This weekend at digital art festival Ars Electronica, participatory urban planning project 300.000 Km/s won the STARTS Prize for Innovative Collaboration. The project, which combined research with citizen co-creation to generate a new urban plan for the Ciutat Vella district in central Barcelona that would preserve quality of life in the city.
Building on research begun in 2016, the project mapped the urban fabric of this part of the city to produce a data atlas. This gives information not only on the physical aspects of the area, but also their impact on human well-being, for instance in relation to how noise pollution affects health. Based on this data atlas, citizens participated in the planning process through online and offline means, including the digital democracy platform Decidim.barcelona. The effects of the plan have been simulated using models of activities on various parameters of well-being. The final plan was approved in February 2018 and has been in place for around a year.