ict, society and human beings 2008

ISBN: 978-972-8924-61-4 © 2008 IADIS

GREEN STREET DESIGN FOR BENNEKEL DISTRICT IN EINDHOVEN Ivo Wouters, Wei Chen, Bart van Oorschot, and Wina Smeenk Department of Industrial Design, Eindhoven University of Technology P.O. Box 513, 5600 MB, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

ABSTRACT Green design and electronics technology can be integrated for enhancing our living environments and social interaction in the society. We present a novel design example, called the “Prachtpaal”, for the Bennekel district in the city of Eindhoven, the Netherlands. The design of an interactive green street facility is proposed and demonstrated by using light dependent sensors and actuators. The growth of the green plants is indicated with the special implementation of light dependent sensors and colourful lights, so that people are stimulated in a more responsible way to take care of the plants and communicate with each other. Adding the unique green design in Bennekel district has potential to improve the social cohesion and living quality of the neighbourhood. KEYWORDS green street, interactive environments, human and society, sensors and actuators, social cohesion, participation

1. INTRODUCTION Social cohesion and sustainable development of society are important topics for our human beings [1, 2]. The government of the Netherlands wants to transform problem districts into ‘krachtwijken’ (strong district). It concerns 40 districts with urgent problems related to work, living, learning, integration and safety. Minister Vogelaar wants to transform these districts with the program 'Actieplan Krachtwijken' into districts that are attractive to live in and where chances are given [3]. On the other hand, with the rapid development of technology, sensors and actuators have been applied to interactive design to stimulate more communication between people and enhance the quality of life [4-7]. For example, the applications of sensors are reported for nursing home environment, elderly community, etc. In this paper, we focus on green street design for Bennekel district in the city of Eindhoven, the Netherlands. Bennekel district was considered as a “krachtwijk” district whose environment needs to be improved. We propose and demonstrate a novel design of an interactive green street facility, called the “Prachtpaal”, with light dependent sensors and actuators integrated. The interactive model shows that the green facility helps to increase the social cohesion of the neighbourhood. Furthermore, the facility is easily maintained by the residents, and even more importantly, enhances engagement by provoking participation. The organization of the paper is as follows. Section 2.1 describes the field and scientific research on Bennekel district. Section 2.2 illustrates the design concept. Section 2.3 discusses social effects. And section 3 draws conclusions.

2. DESIGN PROCESS 2.1 Field and Scientific Research Before we start explaining the design implementation and the effects which they can achieve, we explain the design process from research to concept development. We carried out an extended field and scientific research. During this research, the social structure (geographical, demographical, and economical) of the

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IADIS International Conference ICT, Society and Human Beings 2008

Bennekel [8] was investigated and field research was done in order to state an opinion about the identity of the neighbourhood. From our field research and interviews with people living in the Bennekel district, we found that the district has a ‘grey’, boring appearance as shown in Fig. 1. When entering this street you feel the emptiness at once. Beauty and detailed decorations are missing.

Figure 1. Picture of a street in Bennekel district

Besides the impression of the district, we observed some social problems from interviews and questionnaires. The main problems are the separation and the lack of commitment from the inhabitants. 40% of people we interviewed feel lonely and 16% feel the need of more support.

Figure 2. Ethnic Statistics in Bennekel-Oost

The reasons for the aforementioned problems come from several aspects. Fig. 2 shows the ethnic statistics in Bennekel [8]. We can see from the figure that in Bennekel-Oost 42% of the inhabitants has non-Dutch cultural background. However, in this multicultural environment, people do not interact much with each other. Next to that, there are relatively a lot of students who live in Bennekel-Oost. Another remarkable fact of Bennekel-Oost is the high mobility. Almost one-third of all inhabitants stay less than 5 years in Eindhoven. Vandalism to public facilities makes the maintenance work hard. Therefore, participation of the neighbourhood is lacking in Bennekel district. Due to lack of commitment and the separation of the inhabitants of the Bennekel there is no social cohesion or positive identity. To transform the district from the ‘grey’ image, design for a green facility which enhances social cohesion of the neighbourhood comes to our mind.

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ISBN: 978-972-8924-61-4 © 2008 IADIS

2.2 Design Concept From the results of our research and the problems to be solved in the district, we formulated the following requirements for design: - The product should improve the image of the neighbourhood. - The product should obtain human-technology interaction and provoke human-human interaction. - The product should be ‘Green’ and sustainable. - The product should be vandalism proof. - Participation of households will lead to social cohesion / communication. With these criteria in mind, the idea generation eventually comes out with the “Prachtpaal”.

