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 originality of this contribution and the Verona case study is mainly due to the interdisciplinary approach that combines the application of ICT and data visualization systems with the discipline of co-design according to the methodologies typically used in Urban Living Labs. This approach can have significant impact on multidisciplinary team composed of both urban planning experts and visual designers that aim creating internal and external synergies. This contribution highlight all the most important elements for building participatory and co-designed projects in urban context, also enhancing fertile processes that avoid the creation of “cultural bubbles” that hinder cultural proximity, showing the results of a series of activities carried out in a real pilot case.