Persuasive Cities

Persuasive Cities research is aimed at advancing urban spaces to facilitate societal changes. According to social science research, any well-designed environment can become a strong influencer of what people think and do. There is an endlessly dynamic interaction between a person, a particular behavior, and a specific environment. Persuasive Cities research leverages this knowledge to engineer persuasive environments and interventions for altering human behavior on a societal level. This research is focused on socially engaging environments for supporting entrepreneurship and innovation, reshaping routines and behavioral patterns in urban spaces, deploying intelligent outdoor sensing for shifting mobility modes, enhancing environmentally friendly behaviors through social norms, introducing interactive public feedback channels to alter attitudes at scale, engaging residents through socially influencing systems, exploring methods for designing persuasive neighborhoods, testing agent-based models and simulations of behavioral interventions, and fostering adoption of novel urban systems.