1. Changing Cities -
Cultural Heritage Landscapes:
Using New Tools/Technologies to
Represent the Spirit of Place
Images taken by James Arteaga

2. Outline
I. Academic, Work &
Volunteer Experience
II. Internship Organization
III. Internship Project
IV. Conference Working Paper
V. Future Work
Image taken by Ardi Karimi
Images taken by James Arteaga

3. Context
Bologna, Italy - Ottawa, Canada
The context of where the work comes from and where we
are is essential to acknowledge.
Acknowledgement, and recognition of, as well as dialogue
with Indigenous Peoples in conversations relating to space,
place, and heritage conservation in the Canadian context is
essential in developing methods and approaches that are
specifically designed for our context.
Therefore, I would like to acknowledge that I am on the
unceded and unsurrendured territory of the Algonquin
Nation.
Image from apihtawikosisan.com;
Painted by Fanny Aishaa
Image from the National Post

4. Academic Experience
Bachelor in Environmental Studies (B.E.S.) in Honours
Planning, School of Planning, University of Waterloo (2013)
- Minor in Second Language Acquisition
- Minor in the Spanish Language
3rd Year Exchange to the University of Sheffield, Sheffield, U.K.
(2011/12)
- Public Space & Urban Design, Town Planning in the Global
South, Languages & Translations
Master of Arts (M.A.) in Canadian Studies: Heritage Conservation,
School of Indigenous and Canadian Studies (formerly School of
Canadian Studies), Carleton University (2016)
- Relationship between Urban Planning & Heritage Conservation
- Local/Municipal Heritage Conservation Practice
- Representation in Heritage Conservation
- Heritage Conservation & Immigrant/Diaspora Communities

5. Work Experience
Policy & Programs Assistant, Ministry of Tourism, Culture
and Sport (Summer 2014)
Heritage Assistant, National Capital Commission (Winter
2015)
Heritage Research & Resource Developer, Region of
Waterloo (Summer 2015)
Cultural Development & Initiatives Intern, City of Ottawa
(Winter 2016)

6. Volunteer Experience
Co-Chair, Carleton University’s Heritage Conservation
Symposium (2015/16)
Heritage Planning Advisory Committee Member, Region of
Waterloo (2014)
Images taken by Krista Gowan

7. Internship Organization
City Space Architecture
A non-profit cultural association established in 2013 and
based in Bologna, Italy.
Aims to promote a general awareness on architecture and
public space, focusing on a shared vision of our common
liveable future.
Previous projects include: the Pop Up City Project, the Past,
Present, and Future of Public Space Conference, and the
publication of the Journal of Public Space in collaboration
with Queensland University of Technology.

8. Internship Project
Team Members
Professor Luisa Bravo, President
- Founding Editor of the Journal of Public Space
- Adjunct Professor in Urban Planning and Design,
University of Florence
- Adjunct Associate Professor, Queensland University of
Technology
Professor Simone Garagnani, Vice-President
- Research Associate & Adjunct Lecturer, University of Bologna,
- Charter Member and Practitioner at TC Project
- Vice President of the Associazione duepuntilab
Valerio Francia, Treasurer
- MSc in Architectural Engineering Student,
University of Bologna
- Interested in public space, people’s perceptions of public space,
and how public space is usedn
- Thesis title: “Mapping Urban Perception – New Investigation
Tools of Public Life in Bologna”
Images taken by Luisa Bravo

9. Internship Project
Goal
To conduct a deeper study of the European city, specifically the public
spaces of Bologna’s historic centre, by means of digital photo-model-
ing and high-definition surveys, in order to capture its reality, and
experience it in the digital domain.
If we hoped to better understand the city’s cultural landscape, we
needed to understand the public spaces that form help form it. This is
due to the fact that according to the Charter of Public Space, and the
European Landscape Convention, public spaces are where the
foundation of a community’s identity can be found.
The identity of a community or the Spirit of Place (Genius Loci) in
public spaces, is formed through multiple layers of complexity and
Spirits of Time (Genius Saeculi) that include the tangible, intangible,
and living heritage of the city.
Because this project was meant to be accessible to all field of study,
and both the public and private sector, simple and affordable tools and
technologies were used throughout the project.
* This was an experimental project and is still a work-in-progress
Archival information from the Public Library, Modern Art
Gallery, and the Local History Museum;
Images taken by James Arteaga

10. Internship Project
Case Study Area
- Piazza di Porta Ravegnana
- Piazzetta Anchille Ardigo
- Piazza Rossini
- Piazza Verdi
- Via Zamboni
Chosen because of the
significance to the city’s
image, specifically le Due
Torre in P. Porta Ravegnana,
which are the iconic
structures of the city, and
P. Verdi, which is a significant
political & social space for
various residents of the city.
Image taken by James Arteaga
Image taken by James Arteaga
Image taken by James Arteaga
Image taken by James Arteaga

