Finding a common language – beyond technical jargon – is essential to enable citizen science. Visualisation can be particularly useful in this context when it comes to creating scenarios in urban spaces or at the neighbourhood level.
With the help of artificial intelligence, scenarios can be created in near real-time by laypersons, which can form the basis for further discussions and development. UrbanistAI is a tool that has been tested in workshops held by the TalTech OPUSH team in collaboration with the ministry and the Kalamaja Museum.
What should be the tools and instruments that help people to express their wishes in a way that professional spatial experts can understand, and vice versa? A potential solution for the different actors to find a common language can be the visualisation of urban space using artificial intelligence (AI). UrbanistAI (https://site.urbanistai.com/) provides both a methodology for conducting workshops and AI-based visual tools for urban planning, enabling residents, architects, urban planners, developers and local government representatives to create and analyse new visual spaces. The tool uses AI-based technology to create different potential urban design scenarios using photos of the existing urban space under discussion and a verbal description of how they would like to see certain areas of the urban space, suggested by the participants (so called “prompts”). At the end of September 2023, as part of the ‘Design Night’ festival in Tallinn, citizens had the opportunity to participate in a workshop on ‘Street Design with AI’ and test the UrbanistAI tool for co-creating urban spaces.
The sample area on which the participants could practice their visions was chosen as Niine Street, a short street in the city centre of Tallinn. It is one of the important links connecting the Kalamaja district with the Old Town. The location of the workshop was chosen to be a local community museum – the Kalamaja Museum.
The workshop participants worked in three different groups and the workshop lasted for almost three hours. During this time, more than a thousand images were created. For each idea found its way into a picture, and then the participants could further develop their shared vision.
To get an idea of the participants' expectations of the urban space they were creating, everyone was asked to write down keywords that they would use to describe their visions streetscapes in the area. Each participant brought their own individual wishes, perspectives, knowledge and experiences to the workshop. In the subsequent group work, they started to look for a common vision for the streets in the Kalamaja district in general and then moved on to the context of a specific street. In the working groups, a varying number of images were created, from which the participants selected the ones they felt were the most interesting or promising. For each vision, the group began by examining what was incorrect about the image and tried to come up with keywords to prompt the AI in order to find a solution that seemed more correct, until they concluded that it was reasonably accurate or valuable.
For example, the workshop participants did a lot of visioning and discussing about urban gardening. However, the solutions proposed by AI were all options that required a significant amount of maintenance. The group was more interested in a solution that would enhance the landscape without requiring constant care. Eventually, wild and easy-care greenery seemed to best suit the shared vision.
In one of the citizen scientist groups, the redesign of Niine Street began with a discussion about the identity of the street itself. In the end, the group came to the common conclusion that the street is something in between a place and a street. Currently, however, it is not really a place where people like to stop and linger. Nevertheless, the street used as a demo area during the workshop clearly had the potential to become such a place one day. The workshop participants thought that Niine Street could use more space for pedestrians and that the street space should be divided between the different types of traffic more safely, while also adding landscaping. During the three-hour workshop, there was no clear vision of what Niine Street might actually look like in the future. The participants of this group were fairly frustrated that they could not get it right during the workshop. However, the main ideas and keywords that the participants were using to search for a street space clearly emerged.
Workshop results and conclusions
The participants were surprised at how well the groups collaborated. Several participants pointed out that it was much easier to explain their ideas using images than in words. It was also surprising that a shared vision emerged despite the fact that the participants had not met before.
One of the outcomes of the workshop can therefore be seen as confirmation that the serious game approach to an AI-based tool can indeed – depending on how it is used – become something that brings people together and creates collaborative visions. These co-created visions can serve as enablers for creating a better space.
The concluding discussion of the workshop revealed that both the citizen scientists and the architects had the impression that this co-creation process worked smoothly and that the collaboration went well. However, it turned out that the AI-based tool is less suitable for detailed design, but is more useful for developing overall ideas and more abstract scenarios including aesthetic-emotional components for the street space.
Spatial design tools based on artificial intelligence should not be understood as solutions, but rather as tools that can support in creating visions and scenarios to rethink urban space and its potential. The UrbanistAI tool assisted in better connecting the local community and citizen scientists in the search for a shared vision. UrbanistAI is first and foremost a co-creation tool that aids in clarifying ideas, raising questions that might otherwise not have been asked, and arriving at ideas that would have required testing the unrealistic.
The workshop was organised by the Academy of Architecture and Urban Studies at Tallinn University of Technology as part of the JPI Urban project OPUSH. The workshop was supported by the Estonian Ministry of Climate Change, the government of North Tallinn and the Kalamaja Museum.
