Yuichiro Takeuchi

Wikitopia: Future Cities, Built by Citizens The goal of my research is to realize technologically-enhanced future cities that are continuously edited and improved by citizens like the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. Who are in charge of building our cities? Governments, industries, professionals such as architects and planners - while there may be a number of possible responses, in any case the power to design and build cities is not equally distributed among citizens (i.e., the actual "users" of cities), but is instead consolidated in the hands of select institutions and individuals. In contrast, in the digital world we can find many examples - Linux and Wikipedia, to name two - of large, complex systems built by "everyone", or groups of willing volunteers. My research aims to bring such democratic modes of production to urban design, giving rise to a new form of urbanism that can better, and more quickly, respond to the needs of diverse populations.

Wikitopia project page