Urbangallery

Project W, urban research, London 2000 - 2001, abstract:

CHORA
Urbangallery
Urban Flotsam
Spinoza’s Garden

Introduction
This proposal is to establish the viability of the Urban Gallery as a planning tool for the generation and management of multiple space use. It is a knowledge management tool aimed at facilitating and initiating specific projects that arise from the context of the 5th Nota. The viability of the tool is seen both within the context of the aims of the 5th Nota: it is a planning tool for its stated aims as well as a monitoring tool to test the efficacy of these aims, but it also is tool for the knowledge management needed to anticipate future changes not provided for or foreseen in the 5th Nota, it is a tool that will aid the eventual preparation of the 6th Nota.
The proposal contains the following:

A development of the tool
B application of the tool in several project envelopes

The tool creates the process architecture necessary for designing and managing multiple space use in complex environments. It enables comparative studies, observation of emergent tendencies, technological transfer, training, pooling of resources, staging of scenario game sessions, formulation of action plans linking multiple actors, and other goals. It is a tool for decision making in complex and dynamic environments. It facilitates the connection between different levels of policy and action, between national policy and local conflicts, global pressures and specific situations. Moreover, it is a tool that helps the communication of problems, exchange of technology, training and education of decision makers and other actors, and participatory processes. To aid planning in complex environments where multiple pressures on the use on of space create conflicts and in which multiple space is a necessity and potential but which lack both the process architecture needed to connect the actors related to the various pressures and create a dynamic decision-making environment and the instruments to create specific prototypes for multiple space.

The tool has the following components:

• A methodological structure,
• a web based technical component, described in the next pages, and
• a communicative component: a manual of use and

various aids for training and scenario games, the latter based on conventional board games.

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