The OPUSH project has taken a significant step forward in digital interaction by launching a new, custom-built “Survey Chatbot” designed for Telegram. Developed in collaboration between the University of Barcelona, Wunderbyte, and TU Wien, the chatbot allows users to respond to surveys directly via Telegram, seamlessly integrating with LimeSurvey — a widely used open-source survey platform. Wunderbyte, also a project partner, led the technical development and programming of the chatbot.
In an earlier phase of the project, individual heat stories were collected at various workshops in Vienna. The people involved were pensioners aged 78-82. These micro-stories were evaluated and used for the chatbot pilot. The aim of the chatbot is the systemic data evaluation of the experiences entered into the chatbot.
Survey Chatbot: Features and Functionality
The Survey Chatbot was crafted with OPUSH’s specific needs in mind. It operates by connecting to LimeSurvey, retrieving survey questions using a designated survey ID, and presenting each question individually to users within the Telegram chat. User responses are then recorded back into LimeSurvey, enabling streamlined and efficient data collection. Key features include a MULTI_VOTE configuration option, which allows survey administrators to control whether users can submit multiple responses.
The chatbot is written in Python, which ensures compatibility with LimeSurvey and simplifies survey management. LimeSurvey itself offers a flexible solution for designing and managing surveys, polls, and questionnaires, making it an ideal pairing for this Telegram-based chatbot.
Development and Testing Milestones
During the second year of the OPUSH project, developers at Wunderbyte worked intensively on the chatbot, collaborating closely with future.lab at TU Wien, the project’s lead partner. This partnership involved regular feedback and revisions to ensure that the tool met all project requirements.
In late March 2024, the chatbot, along with its technical requirements, was successfully installed on TU Wien’s servers. The on-site training session conducted for the TU Wien team covered essential skills, including adding and updating LimeSurvey surveys through the chatbot interface. During testing, identified errors were rectified, and the multivote feature was finalized.
Open-Source Release and Access of the Survey Chatbot
In line with OPUSH’s commitment to open-source development, the code for the Survey Chatbot, developed by Wunderbyte, is now publicly accessible on GitHub under an open software license. Interested developers, project partners, and institutions can explore and implement the tool from the official repository: https://github.com/WunderbyteGmbH/survey_chatbot.
Technical Requirements:
Python version: 3.9 or higher
LimeSurvey: Installed with an active survey
This innovative tool marks a new phase in OPUSH’s efforts to enhance user engagement through streamlined, accessible digital solutions, opening up possibilities for versatile, real-time data collection on popular platforms like Telegram.
Heat Chronicles (Cròniques de la Calor by its Catalan name) is a new project that appeals to citizen collaboration to identify, in specific neighbourhoods, the urban public spaces — squares, streets, parks, etc. — most exposed to extreme heat in the metropolitan area of Barcelona, and to propose strategies to mitigate its effects. The study aims to cover a wide variety of neighbourhoods with high vulnerability to extreme heat episodes, and to involve the most affected groups, in a way that is unprecedented worldwide.
During the year 2023, the project was ideated by the research group OpenSystems from Universitat de Barcelona. Three pilots were carried out that allowed to optimize the scientific protocol and confirmed the social relevance of the project. During summer 2024, Heat Chronicles was upscaled to 5 neighbourhoods of Barcelona metropolitan area.
Background
Episodes of extreme heat are becoming more frequent and more intense in cities, where the heat island effect accentuates them. As citizens, we must become more aware of the existence of these periods, be able to identify the most vulnerable spaces to heat in our closest urban environment and create inclusive strategies to mitigate the effects of extreme heat. In addition, the heat does not affect us all equally nor do we experience it in the same way everywhere. For this reason, Heat Chronicles involves diverse groups, in terms of age, profiles and places of residence. Their common denominator is that all groups can suffer from heat in a more extreme way.
Concept Development
This new citizen science project is framed into citizen social science, a concept which has been developed by the OpenSystems research group for more than 10 years. Citizen social science is defined as participatory research co-designed and directly driven by citizen groups sharing a social concern. The neighbourhood and its social concerns are at the centre of the research and all stages of the research are nourished by their knowledge.
In Heat Chronicles, the participants are considered as experts due to their knowledge of the public spaces and to their lived experiences during heat waves. That way, the criteria of the participants is prioritized to decide where the temperature measurements and “heat surveys” will be made.
Research Design
During face-to-face workshops, the participants identify the most relevant places in the public space, according to their criteria and in relation to their uses and the heat. Several "heat walks" are then organized where the temperature in these places is measured, as well as the thermal comfort and perception of the neighbours. Finally, the results are interpreted collectively to diagnose the problem more precisely and propose solutions based on scientific evidence.
Social inclusion
During summer 2024, a total of 52 heat walks have been performed, in which 481 persons have participated. The groups of participants stopped in 210 public spaces, where they scored their thermal sensation and comfort.
