ABSTRACT
An engaged community that reflects a diverse set of experiences is key to an equitable and liveable city. However, maximising engagement activities is often difficult when competing with residents’ busy schedules and hectic daily lives. To explore new opportunities in this space, four augmented reality experiences to learn more about the potential for this technology to transform community engagement practices in the context of smart city are developed. The findings suggest that augmented reality is least successful when used to re-create existing engagement practices, such as surveys or questionnaires, and more successful when it empowers a sense of agency and ownership over the process in its users. The way augmented reality situates information can aid in making public space feel personal to the individual. In this way, augmented reality’s affordances are less about overlaying digital information in physical space, and more about how this can enable individuals to reclaim a sense of control and relevance in the relationship between citizens and council. This chapter highlights the value of augmented reality’s affordances to bring light to new interactions between community engagement stakeholders.
