Carlo de Gaetano | Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences

'Urban Belonging'

This talk will introduce ‘Urban Belonging’, a project focusing on enhancing citizen engagement in urban planning by prioritizing the perspectives of marginalized and diverse communities in Copenhagen. This initiative involved individuals identifying as LGBTQ+, deaf, homeless, international, ethnic minorities, mentally vulnerable, or physically disabled. Participants filled out a spatial questionnaire and used the app to capture images of places in Copenhagen that influenced their sense of belonging. These images were geo-tracked, and participants added annotations and reactions to each other's photos within the app. In workshops, participants collaborated to interpret the gathered data, resulting in a collection of photos, maps, and visualizations. The project's methodology is being documented in scientific articles, and the app is accessible on GitHub, already benefiting others for similar purposes.

The research consortium partners are Gehl Architects, Techno-Anthropology Lab (Aalborg University), Service Design Lab (Aalborg University), and the Center for Digital Welfare (IT University Copenhagen). External collaborators include Pedro Borges and community partners LGBT+ Denmark, Hugs & Food, Danish Deaf Association, Danish Disability Association, SIND Denmark, and Mino Denmark.

Funding: The project received funding from the ‘Doing Data Together’ grant awarded to Anders Koed Madsen at Aalborg University and Innovation Fund Denmark’s research grants awarded to Sofie Burgos-Thorsen and Drude Emilie Ehn. In addition, it is supported by Gehl, Service Design Lab (Aalborg University), Center for Digital Welfare (IT University Copenhagen), and Centre of Expertise for Creative Innovation in Amsterdam (CoECI).

In September of 2023, the Urban Belonging project won the European Union Prize for Citizen Science Diversity & Collaboration Award.

Biography

Carlo De Gaetano is a visual designer and researcher at the Visual Methodologies Collective, specializing in data visualization for social research. He works on projects dealing with climate imaginaries, participatory practices, and senses of belonging. He is currently involved in the artistic research studio Interspecies Imaginaries in the context of the Climate Imaginaries at Sea program. In his practice, he explores archives and online spaces to curate audio-visual special collections about the human-nature nexus. He then creates work of more-than-textual fiction through AI generative tools and participatory practices, challenging dominant narratives from the collections and giving space to imagine alternative ways to tell stories about our relationship with other beings.