Public Space Academy / Keynote Lecture by Martijn de Waal

The Public Space Academy is proud to present the Keynote Lecture Series, featuring leading academics, practitioners and urban innovators working on the theory and practice of public space.

The last keynote lecturer of the 2025 series is Martijn de Waal, a Professor in Civic Interaction Design at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. His research concerns the implications of digital media for (urban) public spaces. He is the author of “The City as Interface. How New Media are Shaping the City”, a co-author of “The Platform Society. Public Values in a Connective World” and, co-editor of “The Hackable City: Digital Media and Collaborative City-Making in the Network Society”.

Title of the lecture:
Shaping Cities through Civic Interaction Design

About the lecture:
In the past decade, datafication, digitisation and privatisation have made their mark on cities and public spaces around the world. In this context, the research group of Civic Interaction Design at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences is developing a new approach to facilitate civic initiatives and activate public spaces. It centres around civics as an orientation to society that prioritises relations over transactions and collective wellbeing over individual usability and seamless consumer experiences. Centring on notions of care and stewardship, it asks how design can create opportunities for people to interact, form alliances, generate shared interest, and care for matters of public concern.
In this lecture, Martijn de Waal will introduce Civic Interaction Design as an approach for the shaping of urban and public life and will give examples from projects centred on the facilitation of collective citymaking and the activation of public spaces through interactive technologies.

The Public Space Academy is promoted by City Space Architecture in partnership with the Ove Arup Foundation and with the generous support of UN-Habitat (United Nations Human Settlements Programme).