The original note, as written at the time
An urban system designed to introduce and assess new ways in which different types of spaces can be used. The major system will be a physical infrastructural endeavour. A larger stimulative system expanded from a replica of the physical one can be used to support and extend the data collected.
Ongoing development
An urban system designed to introduce and assess new ways in which different types of space can be used.
The main system is a physical, infrastructural endeavour. A larger, stimulative system — a replica expanded from the physical one — supports and extends the data collected.
This is the right way round and it is almost never done. Cities introduce new kinds of space and then evaluate them by opinion, or by the attendance figures that the promoter supplies. A trial street, a market reorganisation, a pedestrianised lane: each is judged by whether people said they liked it.
A physical test bed that is instrumented changes that. Build the space, measure it — footfall, dwell time, heat, noise, trade, conflict — and then replicate it in simulation at a larger scale before committing the capital. The physical build gives you the truth and the simulation gives you the reach.
The replica must be a stimulus rather than a prediction, which is an important distinction. A model that claims to predict the outcome of a design will be argued with and then ignored. A model that lets a hundred people walk through a proposal and react to it produces evidence of a different kind: what people do when confronted with a thing that does not exist yet.
The institution matters more than the technology. A testing city only works if a negative result is publishable — if the authority can say this did not work and stop — otherwise every trial becomes a justification for something already decided.
The real product is not the space. It is the habit of finding out.