Environmental Sustainability: Public Spaces and Collaborative Actors in a Digital Ecosystem

Affiliated Project at the Institute for Cultural Inquiry Berlin (ICI Berlin 2023-24)

Christiane Wagner’s research delves into the consequences of digital technology, verifying the connections between actors and actions based on collaboration. Wagner focuses on design and architecture projects and artistic performances by applying digital devices, machine learning, and artificial intelligence in the context of environmental sustainability. The implementation of her project targets the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development following the Charter of the United Nations, which includes the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). She focuses on the eleventh goal, which is sustainable cities and communities, and explores the potential of sustainable infrastructure through digital connectivity and interaction, where human participation becomes the main interest. She analyzes cultural differences and similarities between the Global North and South under industrial, technological, aesthetic, and sociopolitical circumstances.

From that perspective, Christiane Wagner explores concepts of the smart city in São Paulo and Berlin. Using the method of creative problem-solving, the project investigates opportunities for collaborative actors in a digital ecosystem. Her empirical research analyzes two specific scenarios. First, by drawing on a critical theory background and by using observation and the contextual framing of digital spatial models, this approach considers questions of sociality, ethics, aesthetics, public policy, social welfare, and political will as they relate to the human challenges that arise with the use of digital tools. Second, this research investigates the transformative potential of technological utopian visions through technique — under which the term art is included. These visions are treated as simulations of built environments for an urban planning project aiming at integrated, human-centred, and public-interest design.

Expanding Public Spaces

Smart City’s Empirical Research in São Paulo and Berlin ^[1] 

Recent studies have demonstrated that urbanization does not create ways of life but instead offers support for the possibilities of specific models that satisfy the expectations of public life. However, these models have not yet been investigated or analyzed in detail. Under these conditions, this research evaluates the digital environment as part of a complex visual culture, which implies current ethical, social, and political values toward sustainable public spaces. In this context, the environment of arts’ interplay and the principle of utopia as a critique of sustainable environments’ intentionality, which determines possibilities, will be addressed through imagined and utopian models becoming reality. The hypothesis of this research applies to the possibilities of digital connection and interactivity with urban and natural environments as innovative and sustainable infrastructure. This hypothesis will be verified following two determinants. The first is the adopted environment spatial models toward industry 4.0. The second is the transformative structure through new media, creating realities, intelligent environments, and interactive communities. Therefore, the core question is: Would the basis of a smart city be in the interactive communicational structure; in the capacity of human communities to cooperate intellectually, ethically, and democratically; or in the capacity of artificial intelligence as a solution to complex human problems toward the fourth industrial revolution?  Methodologically, an interdisciplinary approach in the arts, humanities, and social sciences related to digital practices is addressed. The aim is to investigate paradigms involving the effects of new technologies associated with different cultures and interpretations. Hence, this approach analyzes the urban and natural environments, restructuring the fragmented values of nature and culture’s differences and similarities in global cities like Berlin and São Paulo. The expectations for social solutions are seen as the main challenge of an intelligent environment made possible via information and communication technologies aiming at sustainable development goals.

Notes:

1. In 2022, this research project was presented to integrate the USP Global Cities Program at the Institute of Advanced Studies of the University of São Paulo, where it was accepted in March 2023 for development after evaluation by the university’s scientific program committee.

2. The goal is to promote research, advance scientific and technological progress, and establish international networks. The implementation of this project targets the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development following the Charter of the United Nations. That includes the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with a focus on the 11th goal of sustainable cities and communities, aiming for sustainability in urban public spaces.