Cidadesocial: An application software for opportunistic and collaborative engagement of urban populations

Abstract

The combination of mobile devices and easy access to the Internet enhances the spread of information coming from our day-to-day lives. People share all types of information such as events, opinions and problems in urban areas. Also, they can act as sensors by monitoring and sharing information about the demands made by inhabitants for urban changes on social media. Moreover, these platforms allow people to support each other - even strangers - through questions and answers, recommendations and indications. However, much of this kind of information is lost. Even social media (e.g. Facebook and Twitter) limit the spread of this flow of information up to the network borders, because their focus is on a relationship network. Consequently, the information does not reach people outside these networks. This paper describes an application software - named CidadeSocial – that allows inhabitants to share information according to their common interests. The application software exploits the geospatial location of the users to create a temporal social network, provides recommendations based on their profile and uses a gamification approach to encourage user engagement. Thus, we argue that CidadeSocial is a tool with potential to serve as an interface for engagement in improving the day-to-day life of cities and their inhabitants.