A Critical Review of how Public Display Interfaces Facilitate Placemaking
Paul Biedermann, Andrew Vande Moere · 2021
Although public interfaces are promised to facilitate placemaking by offering a technological platform between citizens and decision makers, little is known about whether they actually bring these stakeholders closer together towards local transformative change. By systematically analysing the infrastructural concepts, methods and tools of 40 interface deployments, this review presents a relational model that describes how a public interface can afford the communication, reflection or inquiry of civic feedback. Our analysis also reveals how most public interfaces: are based on utilitarian motives rather than facilitating placemaking; provoke dialogues among citizens instead of between stakeholders; fail to upend the hierachical dependencies between stakeholders; make use of certain technological means that limit citizen agency; and are controlled by gatekeepers who operate covertly and without accountability. Based on these findings, we propose five ”middle-out” considerations that inform how the next generation of placemaking interfaces can facilitate more meaningful and democratic bilateral dialogues between citizens and decision makers.