To be able to engage the neighbours most affected by extreme heat, the project was carried out with the collaboration of thirteen entities, such as public libraries, athenaeums, educational centres, neighbourhood groups and NGOs. Five neighbourhood were investigated: Congrés i els Indians and Sant Pere, Santa Caterina and La Ribera, in Barcelona; the neighbourhoods of Collblanc and Torrassa, in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, and the municipalities of Sant Vicenç dels Horts and Montcada i Reixac. These neighbourhood were chosen because of their known vulnerability to extreme heat, that could be assessed through a high vulnerability to climate change index, a high population density and a low average income, among others socioeconomic factors.
The different groups involved included elderly people, such as self-organized groups of women, parents of 0-3 years old kids or youth in an especially difficult situation because of school drop off or family distress.
Conclusions
Heat Chronicles demonstrated the feasibility of performing an upscaled citizen science project on urban heat, while keeping the focus on neighbours’ perception and lived experiences.
The first results are being currently discussed with the participants, but the first important learning is that thermal comfort is correlated with the gender and the age range of the participants, while structural urban factors like sky view factor also play a role. These outcomes advocate in favour of considering the diversity of the neighbours’ needs and perceptions, and especially the ones of the most affected neighbours, while designing a resilient city able to mitigate climate change.
In 2024, the OPUSH Delft team kicked off an exciting Citizen Science project called "Check je plek," bringing kids into the conversation about how urban spaces can better serve their needs. This project, led by TU Delft in partnership with the DOK/OPEN Delft Public Library, local co-design studio Blok 74, and in communication with researchers from Utrecht University, invited children to share their thoughts on Delft’s city spaces and even help redesign their library.
Background
Delft OPUSH partners TU Delft and DOK, the local public library, are both interested to establishing a long-term cooperation on citizen science experimentation. After initial discussions, both parties agreed on a shared pilot project: redesigning the library space based on the needs and preferences of its young users, specifically children aged 7 to 12.
Concept Development
The project’s concept came from a similar experiment at the University Museum Utrecht, where researchers Kathrine C.E. van den Bogert and Gijs van Campenhout wanted to see how kids viewed and valued urban spaces (see here). Initially, OPUSH Delft had a different idea — a nature-monitoring project where kids would track local wildlife. But after talking with potential partners and looking at the community’s needs, they pivoted to urban spaces. Kids, they realized, have a lot to say about the places they play, study, and hang out, and including them in the conversation could offer new insights. Plus, with a library renovation in the works, it was the perfect time to ask children to share their vision for this public space.
Research Design
The project combined data collection with hands-on, creative design activities. First, kids mapped their favorite places in Delft, explaining why they loved these spots. This mapping helped identify what kids value in public spaces. For the library redesign, the team used brainstorming, mapping, and sketching activities, giving the kids tools to express their ideas. This participatory approach not only gathered data but helped the children feel like co-creators in reimagining their environment. Throughout the project, the team learned that a balance of structured tasks and open-ended creativity allowed the children to really engage and express themselves.
Workshop Activities
The workshop involved a group of "DOK designers," kids aged 7-12 who meet regularly at the library. During the sessions, they pointed their favorite spots in the city and shared what makes these places special, whether this was a play area or a quiet park. This activity got the kids discussing about what they want from public spaces, opening up a discussion on urban design in a way they could relate to.
Next, their attention was turned to the library itself, specifically the floor area where they themselves meet regularly. Working in two groups, the kids mapped out ideas for how the library could be more welcoming, fun, and functional — a space that supports studying, playing, and hanging out. Under the guidance of Blok 74, they drew layouts and brainstormed features they thought would be useful, which TU Delft researchers later transformed into visual designs. A key lesson here was that kids had thoughtful, practical ideas, that should be recorded and taken into account by the professional designers.
Conclusions
"Check je plek" showed just how valuable it can be to include kids in urban planning. They gave fresh, honest insights on what they want from public spaces, and the library project helped them feel connected to their city in a new way. Going forward, DOK Delft has a new model for engaging the community in Citizen Science, and this project opened up possibilities for more kid-led initiatives.
The main takeaway? Kids aren’t passive users of public spaces — they’re creative, insightful contributors. "Check je plek" proved that giving young people a voice in city planning can lead to designs that are fun, functional, and full of heart. It’s a lesson worth keeping in mind as Delft and other cities think about how to make urban spaces that truly serve everyone.
The last session of Heat Chronicles campaign was held on July, 12th in the Casal de Barri Congrés – Indians with the group of neighbors who went for a walk the week before. The data from their journey were analysed, together with the data from the other two participating groups. The experiences of the neighbors, some of whom have lived in the neighborhood for more than 50 years, helped contextualize the observations. During the summer campaign of 2024, 52 heat walks were held with 481 participants from 5 different neighborhoods.
