizens’ meetings, which are usually attended bythe same people as always and predominantly involve theolder generation. Our results show that mainly young peo-ple are not yet addressed and motivated to participate incivic participation processes, although they are particu-larly affected by urban development projects like urbanrestructuring. A digital system is intended to remedy thissituation by allowing people to contribute their suggestions,ideas, and criticism. By using a digital system, every voiceshould be heard and taken equally seriously - regardless ofthe age or other characteristics of the persons. This paperpresents the state of the art of our research project. Theaim is to develop a mobile participation app for citizens inorder to support citizen participation in the context of urbanand regional development projects (e.g., new building con-struction, design, and revitalization of public spaces). Forexample, to visualize construction work or changes in publicspace, innovative approaches such as augmented realityare to be used. In this way concrete ideas and conceptionsare more tangible and comprehensible. Thus, the real en-vironment can be modified into a new design, so that it isvisible what the environment might look like in the future.Additionally, discussions and comments, as well as votingor entries in maps are used. Citizens will be able to use thesystem to inform themselves, exchange information, and
give an opinion or preference. Until now, AR has alwaysbeen used individually in many other systems. Since thisis about citizen participation and, therefore, communicationand collaboration, the AR system will be used to generateideas and ensure an exchange of ideas.
Project detailsCreactive Citizen is a EU-funded research project and hasa term of 3 years, which ends in March 2021. The work-ing group consists of political scientists, computer scien-tists (field of HCI and CSCW) and a software developmentcompany. Besides, a german city (with 25.000 citizen) isinvolved as a project partner and provides concrete prob-lem scenarios. For instance, the system will be used for acitizens’ vote on designs for a new town hall.
Approaches and ChallengesFirst, a practice and information analysis were carried out,in which theory-based research results, as well as actualpractical experiences of municipalities, were collected, com-pared, and evaluated. Surveys with 96 participants as wellas 19 interviews were conducted with politicians, adminis-trative staff, and citizens to identify the current participation.As a part of a user-centered design approach, users wereinvolved at an early stage to identify user needs in directexchange with them (see [4]). As a step towards the de-sired citizen participation, various activities were held inour partner city to gather the ideas of the citizens regard-ing urban development. There were activities like citizens’meeting, walks with the citizens, a thematic working groupand a website for collecting ideas. These activities result indifferent citizen inputs and are summarized in various docu-ments, which were used as a basis for information analysisto identify further needs. Methodologically, the individualstatements were semantically analyzed and categorizedusing an affinity diagram. From the analysis of the citizen
input, it can be stated that different types of ideas are rele-vant. On the one hand, the ideas were described in a veryabstract way, but on the other hand, there are very concreteideas such as ideas for structural measures: "In the designof the waterfront, footpaths and cycle paths, as well as newbuildings with common architecture, should be considered."Such ideas strive for the possibility of visualization.
Focus on young citizenAs the project progresses, the focus was placed primarilyon young people, as they have been the least involved andshould be addressed more as an underrepresented group.For this reason, a group discussion with a youth parliamentwas organized, in which mainly discussions on topics suchas leisure time and relation to the city, engagement, andparticipation, as well as the use of digital and analog media,were questioned. It became apparent that citizens like tocommunicate and collaborate and like to work together onpossible ideas for improvement. Therefore, this interactionshould be supported by the AR system. Also essential arerequirements such as voting, discussions, comments. Anexchange among citizens (including city officials) should bemade possible to obtain a broad overview and to involvemany citizens. Further work with the youth parliament waspursued by conducting a Design Sprint Workshop basedon the findings of the group discussion. This included thephases Understand, Ideation, and Prototype. In the firstphase it was discussed how young people currently interactwith each other by creating new ideas. Based on this, theydeveloped design ideas for an AR system, which supportstheir interaction. For the transformation into concrete designsolutions, the participants used mockups, storyboards, andLego prototypes.
AR PrototypesA prototype was iteratively implemented, with which it is ul-timately possible to map two different designs to an existingbuilding (see figure 1). The view can be designed verticallyor horizontally. It is possible to add comments at any pointon the digital object so that different user can comment onthe designs, and an exchange can be supported as collab-oration. For example, an opinion on the selected door canbe described and will be made visible for others. This pro-motes the collaborative development of ideas. Technically,the implementation in Unity3D took place using the Vuforiaframework. The natural feature tracking provided by Vuforiais used to determine the markers. Real-world objects areused to form the markers (see [5]).
Figure 1: Screenshot of a new building design in AR
Besides we developed other ideas like providing digital ob-jects (e.g. benches, trash cans). The objects are given bythe system and are available to citizens for redesigningthe city (like individual squares, parks). If a citizen has de-signed the environment from a certain point of view, the ARsystem should make it possible for someone else to takeher/his perspective and, if necessary, modify her/his designfurther. This collaborative development and advancement of
own or third-party ideas leads to a gamification-approach,which results in an increased motivation to use.
Design- and technical challengesThere are some challenges in the design process and inthe technical implementation of AR systems. Already theauthors [3] identified technical and design challenges in de-veloping AR applications. As we had difficulties in findinga suitable design approach for the AR system, the designprocess is challenging. Individual methods and tools, es-pecially in the field of AR, still seem to be a gap. Also, theauthors [1] point out that universal design principles areusually too generic and cannot be meaningfully mapped toAR systems in a way that an added value would result. Incontrast to the design of other (mobile) systems, the realenvironment and the real context has an enormous impor-tance in AR, which has to be considered. In our workshops,we used tools like Lego or transparent foils, which are at-tached to windows or pictures of real environments, to de-sign mockups and prototypes considering the environmentand the context. Also there are technical challenges regard-ing the use of AR in free spaces. A distinction is made be-tween two tracking methods: The geolocalized techniqueand the marker-based technique (see [2]). Markers areused when areas with fixed buildings or infrastructure arebeing redesigned. In the case of free spaces without fixedinfrastructure, however, this method turns out to be difficultbecause there are no reference points for possible mark-ers. Although the geolocalized approach could be used, theuse of GPS is still entirely inaccurate and could lead to un-satisfactory results in the representation of AR. A suitableapproach is to be further researched.
ConclusionAfter preliminary research, the focus was placed on youngcitizen, as they are especially underrepresented and un-
addressed to get involved in civic participation processes.A user analysis showed that the visualization of ideas andan exchange of ideas among citizens and with city officialsis essential. A mobile AR application will be developed tovisualize ideas and drafts and offer possibilities for voting,commenting, and discussion. This should trigger the intrin-sic motivation like gamification, so that more citizens aremotivated to use the app and thus become involved in cit-izen participation processes. In contrast to previous ARapps, the use of Augmented Reality should encourage col-laborative use and exchange instead of individual users.AR can make a significant contribution to a new form ofparticipation and involve and motivate more citizens. Nev-ertheless, our project presents some challenges regardingthe design process for AR systems as well as technical lim-itations, that need to be researched further. There is a lackof orientation towards existing and standardized guidelinesor methods that are specifically designed for AR and con-siders the spatial context. Besides, different technical ap-proaches to AR need to be considered depending on theuse case in detailed urban planning.
AcknowledgementsThanks to our partner city Olpe. Thanks to our students(assistants) Marco Becker, Nino Bohn, Patrick Fallmann,Hassan Hussein, Sebastian Schwarzloh, Timur Serefliogluand Chris Vogt.
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