CityBuildAR: Enhancing Community Engagement in Placemaking Through Mobile Augmented Reality

Daneesha Ranasinghe; Nayomi Kankanamge; Chathura De Silva; Nuwani Kangana; Rifat Mahamood; Tan Yigitcanlar

doi:10.3390/fi17030115

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CityBuildAR: Enhancing Community Engagement in Placemaking Through Mobile Augmented Reality

Journal article

Open access

Peer reviewed

CityBuildAR: Enhancing Community Engagement in Placemaking Through Mobile Augmented Reality

Daneesha Ranasinghe, Nayomi Kankanamge, Chathura De Silva, Nuwani Kangana, Rifat Mahamood and Tan Yigitcanlar

Future Internet, Vol.17(3), pp.1-36

2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/fi17030115

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Abstract

mobile augmented reality

placemaking

public spaces

participatory planning

community engagement

smart city

urban technology

artificial intelligence (AI)

generative AI

Mostly, public places are planned and designed by professionals rather engaging the community in the design process. Even if the community engaged, the engagement process was limited to hand drawings, manual mappings, or public discussions, which limited the general public to visualize and well-communicate their aspirations with the professionals. Against this backdrop, this study intends to develop a mobile application called “CityBuildAR”, which uses Augmented Reality technology that allows the end user to visualize their public spaces in a way they want. CityBuildAR was developed by the authors using the Unity Real-Time Development Platform, and the app was developed for an Android Operating System. The app was used to assess community interests in designing open spaces by categorizing participants into three groups: those with limited, average, and professional knowledge of space design. The open cafeteria of the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka served as the testbed for this study. The study findings revealed that: (a) Mobile Augmented Reality is an effective way to engage people with limited knowledge in space design to express their design thinking, (b) Compared to professionals, the general public wanted to have more green elements in the public space; (c) Compared to the professionals, the general public who were not conversant with the designing skills found the app more useful to express their ideas. The study guides urban authorities in their placemaking efforts by introducing a novel approach to effectively capture community ideas for creating inclusive public spaces.

Details

Title: CityBuildAR: Enhancing Community Engagement in Placemaking Through Mobile Augmented Reality
Authors: Daneesha Ranasinghe - University of Moratuwa
Nayomi Kankanamge - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Law and Society
Chathura De Silva - University of Moratuwa
Nuwani Kangana - University of Moratuwa
Rifat Mahamood - University of Moratuwa
Tan Yigitcanlar (Corresponding Author) - Queensland University of Technology
Publication details: Future Internet, Vol.17(3), pp.1-36
Publisher: MDPI AG
Date published: 2025
DOI: 10.3390/fi17030115
ISSN: 1999-5903
Copyright note: © 2025 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Data Availability: Data is available upon request to the corresponding author.
Organisation Unit: School of Law and Society
Language: English
Record Identifier: 991112034902621
Output Type: Journal article

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Collaboration types: Domestic collaboration; International collaboration
Web Of Science research areas: Computer Science, Information Systems