Digital Mile, Zaragoza

The Digital Mile project in Zaragoza, lead by Dennis Frenchman and William J. Mitchell at the MIT, is a specific research project aiming at integrating digital media on the pedestrian path, Paseo del Agua, in Zaragoza. The project is carried out as part of a joint program between City Design and Development and the Media Lab at MIT to create a vision for the Digital Mile. 

 
Credit: Dennis Frenchman 

How it performs:
The project incorporates digital media in all aspects of the urban environment, with the intension to design places that respond to the present users to provide the basis for a large variety of activities, to facilitate stories and information as a service for the users. As a kind of “open-source” city it enables the users to influence the environment to become more dynamic and participatory, however maybe even more importantly to enhance the experience of social spaces. In this regard the digital technologies are supporting the physical space by extending the use of the spaces and to enable personal and public communications, exchange of goods, information, emotions and ideas as meaningful places of interaction. These activities are initiated by incorporating free wireless public networks and digital systems that change e.g. as a water wall, street surface, building façade, streetlight intensity and colour, digitally controlled urban interior pieces etc. The project shows the really prospective possibilities for architecture to go into a feedback process with the citizens, and it will be really interesting to see the realization of the projects on the mile.Dennis Frenchman and Francisca Rojas did a really good article about the project to be downloaded from the link below. 

 

Credit: Andres Sevtsuk

More information at:
Article about the project
Smart Cities