Cahier #1 introduces our Hackable City-model and explains how it can be used to explore collaborative processes of citymaking in democratic societies. What new roles have emerged for citizens, (design) professionals and institutions, and how can collectives of citizens organized issues of communal concern interact with traditional institutions?
With the lens of the hackable city, we want to highlight a vision of the city as asite of both collaboration as well as struggle and conflicts of interests. In thisaccount, new media technologies enable citizens to organise, mobilise, innovateand collaborate towards commonly defined goals. As a lens, the hackable cityaims to bring out the underlying dynamics and (sometimes conflicting) values atstake in citymaking, as well as the concrete practices through which they areenacted. It revolves around using the affordances of digital technologies to findnew ways to organise civic initiatives and align these with processes ofdemocratic governance and accountability in a society that is increasinglytechnologically mediated