11. Internship Project
Significant Events
Project Introduction (May 16)
- Valerio Francia, Mattia Fantini, Eres Tedla Tekeste
Informal Photogrammetry Workshop
- Valerio Francia, Mattia Fantini, Ilaria Mazzi, Elena Masina
Urban Centre Agisoft Photoscan Workshop (June 4)
- Valerio Francia, Mattia Fantini, Ilaria Mazzi, Elena Masina
Urban Age “Shaping Cities” Conference (July 14-15)
Research Seminar with Australian PhD Candidate (August 5)
- Valerio Francia, Elisa Lafumera, Eres Tedla Tekeste, Arturo Del
Razo, Carlo Estrada Grajales
* These events contributed to the project in both a practical and
theoretical manner
Top Image taken by Luisa Bravo;
Bottom Image taken by James Arteaga

12. Internship Project
Informal Photogrammetry Workshop
We practiced taking images for the purposes of photogrammetry
at Piazza di Porta Ravegnana.
We experimented with different media for taking images
including a: DSLR Camera, iPhone, and Point & Shoot Camera.
Images taken by Simone Garagnani

13. Internship Project
Taking Images
The images taken of the case study were not pointed on the
building facades that formed the public spaces, but were instead
pointed towards the open public space.
The case study area was divided into six sections for the purpose
of using photogrammetry, and each section was photographed
with four horizontal rows of images.
- 1st Row: ground row
- 2nd Row: bottom row of facade
- 3rd Row: middle row of facade
- 4th Row: top row of facade
The majority of the images were taken around mid-day - afternoon
with a Canon T3 Rebel DSLR Camera.
Around 300 images were taken for each section.
We also experimented with using GoPro-shot video to extract
image stills to use for photogrammetry.
ImagestakenbyJamesArteaga

14. Internship Project
Urban Centre Agisoft PhotoScan Workshop
We learned how to use the Agisoft PhotoScan Software to
develop a 3D digital model of the built environment.
We experimented with using the images taken by the different
media at the previous workshop, and also experimented with the
image alignments accuracy, and the dense cloud quality the
images would produce.
Images taken by Luisa Bravo

15. Internship Project
Digital 3D Modeling with Agisoft PhotoScan
There were six main point cloud chunks developed:
- Via da Piazza Verdi a Piazza Rossini
- Piazza Rossini
- Via da Piazza Rossini a Piazzetta Achille Ardigo
- Piazzetta Achille Ardigo
- Via da Piazzetta Achille Ardigo a Piazza Porta Rav.
- Piazza Porta Ravegnana
All chunks were developed using high accuracy image alignment, and high quality
dense clouds.
Because of computer processing capacity and other factors, some of these
chunks were the result of smaller chunks that were merged later on in the
Workflow by manually selecting common points.
Precision of the final dense clouds was not a priority for this project,
because we were more interested in using this first layer (tangible) of the
urban complexity to further understand the intangible and living layers that
contribute to the formation of the Spirit of Place.
Some challenges were faced when using the images taken by the iPhone and also
the still images extracted from the GoPro video; therefore, they were not used
moving forward in the project.
* The point cloud for Piazza Verdi was developed using Laser Scanning technology

16. Internship Project
Urban Age “Shaping Cities” Conference
City Space Architecture was invited to attend the Conference
being held at the Venice Architecture Biennale in Venice, Italy.
The purpose of the conference was to “provide a platform for
designers and policy-makers to better understand how their
decisions shape the cities we live in and to reflect on the way our
urban environment shape the social dynamics of a 21st Century
urban reality, where over 70% of us will be urban by 2050.”
It was to be a prelude to the upcoming UN-Habitat 3 Conference
in Quito, Ecuador being held on October 2016, where Public
Space, and Urban Culture and Heritage are major topics of
discussion.
Top Image from LSECities;
Bottom Image taken by James Arteaga

17. Internship Project
Urban Age “Shaping Cities” Conference
Many of the topics discussed at the Conference were similar to the
conversations we were having at City Space Architecture, specifically
about the need to better understand the non-physical things that were
happening in cities.
Piazza Verdi, which is a space that is perceived differently by different
residents of Bologna (i.e. students, municipal workers, property owners,
vendors, etc.) was very much related to the topics discussed at the con-
ference, including: the limits of Urban Design, the right to the city, and
migrant streets to only name a few. Some residents viewed this space as
a troubled area, others viewed it as a space of political expression, and
others view it as the centre of student life. Piazza Verdi became a central
topic in many of our discussions about the city and public space at City
Space Architecture because of the social complexities found there.
Many of the topics at the conference furthered our theoretical discus-
sions about the importance of public space, heritage conservation, and
the role new tools and technologies in not only conserving the cultural
heritage of the city, but to also assist professionals and non-profession-
als in addressing and developing creative responses to the challenges
that many cities are facing today.
Images taken by James Arteaga

