Cities like San Francisco need help - but conventional planning processes make it difficult to implement great ideas for civic improvement. Urban Prototyping (UP) complements these processes by rapidly designing, testing, and scaling new projects that improve civic life. UP takes projects from prototypes to city pilots to refined products. UP Cities around the world design and test prototypes through large-scale public Festivals that engage local communities. The first UP San Francisco Festival was held in October 2012 as a flagship event in San Francisco’s first Innovation Month. On October 20, 2012, six blocks of downtown San Francisco became a living laboratory for urban experiments. The 2012 Festival featured: 5000+ visitors 23 urban prototypes 40+ audio, visual, and dance performers 25+ renowned speakers in design, art, and technology. Original UP concept by Gray Area and Rebar. http://urbanprototyping.org http://twitter.com/urbanproto http://facebook.com/urbanprototyping

1. SAN FRANCISCO
2012 FESTIVAL RECAP

2. UP San Francisco at a glance
Cities like San Francisco need help - but conventional planning processes
make it difficult to implement great ideas for civic improvement.
Urban Prototyping (UP) complements these processes by rapidly
designing, testing, and scaling new projects that improve civic life.
UP takes projects from prototypes to city pilots to refined products.
UP Cities around the world design and test prototypes through large-
scale public Festivals that engage local communities.
The first UP San Francisco Festival was held in October 2012 as a
flagship event in San Francisco’s first Innovation Month.
UP SF 2013 will take place in October 2013.

3. By the numbers
On October 20, 2012, six blocks of downtown San Francisco became a
living laboratory for urban experiments.
The 2012 Festival featured:
5000+ visitors
23 urban prototypes
40+ audio, visual, and dance performers
25+ renowned speakers in design, art, and technology.

4. San Francisco Context
The 2012 Festival was located in the heart of San Francisco in the city’s
Mid-Market District. The District, long home to many urban challenges,
has experienced a resurgence in recent years through the combined
efforts of community, government, and commercial groups.
Gray Area Foundation for the Arts has been a center for art and
technology in Mid-Market since 2008. Intersection for the Arts, San
Francisco’s oldest arts nonprofit, moved to the neighborhood in 2011.
The host site, The 5M Project, is transforming four acres around 5th and
Mission Streets into a mixed-use development designed to catalyze
innovative ideas. The site provided an ideal environment for projects to
temporarily install, test, and showcase their projects in the public realm.
Together, Gray Area, Intersection, and 5M joined forces to produce UP
San Francisco 2012, with several city departments and collaborators.

5. Audience
Our four panels focused on increasing the dialog between artists,
designers, technologists, city leaders, and the local community.
The on-site test installations of prototypes created two key outcomes:
first, project teams could perform user-testing and get feedback on
their early work in a real urban setting, from a diverse group of citizens;
second, those citizens could experience and take part in the
development of new bottom-up projects to shape the future of their city.
Our day-long series of performances created an atmosphere of
celebration of the teams’ work that visitors of all ages could enjoy.

6. Creating Prototypes
We created new urban prototypes through two approaches:
an open call for project proposals, which encouraged submissions from
teams with existing ideas and a history of working together; and
a 48-hour makeathon where teams and ideas were formed and
prototyped on the fly, going from concept to execution in a weekend.
These approaches complement each other by allowing for both the
reliability of strong teams submitting from around the world, and the
serendipity of new people and disciplines mixing together locally.
We received 90+ submissions to the Festival from the open call and 11
more from the makeathon. Of these we selected 23 projects to be
showcased in the Festival and receive $1,000 materials stipends.

7. Project Requirements
We sought projects that could begin locally and scale globally.
Each project had to meet three basic requirements:
Digital + Physical
Projects had to include both digital and physical components, ideally
mixing the two in unique ways that uncover new possibilities.
Open Source + Documented
Projects had to be open source in every sense of the word and produce
a comprehensive how-to guide that was made available to the public.
Replicable + Affordable
Projects had to be affordable, aiming for a materials budget of less than
$1,000 for the prototype phase, and had to be designed for a type of
place rather than a specific location, in order to scale worldwide.