Figure 3. Design concept and 3-D model of the “Prachtpaal”

The basic idea behind the “Prachtpaal” is to have a big pole in the middle of the street with several organically shaped arms reaching out to the first floor windows. At the end of these arms are flowerboxes attached with different kinds of ivy in it. Fig. 3 shows the design concept and 3-D model of the “Prachtpaal”. We can see that a physical pole - the “prachtpaal” is placed in a street. From the central cylinder ‘arms’ will reach to the first floor windows of houses. Choosing for the 1st floor is with consideration of vandalism proof. At the end of these ‘arms’, there are facilities / baskets for green plants and flowers. People can optionally choose their own kind of ivy to personalize their box a bit more. As we know, people with a common activity are much easier to start a conversation and something happening in the street triggers the conversation. Furthermore, this conversation can be a start for more social cohesion and understanding and less loneliness. With the “Prachtpaal”, inhabitants/house owners/renters take the responsibility of growing and maintaining the green baskets. By doing this well (with attention) the green will cover the ‘arms’ and will reach the green of other households. In this way, a physical connection between different households is established. The “Prachtpaal” model has light dependent sensors and actuators implemented which shows the inhabitant the ‘growth’ (social cohesion) at night and encourage people to take care of their plants, and feel responsible for the ambiance of their street. Along with the growth of the ivy, the lights on the bottom side of the arms switch from white to green, so the green lights “grow” together with the plants. And so does the neighbourhood!

2.3 Social Effects The most important goals to reach social cohesion within Bennekel is to stimulate the residents to take

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responsibility for the identity of their neighbourhood, so they can feel proud again. During our field research we noticed that a compelling approach in our design was not going to work. Therefore we looked for possibilities which we could implement in our design to motivate the residents to become enthusiastic and in this way persuade them to participate. The prachtpaal concept was chosen because it could stimulate the willingness of the residents for participation. Next to ‘using’ green/plants, we explored the possibilities to create an interaction between the residents and the product with means of sensors and actuators. In the final design we decided the plants as a medium between the interaction of the residents and the product. This resulted into a very subtle human-technology interaction. The lights grow along with the plants. The emphasis is put on the “growth”, which symbolizes the growth of the social engagement of the residents. Therefore, when the user takes well care of his/her plants the resident have the opportunity to finish the product and improve the life quality of their district. The expected social effects are discussed here. Since our solution/intervention provokes participation and cooperation and does not force residents (top down) to act, we believe that we will motivate people to finish the prachtpaal and enrich the environment and the neigbourhood image. By having a shared activity, communication will be stimulated and loneliness percentage will decrease and people will care more about each other which leads to social cohesion.

3. CONCLUSION We presented an interactive design example, called the “Prachtpaal”, for the Bennekel district in the city of Eindhoven, the Netherlands. We showed that the social interaction and social cohesion of residents in the district are enhanced by the unique green design with application of sensors and actuators. The interactive green design has the potential to stimulate communication between the inhabitants and improve the quality of their life with better living environment and a better image of Bennekel.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT The authors would like to thank Home Domain of Department of Industrial Design, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands, The City of Eindhoven (Cees Donkers) and Buurtplatform Bennekel Belang for their support on the project. The authors would also like to thank Jeroen Blom, Maarten Woudstra, Rick Paffen and Rik Hermans for their valuable input during the project.

REFERENCES Leeuwen, E. et al, 2003. Urban Green and Integrative Urban Sustainability: Concepts and Relevance for Dutch Cities. European Spatial Research and Policy, Vol. 10, No. 1, pp. 5-26. http://dare.ubvu.vu.nl/bitstream/1871/3430/1/12327.pdf Lenthe, F. et al, 2005. Neighbourhood inequalities in physical inactivity: the role of neighbourhood attractiveness, proximity to local facilities and safety in the Netherlands. Social Science & Medicine, vol. 60, No. 4, pp. 763-775. Actieplan Krachtwijken, available from www.vrom.nl/get.asp?file=docs/publicaties/7376.pdf. Chen, D. et al, 2005. A Study of Detecting Social Interaction with Sensors in a Nursing Home Environment. Proceedings of International Conference on Computer Vision workshop on Human-Computer Interaction (ICCV05). Thomas, D. I. and Vlacic, L., 2005. TeamMATE: computer game environment for collaborative and social interaction. Proceedings of IEEE Workshop on Advanced Robotics and its Social Impacts, pp. 60 – 65. Xin, M. et al, 2007. Purple Crayon – From Sketches to Interactive Environment. Proceedings of the international conference on Advances in computer entertainment technology (ACE’07), Salzburg, Austria. Estelle, J. et al, 2006. Enhancing Social Interaction in Elderly Communities. Proceedings of Computer Human Interaction (CHI 2006), Montreal, Canada. De Haan, I. and Van Gemert, A., Sociale Kenmerken van de Bennekel. Gemeente Eindhoven, Eindhoven, The Netherlands.

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