18. Internship Project
Research Seminar
Carlos Estrada, PhD Candidate from Queensland University of
Technology (QUT) in Brisbane, Australia was invited to City Space
Architecture for a research seminar where he presented his
current PhD research at the the Urban Informatics Lab, QUT.
His thesis research titled, “Imagining the Unseen City: A Par-
ticipatory Ethnographic Study to Reveal Marginal Constructions
of Nocturnal Urban Space,” examines the affordances of digital
technologies and internet-based interactions for enabling
marginalized groups, in this case immigrants and night-shift work-
ers, to construct nocturnal spaces, arguing that current technolo-
gies influence the way urban users experience their environment.
His research focuses on the production of urban imaginaries as
a research strategy to engage marginalised individuals with the
co-creation of narratives about their unique way to be citizens,
with the ultimate goal being to challenge dominant and
exclusionary schemes, present in policy-making practices, by
positioning worldviews of misrepresented citizens.
Image from LinkedIn

19. Internship Project
Research Seminar
The research seminar was meant to be a way of learning about the different
research being done at the Urban Informatics Lab, City Space Architecture,
and Carleton Immersive Media Studio.
The first session of the seminar was a more intimate discussion between the
team at City Space Architecture and Carlos Estrada. We discussed the
similarities between both of our projects including:
- Public Space
- Diasporic/Immigrant Communities
- Technology
- The Right to the City
The second session of the seminar was attended by multiple different people
including students, professionals, and academics. This session was an
opportunity to further discuss the work being done by Carlos Estrada in rela-
tion to technology and its use for urban planning in the city.
The seminar became a chance to further think about the work we were doing at
City Space Architecture, specifically where this work-in-progress project could
go in the future, and how it could be of use for municipal planners.
The potential for future collaborations were also discussed, specifically collab-
orating to participate at the Annual Meeting of the Association of American
Geographers being held on April 5-9, 2017 in Boston.

20. Internship Project
Final Work-In-Progress
3D models of our case study
area were developed where
precision was not important
since the purpose was to
illustrate what could be done
with further work and
research.
Separate dense clouds were
developed for each open
square and each connecting
road.
These dense clouds were
then merged using Agisoft
PhotoScan, and Geomagic
Studio.

21. Internship Project
Final Work-In-Progress
The platform used to attempt to
illustrate the Spirit of Places,
through the mapping the tangible,
intangible, and living heritage, was
UMAP.
This website uses OpenStreetMap
layers as its basis to then add other
information onto the map.
Some of the intangible and living
heritage layers mapped included:
- Historic Events
- Graffiti & Street Art
- Legends, Folklores & Myths
- Everyday Social Practices &
Situations
- Place Names
- Perceptions of Space
- Use of Buildings

22. Conference Working Paper Submission
8th International Conference of the Arab Society for Computer
Aided Architectural Design (ASCAAD) organised at SOAS
University of London (November 7-8, 2016)
Understanding (In)tangible Cultural Landscapes: Digital tools as
a medium to explore the complexity of the urban space
Abstract: The cultural heritage landscape (CHL) of the urban
space in cities is the result of multiple layers of complexity,
encompassing both the tangible built environment, and
intangible cultural values that together influence the living
heritage that forms the Spirit of Place. This paper explores the
gap in the intangible and living heritage documentation of CHLs
by using a section of public space in the medieval historic
centre of Bologna, Italy. Digital technology is used to propose a
new paradigm in the study of the complex link between the
tangible, intangible and living cultural heritage present in the
public spaces of a city’s cultural heritage landscape.

23. Future Work
Collaboration between other field of study is needed to further understand the
intangible and living elements that exist in the physical urban environment.
Research is needed to explore and experiment the types of affordable tools/
technologies that exist today in both the private and public sector that can
support the digitial documentation of the non-tangible elements of the physical
urban environment.
Virtual reality and augmented reality are technologies that need to be further
explored and tested in this type of reserach since they can provide a further
step in the documentation and understanding of the built environment through
immersive digitial experiences. This technology can also support the develop-
ment of afforbale tools that can be used by different people who are interested
in better understanding the built environment such as municipal planners, ar-
chitects, and local residents.
*There are no limits or boundaries to this work-in-progress project
Images taken by James Arteaga

24. Thank You!
Merci!
Grazie!