The Demodays are one of the tools we use to stimulate innovation and encourage connection between our partners and community. The purpose of the Demodays is to present the progress of various innovation projects, ask for help, share dilemmas and involve more partners to take these projects to the next level. More information about the Demodays can be found here.(link!!)
Ruben and his colleagues at the Municipality of Amsterdam's Digitalization & Innovation department explored how cities should approach innovation and digitalization. While progress was made, transitions are heading in different directions, posing challenges to meaningful advancement. Socratic Design offers a solution, helping to challenge assumptions and foster new narratives and practices. Ruben guided us through examples and exercises in this enlightening session. Read Pelle's full report here.
Mobility – Mobility Injustice
Being able to move from point A to B contributes to your sense of freedom. But there are also people who cannot do that as easily as most people; be it because of financial, physical, vehicular, or other reasons. On behalf of Provincie Noord-Holland and in collaboration with Amsterdam Smart City and Amsterdam Centre of Expertise, a group of students working on their graduation project tackled this topic at the latest Demoday of 2024. Read Timo’s full report here.
Digital – Data Commons & the (Agri)Food Case
In the big tech-dominated era, data has been commercially exploited for so long that it is now hard to imagine that data sharing might also benefit the community. Yet that is what a collective of businesses, governments, social institutions and residents in Amsterdam aim to do with the Data Commons Collective. Sharing more data to better care for the Amsterdam Region. Lia Hsu (Amsterdam Economic Board) and Simone van der Burg (Waag) led an interactive value workshop to discuss which values are important when it comes to sharing data from the perspective of different stakeholders in an (agri)food use case. Read Sophie's full report here (coming soon).
Energy – Co-creation with residents in the heat transition
Municipalities and neighborhoods are actively engaged in the heat transition, but residents are often involved late in the planning process, leading to dissatisfaction. Kennisland is developing a plan to involve residents early in neighborhood heat transitions, aligning with local interests. This plan has been discussed with various organizations and the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences.
Dave van Loon and Marieke van Doorninck (Kennisland) have dived into the problems surrounding heat grids and come up with a plan. In this Demoday work-session we looked into the problems surrounding heat grids and their plan to solve this. The session was moderated by our own Leonie van Beuken. Read Noor's full report here.
Before we divided into separate work sessions, we had time for some inspiring presentations. The topics presented are listed below. You can click on the links to visit the dedicated project pages.
Our next Demoday will take place on the 20th of June. Do you have an inspiring story or project you want to pitch to the Amsterdam Smart City network? Let us know via Sophie sophie@amsterdamsmartcity.com (Digital), Pelle pelle@amsterdamsmartcity.com (Mobility) or Noor noor@amsterdamsmartcity.com (Energy & Circular)
Er komt weer een Data Dilemma's event aan! Ook de voedseltransitie brengt data dilemma's met zich mee. Één van de duurzame ambities in de Metropoolregio Amsterdam is bijvoorbeeld een lokale, transparante voedselketen. Maar; wat is lokaal? Wat is duurzaam? En hoe gaan we om met data in de voedselketen? Er zullen deze middag sprekers aan het woord komen die vanuit verschillende invalshoeken naar data en voedsel kijken.
Kees-Willem en Jan Wester: Lokaal en duurzaam inkopen en de Agrifood Data Common
Kees-Willem Rademakers, docent en onderzoeker aan de HvA, en Jan Wester, directeur BDVC en kwartiermaker DVC Agri&Food, zullen deze editie van Data Dilemma's aftrappen. De Hogeschool en Universiteit van Amsterdam hebben de ambitie om hun voedsel voor kantines lokaal en duurzaam te gaan inkopen. Dit vraagt om robuuste en transparante lokale voedselketens waar true cost pricing integraal onderdeel van uit maakt. De ontwikkeling van een gemeenschappelijke Agrifood Data Common stelt bedrijven in de korte voedsel keten data in eigen beheer uit te wisselen. Kees-Willem zal ons meenemen in de dilemma’s waar je bij het inkoopbeleid tegen aan loopt en Jan voegt daar dilemma’s rond leveringszekerheid en voedselveiligheid aan toe en bespreken we hoe de Agrifood Data Common daar bij kan helpen.
Lenno Munnikes: De Supermarkt van de Toekomst
Lenno Munnikes, directeur-bestuurder van de Flevo Campus, houdt zich al lang bezig met het onderwerp voedsel. De Flevo Campus houdt zich bezig met stedelijke voedsel vraagstukken vanuit het perspectief van de consument. Almere is het Living Lab van de de Flevo Campus. Een van de projecten waar ze zich mee bezig houden is De Supermarkt van de Toekomst, waarbij ze kijken hoe ze meer lokale producten in de supermarkt kunnen krijgen. Maar wat betekent lokaal? En is lokaal ook echt duurzamer en gezonder?