8. Selected Projects
PULSE OF THE CITY HIGHLIGHTS I JUST WANNA DARKNESS MAP
HOLD YOUR HAND
turning reviving dark using digital art to collecting light
heartbeats into alleys with 3D promote public data from
data + music projection art interaction city streets

9. Pulse of the City
Pulse of the City playfully empowers pedestrians with self-awareness of
their heart rates by translating them into unique musical compositions in
real-time. It simultaneously streams this heart rate data to the internet for
anyone to explore and analyze.

10. Highlights
Lighting and projections are strategically placed to illuminate a dark space
and create a sense of security while activating under utilized spaces at night,
treating dark alleyways and unused spaces as a canvas for creative
intervention.

11. I Just Wanna Hold Your Hand
By interacting with one another people are able to transform their
environment through play. Two metal hands are mounted to the wall. When
two or more individuals complete the circuit they provoke audio-visual
responses based on the flow of electricity through the individuals.

12. Darkness Map
Darkness Map is a crowd-sourced data visualization that portrays the
amount of light and darkness in the nighttime urban environment on a
human scale, capturing and communicating the city’s nightime luminosity.

13. Project Outcomes
Festivals are just the beginning of the longer UP process of creating
lasting change in cities. In just a few months after the 2012 Festival:
the majority of project teams had meetings with city departments
to discuss possibilities for pilot installations and future development;
several teams had completed additional test installations at local
events, engaging hundreds more citizens in user-testing and feedback;
TrafficCom had started shipping test products for immediate use;
Street Stage was planning an official pilot within San Francisco;
Glowing Crosswalk and I Just Wanna Hold Your Hand were selected
winners of the global Instructables Design Competition; and
Fruit Fence had been replicated by another citizen in San Francisco.

14. 2012 Festival Reviews
“With a little imagination, it’s easy to see how a lot of these projects could be
integrated into a city.”
- Wired
“...the aim, to actively spotlight imaginative civic possibilities, is worth calling out.”
- Wall Street Journal
“[UP San Francisco] showcased creative innovations from local residents that aim
to make the urban environment more livable.”
- Fast Company
“The tactile nature of actual working prototypes should facilitate [the projects’
replication worldwide].”
- San Francisco Chronicle
“The festival promises to be an explosion of DIY tech meets DIY civic engagement
meets SF art scene.”
- San Francisco Bay Guardian

15. Press List
The Wall Street Journal
WIRED
The San Francisco Chronicle
CBS SmartPlanet
The Atlantic Cities
Fast Company
Huffington Post
Smithsonian Magazine
Discovery News
TreeHugger
Shareable
Laughing Squid
San Francisco Bay Guardian
Curbed SF

16. Selected Speakers
Government
Jane Kim, District 6 Supervisor, City of San Francisco
John Rahaim, Director, San Francisco Planning Department
Shannon Spanhake, Deputy Chief Innovation Officer, City of San Francisco
Commercial
Tom Kelley, General Manager, IDEO
Matthew Passmore, Rebar
Ben Cerveny, Bloom.io
Academic
Scott Doorley, Stanford d.school
Sanjit Sethi, California College of the Arts
Genevieve Hoffman, NYU Tisch School of the Arts
Nonprofit
Liz Ogbu, IDEO.org
Ben Grant, San Francisco Planning and Urban Research
Deborah Cullinan, Intersection for the Arts

17. Selected Performers
Wonway Posibul
Campo Santo + Felonius
Goldo and the Guns
Apex Richey
Howard Wiley
Valerie Troutt
Modas Dance
Mark Fell
Moss Moss
Afrikan Sciences
Ghosts on Tape
DJ Dials
Ryan Alexander
Gabriel Dunne

18. Partners and Sponsors
Gray Area Foundation for the Arts
Intersection for the Arts
San Francisco Mayor’s Office of Civic Innovation
5M Project
Rebar
IDEO
San Francisco Planning Department
San Francisco Planning and Urban Research (SPUR)
Adobe Foundation
Autodesk
TechShop San Francisco
Neighborland
Twitter
Waze

19. Contact
urbanprototyping.org
@urbanproto
facebook.com/urbanprototyping
info@urbanprototyping.org
Jake Levitas, Director
Urban Prototyping
Josette Melchor, Executive Director
Gray Area Foundation for the Arts
Original UP concept by Gray Area and Rebar.

20. URBAN PROTOTYPING