Invisible City

Invisible City is a research project: we want to build a map that brings the city to life and, most importantly, captures how young people feel about it.

Project Background

How do you tap into the hidden parts of a city and understand how the people who live and work there really feel about it? This was the aim of the Invisible City research project, an initiative run by the Institute for Culture and Society at Western Sydney University in partnership with the Young and Well CRC. They wanted to create an interactive map that captured the different emotions young people aged 16-26 feel across Parramatta, a major multicultural suburb of Sydney and a rapidly expanding business district.

By plotting young people’s subjective experiences and feelings, the researchers hoped to provide the Parramatta community with new ways of thinking about their physical environment that could inform the city's plans for urban renewal. Mapping emotions can lead to discussions on how to improve city design and can help to explore how technology can be used to improve citizens’ wellbeing.

To build and launch the pilot version of this project, Western Sydney University reached out to Ushahidi.

Building a Solution

Ushahidi’s Solutions Team deployed the Ushahidi platform for Western Sydney University, configured a custom reporting form, and set up SMS reporting. This allowed the researchers to immediately start collecting exactly the data they needed, which young people in Parramatta could send directly from their mobile phones.

Ushahidi also created a custom data visualisation to show the spread and density of emotions on a map of Parramatta, and customised the platform design to match with the project’s branding.

 After the pilot launched, Ushahidi helped Western Sydney University to migrate the platform to their own servers.

 

Outcomes

The Invisible City project has so far mapped over 280 emotion reports across Parramatta, and presented the results in an exhibition in Sydney in October 2015. The University of Western Sydney has made the software customisations open source, allowing other researchers in cities all over the world to map emotions and begin debates on city planning and human wellbeing.