Unortkataster Cologne

The development of the Unortkataster is driven by the intention to create an online application in collaboration with users that virtually facilitates controversial thinking about critical places (singular: Unort; plural:Unorte) in a real urban environment (the area of the city of Cologne). The application is intended to publicly collect knowledge of the citizens about architectural or social deficiencies of their local environment, to motivate textual and audiovisual discussions on these topics and to organize and visualize them by temporal and spatial aspects. The application name was chosen after the contact to the lead user group of the "Leitbild Köln 2020" process was established.

The Unortkataster application was developed referring to initial requirements of the working team "image of the city" inside the group of the "Leitbild Köln 2020" process and provides a community platform for the citizens of Cologne, based on a shared city map. Adding state-of-the-art community functionalities to a digital map extends it to a multi-user interface with user administration capabilities and a database structure for storing media content. The map thereby allows people to mark areas or places on the map, that are considered to be an Unort and to add opinions and media content to justify the personal decision of the marking.

On the map of the Unortkataster marking a space becomes equal to starting and locating a discussion about a special location. The setting of a marker creates an Unort and is the starting point of a discussion about the place. Other people may, in succession, add comments or media content to express affirmation or disaffirmation. The Unortkataster is intended to facilitate processes; therefore time becomes the second principle of organisation. Since each action on the map is recorded with time, the development of the discussion can be regarded time relative to its location. Hence it constitutes a spatial-temporal interface with the possibility of audiovisual communication. Conversations are connected with places, hence places become blogs. This allows subscribing to the information feed of a place and the tracking of the ongoing discussion. Places have a start- and possible endpoint in time. They may appear and vanish. If citizens decide to take part in the discussion about places in Cologne, the time layer of the map is updated and thereby the discussion is documented.

www.unortkataster.de