Networked Neighbourhoods

Exploring sharing and communication practices in urban neighbourhoods while considering the situation of elderly people.

The aim of this design research project was to explore new ways to facilitate communication, sharing of resources and to encourage practices of mutual help among residents in urban neighbourhoods. Within this context, we focused on senior citizens as important actors in shaping the social fabric of urban neighbourhoods and aim to explore their particular opportunities and potentials in cross-generational communities. In our research, information and communication technologies provide the tools to interlink the different local actors and to create sustainable synergies.

By following a participatory mindset, local residents were involved as experts of their everyday living contexts and as a potential source of social innovation. In Co-design sessions that were initiated with and among the residents, we aimed to co-create highly contextual and informed insights that promise to originate in innovative prototypes and scenarios of sustainable and intuitive sharing solutions.

The project is part of an ongoing comparative research: the pilot study in Berlin is contrasted and complemented with subsequent research in Tokyo, in order to obtain an intercultural perspective on the possibilities of inclusive neighbourhood networks.

Results of Networked Neighbourhood served as point of departure for subsequent project: Neighborhood Labs.