9. Digital Urban Acupuncture

In this chapter we will understand how to use the Relational Ecosystem to perform Digital Urban Acupuncture. The chapter starts off from the definition of Urban Acupuncture, and from all its supporting theories and methodologies, to then define Digital Urban Acupuncture: its goals, methodological approach, assumptions, and operative strategies. By considering the city as an ecosystem, it is possible to take into consideration the myriads of microhistories of all of its members to identify flows of information, communication, knowledge, emotion, opinion, activation, and their patterns over geography and time. These can be used to highlight the pressure points, just as in acupuncture, which can be activated to creatively provoke engagement, interconnection, relation, and the breaking of undesired loops and patterns. This allows for both a dynamic definition—and polyphonic—of the well-being of the city, and to activate the identified pressure points in creative ways, to provoke wide results, affecting wide areas of the population. A final section of this chapter explores the issues connected to the multiple forms of divide which can be present in this scenario, and possible ways in which it is possible to confront with them: digital divides, cultural divides, age divides, and more. The chapter ends with an interview with Marco Casagrande.