There is little accurate data about cities in Africa and a few effective methods to collect the same. With the rapid urbanization being experienced and the two-tier development process it brings with it, there’s no easy way to understand and determine which areas are over- or underserved; there’s no easy way for people to share immediate experiences about neighbourhoods.
In our work, we learnt two things one, no one has better information about a place than the people who live there. Two, there is no platform for them to share information on issues and experiences. Many data collection initiatives/tools that do exist are extractive and information rarely stays with the people.
This leaves the people cut out of the decision-making process, from determining what data points are collected to what happens with the data itself, and because of that, people don’t have access to data that is important to them.
At Spatial Collective, we are working on a platform that enables people to express their perceptions about a place through location, topic, and emotion. Their perceptions are shared to other people in their immediate surroundings.
The platform aims to provide the user with an immersive experience to their immediate surroundings by providing access to the shared information on a place thereby understanding why it evokes those emotions. Additionally, it will enable users to make real-time decisions by showing the emotions that a place evokes.
