A TALE OF A WISE CITY

Abstract

This paper proposes methods for imagining a future which includes non-human stakeholders. The particular scenario is built on the concept currently known as Smart City. This exploration proposes a speculative fiction of a future where technologies in a Smart City are serving human and non-human citizens. The final outcome is a fictional documentary that illustrates life in the city from the viewpoint of its human citizens. To develop the concept of the city one of the primary challenges was to coordinate the many different scales, from the entire city structure to the interactions between the individual citizens. To address this, I used rhythm as a method. For the resulting prototype, storytelling was chosen as a medium to allow the concept to be articulated on multiple scales. Both, the rhythm, as a method, as well as storing, as a prototype, are methodologies I will present in this paper. I suggest that these methodologies can be seen as tools for helping to reimagine the future of relationships between humans and non-humans. By using this speculative design approach I suggest that we can better reflect on the relationship with non humans in the future.