Agrihood: A Motivational Digital System for Sustainable Urban Environments

Abstract

Extreme industrialization and globalization have turned cities into the most voracious consumers of materials and they are overwhelmingly the source of carbon emissions through both direct and embodied energy consumption. Newly created cities and the urbanization process in rural areas replicate a lifestyle based on consumerism and the linear economy, causing destructive social and economic impact while compromising the ecology of the planet. To reduce this phenomenon, we need to re-imagine cities and the ways they operate, with the perspective of making them locally productive and globally connected. The purpose of this contribution is to make the citizens more aware about their consumption, ecological footprint, visible and invisible fluxes to suggest a new trend in the urban context. We propose a method to plan the city of tomorrow in a dynamic way, where the active participatory process and the gamification techniques are the core pillars of our vision. We analyze the issues of a pilot city (Trento) and report one of the possible outcomes: Agrihood. The provided solution shows how a physical temporary space and digital tools can be integrated and can interoperate to drive a more sustainable urban environment through citizens engagement and participation. If you create an Agrihood network for the whole city the system begins to have major impacts on it: new green spaces that become real lungs for the city, new interactions between neighborhoods, new production and savings in economic terms for each individual family.