Metaverse | Transitioning (To) Future Cities

Metaverse | Transitioning (To) Future Cities: Transdisciplinary platforms as instruments to democratise technology for participatory use in building back neglected urban voids of Riga

Dzelme, Rihards (TU Delft Architecture and the Built Environment)

Kuijper, J.A. (mentor)
Medici, P. (mentor)
Muñoz Sanz, V. (mentor)
Van den Berghe, K.B.J. (graduation committee)

Delft University of Technology

Architecture, Urbanism and Building Sciences

2022-06-24

We are at the beginning of the most significant societal change since the internet. We are transitioning from a 2-dimensional browser-based interaction to immersive 3-dimensional experiences. The metaverse is not a place or a destination but a state where technology and ecosystem are symbiotic.
Digital Twins, interactive toolkits, tokenization and urban platfomization, are the bedrock of the future cities and the metaverse. Today, we see the metaverse as cartoonish meeting rooms, yet on a granular level, the metaverse systems focus on user-centric governance and new decentralized economic models. De Filippi and Wright (2018) have described this as "a structural shift of power from legal rules and regulations administered by government authorities to code-based rules and protocols governed by decentralized blockchain-based networks." ... deployed to citizens.
With a nickname as Europe's Capital of vacant buildings, Riga suffers from excessive urban negligence and diaspora. Such a location provides a unique opportunity in the tokenization economy, where each urban void can become an asset (an NFT) or social crypto coin that individuals can purchase or 'invest' in, exchanging money for equity (fiat to crypto). By buying into the urban void metaverse, individuals establish a digital identity and can become active citizens of the duality. With a token, one automatically becomes part of the DAO protocols and proposes alternative solutions to the urban void of Riga through its city dashboard.
The architectural project acts as a jugendstil-inspired expression of art, history and local struggles. As part of the Next Generation EU, the project proposes a Metaverse Research Academy, where locals can play, imagine and shape their neighbourhood through serendipitous learning. The project can be viewed as a public space where the architecture seamlessly adapts the context into an icon to attract local and international talent while transforming an agglomerate of urban voids into a social, age-inclusive, permeable pocket.

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Metaverse
Blockchain
Cryptography
Decentralized Autonomous Organization
Smart Contract
City As A License
Digital Twin
Consensus Algorithm
Urban Governance
NFT
Digital Toolkit
Asset Economy
Urban Voids
Virtual Reality
Augmented Reality
3D Experiences
Web 3.0
Tactical Urbanism
Decentralized Governance
Riga
Latvia
EU

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:f6fda3be-2b23-4539-87bd-8b5e3f37e719

56.96185654547952, 24.130598941371787

Student theses

master thesis

© 2022 Rihards Dzelme