Challenges and opportunities for visual learning spaces for fieldwork in Urban Planning

Lessons from Bhopal and Trondheim

Abstract

Via the strategic funding received from the Architecture and Design faculty, a project to explore the role of visual and digitalization tools in fieldwork-based learning experiences was set up, bringing together researchers, students and teachers from both the urban ecological planning and design as well immersive technologies research. While the use of visual methods within the participatory approach have been ongoing since the start of the UEP fieldwork in 1999, recent technologic developments have provided innovative opportunities for citizen engagement, ranging from mobile ethnography, app- and web-based data collection, geospatial data-collection and use of video and moving image to immersive technologies and the use gaming to build prototypes. In this paper, we explore how visualization and digitalization can facilitate this learning process as well as the challenges and opportunities related to it.