Het derde onderwerp en spreker wordt binnenkort bekendgemaakt!
Wordt binnenkort bekendgemaakt! (Amsterdam)
Vier keer per jaar onderzoeken we de mogelijkheden om data en nieuwe technologieën te gebruiken om stedelijke en maatschappelijke uitdagingen aan te pakken, met de nadruk op verantwoorde digitalisering. Het doel is om data te gebruiken om steden veiliger, schoner en toegankelijker te maken, maar wat gebeurt er met alle data die wordt verzameld? Welke dilemma’s komen we tegen als we (persoonlijke) data verzamelen om de stad te verbeteren? Deze vragen zijn van belang voor iedereen: overheden, kennisinstellingen, bedrijven en het maatschappelijk middenveld. Het Amsterdam Smart City netwerk wilt graag met je verkennen welke beslissingen nodig zijn voor verantwoord gebruik van data.
The heat transition is in full swing. Municipalities want their residents off the gas and want them to switch to renewable sources of heat. Unfortunately, heat grids have often led to frustrated residents. Which in turn has led to delayed or cancelled plans for the municipality.
Dave van Loon and Marieke van Doorninck (Kennisland) have looked into the problems surrounding heat grids and came up with a plan. In this Demoday work-session we dived into the problems surrounding heat grids and their plan to solve them. The session was moderated by our own Leonie van Beuken.
Involving residents in the planning of a heat grid is difficult. It takes a lot of time and effort and the municipality is often in a hurry. This is why they choose for a compromise in which they already make the plan, but try to involve citizens at the end part. However, this leads to residents not having anything to say in the plans. They can block the plans, but they can’t really make changes. This leads to a lot of dissatisfaction.
This top-down approach doesn't seem to be ideal for involving residents in the heat transition. That's why Kennisland is working on developing a plan for early collaboration with residents in the heat transition of neighbourhoods, with a focus on connecting with the community's concerns.
They have seen that this kind of approach can be successful by looking at the K-buurt in Amsterdam-Zuid-Oost. In the initial stages, the first plan for the K-buurt didn't gain much traction. However, when they shifted towards a more collaborative approach, people felt empowered to engage, leading to a more meaningful participation process. Instead of traditional town hall meetings, discussions took place in community spaces like the local barber shop. This shift towards genuine participation and co-creation has resulted in a much-improved end product, one that residents truly support and believe in.
The plan that Kennisland came up with consists of a few key points that are necessary for success:
• Engage with residents early on in the process.
• Also consider other issues in the neighbourhood. There might be more pressing concerns for the residents themselves.
• Ensure accessibility for everyone to participate.
• Truly collaborate on developing a list of requirements.
• Harness creativity.
• Work in a less compartmentalized manner.
They aim to form a neighbourhood alliance and organize a community council. Together a plan can be made for the neighbourhood that all residents can get behind.
This plan might take a bit longer at the start, but that investment in time will pay itself back in the end.
After Dave and Marieke explained their plan we did a SWOT analysis with the group. We looked at the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats of the plan.
The main strength that was pointed out was the ability to make a plan together with the residents. The residents experience the neighbourhood differently than a government official, which makes the final plan more beneficial to everyone.
The weaknesses the group saw in the plan were mainly that this could potentially slow down the process. Should we maybe do less participation instead of more and use force to get this heat transition going?
There were a lot of opportunities identified for this plan. The quality of the plan (and the neighbourhood) can greatly increase. By slowing down at the start we can actually accelerate and improve the neighbourhood on many levels. This plan also offers a great learning experience.
Finally, we went into the threats. One of the big threats that was pointed out was the lack of trust. If residents don’t trust the municipality and the process then it will never be possible to let this plan succeed. The explanation to residents also needs to be understandable. The explanation around a heat grid can get technical very quickly, and residents often don’t have the background to understand everything. The last threat that was pointed out was that if you get a lot of input from the residents for the plan, you also have to do something with that, and still be realistic. You have to work hard to manage expectations.
We completed the session by asking the participants if they knew any partners and places to collaborate with for this plan, or if they had any other ideas to make this plan successful.
We would now like to ask the same questions to you! Do you know someone who would like to partner up with Kennisland, do you know a place where this plan can be tested, or do you have any other ideas? Let us know by contacting me at noor@amsterdamsmartcity.com.
