CoMeUp is a collaborative project between Aalto ARTS (Department of Media) and Aalto ENG (Department of Surveying and Planning).

The project takes a “citizen science” approach in the context of urban planning in order to explore how digital media documentation of the urban environment, which is produced and analyzed by citizens, could be shared and discussed with urban planners and decision-makers.

The main research questions addressed are the following:
– What is the role of citizen science in the context of participation in urban planning?
– What alternatives are there to commercial tools and the cloud for gathering and sharing digital media?

During autumn 2012, we have collaborated with active members of the Siivouspäivä (Cleaning day) group. They have tested early prototypes of the CoMeUp mobile app during the autumn Siivouspäivä in Helsinki. We are pursuing collaboration with them in Spring 2013. We have also been in contact with active citizens from the Pohjois-Haaga residents association, the kotikaupunkipolut group, as well as schoolchildren and their teachers who would be interested in testing the CoMeUp platform in spring. We hope to be able to present our results to representatives of the City of helsinki at the end of the project.