Data visualisation and knowledge sharing in participatory design to improve people liveability in urban places.

People living in urban areas are expected to highly increase in future. Society in urban context becomes more complex, and newer social, cultural and economic challenges occurs while decision-making processes become more difficult due to the increase of actors involved and plenty of information flowing by ICT networks and media. In such crowded environment, people can be very close to each other and, at the same time, might not know about urban issues due to different backgrounds or lack of knowledge. Looper demonstrates how an ICT and Urban Living Lab integrated approach can be enforced by environmental design methodologies that start from user needs and improve knowledge proximity and physical proximity. The Verona study case, described in the paper, shows how a collaborative usage of ICT allows a better comprehension of different points of view, enhancing a fertile co-design process avoiding the creation of “cultural bubbles” that hinder cultural proximity.