We were told that the #urbanlogistics system is the most unlikely system for citizen involvement.
They shouldn’t have told us.
Granted: urban logistics — the networks that put food on our plates and clothes in our wardrobes — is probably the most hidden of all the systems shaping our lives.
It doesn’t even have its own infrastructure,
but piggybacks on others: mobility, public space, food, fashion.
Still, we have trouble ignoring a good challenge:
https://lnkd.in/e9r2qcTH
Also granted:
the system is increasingly #automated and de-humanised.
That doesn’t scare us either.
Automation didn’t start with AI.
It started with #punchedcards.
So let’s take it back from there.
We’re building a punched-card machine called LOGICIENNE,
to help us translate our first encounters… into punched cards.
A form of #machinelearning in reverse:
not a machine that learns,
but an excuse for many of us to learn
by building analogue, readable, debatable machines together.
This is also a new lens to look at how city life is shaped:
how do we move stuff around in our dense and diverse neighbourhoods?
A nut humans have been trying to crack for 50 centuries,
ever since we started bringing goods to markets
(yes, markets).
We want to understand what works well — and why —
and what could suit us better, and how.
So we want to talk and listen.
Collect stories and data.
Meet transporters, retailers, storers
(warehousers, not storytellers — though storytellers too),
and you, who use the logistics system every day.
A quest for levers and inspiring alternatives,
at human scale, in the middle of complexity.
With City Mine(d)
Cartoon by the tireless MATmatmat.be
#ourfutureinthefuture #mapping #toughissues #agency #autonomy #complexity #Flightradar #urbanlogistics