ETH+NUU Description

East–Southeast Asia is currently one of the fastest urbanizing regions in the world, with countries such as China increasing urbanization from 20 to 50% in just a few decades. The identity of an urban environment is important because it contributes to self-identity, a sense of community and a sense of place. However, under present day conditions, the identities of expanding cities are rapidly deteriorating and vanishing especially in Asian cities. At the same time, these cities are now reconsidering their city model, attempting to increase the strategic value of their territory in order to transform into more attractive and cohesive urban systems that offer greater quality of life and better citizen coexistence. Thereby, a change in their traditional identity is taking place. That is, cities need to build their urban identity, which extends to past and points to the future. And at the same time, cities need to add new features to improve their livability, sustainability and resilience.
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This workshop consists of lectures and exercises. The lectures cover the history and future of smart cities and advanced urban planning and simulation methods. The exercises follow up with teaching and practicing how to use data-mining technologies for various types of geo-referenced big data and combine them with the space syntax analysis for observing and learning about the socio-economic behavior and the quality of space. The observed and learned features will be identified as the urban identity, which would help designers to understand the contemporary citizen life style. At same time, we introduce a website platform – Quick Urban Analysis Kit (qua-kit) as a tool for citizens to participate in designs. Students will learn how to use this tool to propose urban design by citizens. Finally, students will learn how to use technologies to make the city adept, learning and intelligently responsive the life of the citizens.