We successfully finalized the GreenPlace Project with an inspiring seminar on 27.8.2024
Carolin Klonner and Nora Fagerholm of Geography and Geology, University of Turku
The last event of the GreenPlace project took place in the Joki Visitor and Innovation centre in Turku and online via Zoom. The seminar with the topic Place-based digital technologies and AI for participation and communication in urban planning was organised jointly by the GreenPlace and Transformative Cities projects and offered several talks by academics and the business sector. We had lively discussions about the role, opportunities and risks of place-based digital technologies and AI for urban planning.
Figure 1. Associate Professor Nora Fagerholm opening the seminar Place-based digital technologies and AI for participation and communication in urban planning, 27.08.2024, the last event of the GreenPlace project.
After welcoming, Assoc. Prof. Nora Fagerholm (University of Turku) started the talk series with an overview of Online 3D-based participatory mapping for urban planning including case studies from the GreenPlace project. The companies Sova3D and Mapita were involved in these case studies with their support of the development of 3D platforms by integrating their respective technologies. In the second talk, Sova3D CEO Petri Kokko and university researcher Janina Käyhkö (University of Helsinki) presented insights from the joint work on 3D platforms in collaborative planning and gamification of participatory planning. Sampo Ruoppila from UrbanistAI gave another glimpse of the business sector and the relevance of UrbanistAI for urban planning with his presentation about Generative AI platform for participatory co-design including several use cases worldwide. When working with all these new place-based digital participatory tools, it is important to also investigate the usability. Thus, postdoctoral researchers Carolin Klonner and Salla Eilola (University of Turku) presented their research outcomes from the GreenPlace project in their talk about Usability of 3D tools developed for communicative urban planning. AI development is proceeding fast and it offers great opportunities but it also entails many risks that need to be taken into consideration. Therefore, Professor Christopher Raymond (University of Helsinki) raised this hot topic by presenting insights from The risks and opportunities of AI for participatory urban planning. All of the presentations resulted in several questions and interesting discussions.
Finally, Johanna Palomäki, urban planner from the City of Lahti, resumed the seminar with her closing remarks. Among others, she raised the question whether we really want to go fully digital but rather the integration of various modes of participation and diverse digital and non-digital ways of communication should be targeted. We still need to consider that humanity matters and that the planners’ ethos and attitude are crucial for successful communicative urban planning and for testing novel technologies.
The research project GreenPlace was funded by the Academy of Finland. Principal investigator Associate Professor Nora Fagerholm at the Department of Geography and Geology, started the 5-year-project in September 2019 investigating the Wellbeing benefits of urban green infrastructure mapped through participation and 3D virtual landscapes (GreenPlace), which came to an end now in August 2024.
Different studies took place, for example in Helsinki, Turku and Bochum and tackled questions ranging from outdoor recreation and nature’s contribution to well-being in a pandemic situation to efficacy of 3D digital environments for transformative landscape and urban planning. Methodological frameworks were developed to analyse both participatory mapping data in general and in 3D. Check out our outcomes here.
We thank all participants of the various studies, the events, readers of our scientific outcomes and you – our readers of the blog – for making GreenPlace such a successful project. Stay tuned about other projects and outcomes of the Sustainable Landscape Systems Research Group.
This article was originally published in the GreenPlace project blog.