During our 23rd Demo Day on April 18, 2024, Ruben Polderman told us more about the philosophy and method of Socratic Design. It's important for a city to collectively reflect on a good existence. Socratic Design can be a way to think about this together, collectively.
Thinking and Acting Differently with Socratic Design
Together with his colleagues at the Digitalization & Innovation department of the Municipality of Amsterdam, Ruben explored how a city should deal with innovation and digitalization. Things were progressing well. The municipality could act swiftly; for example, promising Smart Mobility research and innovation projects were initiated with new partners. However, the transitions are heading in various directions, and progress remains limited. No matter how groundbreaking innovation is, there's a danger in trying to solve problems with the same mindset that caused them. The ability to perceive or think differently is therefore crucial. More crucial, even, than accumulated knowledge, as filosopher David Bohm suggested.
Through Socratic Design, we can collectively improve the latter. You work on your own presuppositions, enhance your listening skills, and deepen your understanding of our current dominant narratives to create new narratives and practices. Ruben guided us through examples and exercises to help us understand what narratives and presuppositions entail.
Narratives
"We think we live in reality, but we live in a narrative," Ruben proposes to the group. What we say to each other and how we interact creates a culture that shapes the group and its actions. Narratives are stories that guide our culture, values, thoughts, and actions. They are paradigms so deeply rooted that we no longer question them and sometimes believe there is no alternative. Our current dominant narrative has significant consequences for the Earth and humanity, and although it seems fixed, we can also create new narratives together if we choose to do so.
We must fundamentally seek a good existence within safe ecological boundaries. This should go beyond the transitions we are currently favouring, which sustain our lifestyle but just make it less harmful for the environment. If we want to create new stories with new, positive human perceptions and lifestyles, we must first examine our current narrative and presuppositions. We will need to deconstruct our current ways of living and thinking, much like the Theory U method mentioned during the previous Knowledge Session (see our recap article of this session).
Understanding Presuppositions
Ruben showed us various themes and images to collectively practice recognizing presuppositions. For example, a photo of a medical patient and doctors in action demonstrates that our feeling of "to measure is to know" is also crucial in healthcare. The doctors focus on the screen, the graph, the numbers, and therefore have less focus on the patient; the human, themselves. A photo of the stock market, where a group of men is busy trading stocks, also illustrates our idea of economic growth. Here too, there is a fixation on numbers. Ideally, they're green and going up, but meanwhile, we can lose sight of what exactly we're working towards and what exactly it is that we’re ‘growing’.
As a group, we discussed some presuppositions we could find in our field of work. For example, we talked about our need for and appreciation of objective data, and technologism; the belief in solutions rooted in technology and digitalization.
Fundamental Presupposition Shifts and New Narratives
If you flip a presupposition like Technologism and suggest that Social Interaction could be our salvation and solution to many of our problems, you set off a fundamental presupposition shift. If you translate this into practical actions or experiments, you can collectively understand how a newly created presupposition functions. As a group, we worked on this. During this session, I myself worked with an example from the field of mobility.
If I were to apply this new presupposition in the field of mobility and we look at the development of cars, perhaps we shouldn't go towards autonomous vehicles (technologism), but look for ways to motivate and strengthen carpooling (social interaction). As an experiment, you could, for example, set up an alternative to the conventional car lease plan. Employees of an organization don't all get the option to lease a car; instead, it's considered who could commute together, and there's a maximum of 1 car for every 4 employees per organization. Just like going to an away game with your soccer team on Sundays as a kid; enjoyable!
Read More
This session was an introduction and gave us a good initial understanding of this philosophy and method, but there's much more to discover. The method also delves into how presuppositions are deeply rooted in us, how we validate this with feeling in our bodies, and dialogue methods to collectively arrive at new values and narratives. There's more explained about Socratic Design on Amsterdam's Open Research platform.
Maak jij je zorgen over je privacy en controle van de overheid? Of kan de digitale revolutie je niet snel genoeg gaan? Op woensdag 8 mei gaan we bij Argan in gesprek over de mogelijkheden en gevaren van de smart city: een stad waarbij technologie en data worden gebruikt om de stad te besturen. Een moderne stad moet slim zijn om alle problemen het hoofd te bieden, lijkt het idee. Maar wat is ‘slim’? En om welke problemen gaat het? Meld je aan voor het gesprek, stel je vragen aan het panel en praat mee!
Tijd: Inloop 19:00 - Start 19:30 - Einde 21:00
Locatie: Argan op Jan Tooropstraat 6A
Toegang: gratis
Aanmelden: https://argan.nl/upcoming-events/aanmelden/
