From apps to virtual reality, up to the Luminous Planning Table: research led by the University of Milan and the Politecnico di Milano experiments with new tools to integrate people's experience into urban design processes.
“Gathering data on the experience people have of urban spaces“: this is the goal of exp-EIA – Experiential Environmental Impact Assessment, the research project presented by Marco Boffi, a social psychologist at the University of Milan. Born from a collaboration with the Politecnico di Milano, exp-EIA focuses on what often remains invisible in urban planning processes: emotions, perceptions, and the subjective bond that people develop with the places they cross every day or encounter for the first time. The project aims to build a series of tools capable of mapping experiences, transforming them into useful information for those who design, manage, or govern the city, but also for the communities that inhabit it.
The heart of exp-EIA is the development of technological tools designed to collect experiential data in different contexts. Among these is a mobile app that allows people to express how they feel while physically walking through the urban space, providing real-time evaluations of the places they traverse. Alongside the app, a web platform allows the same information to be collected remotely. Added to these is an immersive virtual reality system that allows movement within simulated environments, keeping the type of data collected consistent.
A particularly innovative aspect is the possibility of working on future scenarios: thanks to simulations, people can explore how a place might look after an urban transformation and provide their emotional reactions in advance. In this way, exp-EIA allows for the anticipation of the experiential impact of transformations before they are realized.
The exploratory dimension is supported by a sophisticated data collection system based on the knowledge of environmental psychology. Structured questionnaires allow for the reconstruction of subjective experiences, while some experiments also integrate physiological data, combining the psychological dimension and bodily response. This information is further enriched by environmental data—such as temperature and wind—which flow into a central platform capable of integrating environmental, psychological, and georeferenced data.
The integration of data allows for the construction of true psychological cartographies of the city: maps that reflect the geographies of subjective experience. These representations reveal differences between genders, age groups, and between people familiar or unfamiliar with a place. This is a key tool for understanding the experience of a community in the urban space and the plurality of perceptions that coexist in the same environment.
A concrete example concerns the cloister of the University of Milan: through the platform developed in the MUSA project, people can explore the environment and “snap” a photograph, answering a series of questions that specialize the emotional experience. The collected data flows into the Luminous Planning Table, a design table that combines a physical model and a digital twin. The information—physical and psychological—is projected onto the model, reflecting in real-time the effects of design choices on shadows, perceptions, and viewpoints.
The value of exp-EIA lies in its ability to foster dialogue between designers, policy makers, and citizens. The Luminous Planning Table makes the consequences of urban transformations accessible even to non-experts, integrating spatial, environmental, and experiential dimensions. The final goal is to support decision-making processes and, at the same time, return the data to the community, promoting a more aware, inclusive, and empathetic city, capable of taking into account the diverse experiences of those who live in it every day.
