A Case Study: São Paulo and Its Real-Time Museum of the City

Abstract

A Real-Time Museum of the city of São Paulo, dedicated to creating an iconic, engaging, inclusive experience of the Relational Ecosystem of the city, built together with SESC, the Brazilian federal agency in charge of managing the nation’s museums and cultural installments. The museum (which is currently being built at the time of writing) has been designed to create awareness about the many layers of the Relational Ecosystem of the city, and to provide a cultural shock to the population, to promote a radical transformation of the sense of possibility about the perception of what a metropolis can be and about the ways in which the concept of citizenship can be transformed, with citizens becoming positive, active, aware, and participatory agents of the city’s civic life. The museum hosts a laboratory in which all members of society can learn how to use the Relational Ecosystem of the city, using Digital Urban Acupuncture techniques, to pursue their goals and to create patterns of self-organization and intervention on the urban environment, supported by the city, regional, and federal administrations. The chapter narrates the methodologies, design process, objectives, scopes, and expected impacts of the project, as well as documenting the patterns, expectations, and future scenarios for this initiative.

The dataset for the Sao Paulo case study is available at http://www.human-ecosystems.com/DAP/DigitalUrbanAcupuncture-CaseStudy-SaoPaulo-dataset.zip.