Equality is a key concern for French and British metropolis. They have to become more equitable places and to list fewer gaps – skills gaps, health gaps, employment gaps, etc. Although City Halls services are usually in charge of the ‘problems’ or the ‘solutions’ but rarely both, and lack of actionable paths to be bold at solving these gaps.

The following questions are listed to ask questions about what we are trying to achieve. Answering them will help fill the more formal submission, listed hereafter.

Why?

  • To reduce 5 inequalities which are known to happen and to be harmful to citizens
  • To make observing and enacting people to see this together and to do something about inequalities

In some neighbourhoods of Bristol, women die 12 years earlier than in other more prosperous areas. It is awful. We often have no clue on how to fix it.

How?

  • By putting decision makers in a same physical location to start a dialogue By highlighting societal issues in context of their corresponding relevant resources
  • By visualizing these societal issues in public spaces
  • By making such a visualisation system reusable by other cities and public organisations
  • By using data modelling to highlight the consequences of allowing inequalities to deepen unchecked.
  • By looking at how inequalities can manifest in 6 key areas of civic life rather than focusing on specific inequalities. That way we are addressing the underlying processes which cause inequality rather than focusing on eradicating these specific inequalities one at a time. We could use areas like:
    • Education and skills,
    • Health and Wellbeing
    • Mobility
    • Democracy
    • Economy
    • Housing

What?

  • A web visualisation which depicts the various city neighbourhoods
  • Data narratives designed to depict where are the issues and where are the resources with their paths to access them
  • Video projections in various city public spaces, as well as on the Internet
  • A source code hosted on a public platform (like GitHub or GitLab) with a permissive open source license

People can see this together and do something about it.

Where?

Bristol

The Bristol Data Dome is the UK’s first 4K, 3D stereovision full dome, 100 seater presentation theatre. The City Council has invested in developing this space as a showcase for interactive and immersive data, creating the potential to model and visualise the City, presenting scenarios to decision makers from across the City.

  • http://futurecities.catapult.org.uk/project/bristol-data-dome/
  • https://vimeo.com/212090086

Bordeaux

Darwin. Cap Sciences. Other locations to be found.

Note: Bordeaux declined taking part in the project.

Retrospective from the future

The web visualisation tool helped to address the significant gaps of equality in the city. Women are not dying 12 years sooner than others. More systemic joined up operations happen because decision makers can have an overall view.

Strength is that they are everybody problems. They cannot be fixed by one agency only.