Open source cities: towards a second order urbanism

Abstract

This paper discusses the participatory and decision-making processes guiding urban space production in Brazil in order to reflect on alternatives to expand citizen cooperation. It proposes to investigate new tools and practices that arise in the context of a broad expansion of digital communication technologies, identified as open source or peer to peer urbanism, which pursue cities more open to collaboration and collective creation. Those tactics relate with the “do it yourself” (DIY) concept and, more precisely, with its latest developments towards “do it with others” (Diwo) propositions. It is intended to explore Vilem Flusser and other second-order cybernetics’ authors, in order to formulate a preliminary set of parameters and raise questions that could help guiding the production of similar initiatives.