Digital Innovation
The first step in delivering a destination designed for tomorrow is understanding that our meaning of ‘place’ has changed. We no longer just inhabit physical spaces, but digital ones too: in 2020, we spent an average of 6 hours and 59 minutes online per day, created 2.8 billion communities on Reddit and spent $1.31bn on Roblox in the first 6 months of 2021.
Digital placemaking is the process of creating connections between people and the digital worlds they inhabit. It often focuses on helping people unlock more immersive experiences, cultivate and express their identity and find a sense of belonging with like-minded people online, but when a user’s physical and digital worlds start to speak to, and learn from, each other, the impact is unmatched.
Singapore consistently tops the charts for the smart and liveable cities. Its approach is simple: embed technology and digital innovation throughout the physical city in order to respond to its citizens’ ever-changing needs. Adopting this people-centric approach reduces the risk of failure and meets demands for our physical and digital worlds to overlap, collaborating to deliver smart, personal, integrated experiences across any touch point.
Uber. Spotify. Online Doctors. These are all integrated experiences that combine physical and digital properties to create a seamless, personal, useful experience that meets specific needs and solves specific pain points better than its physical-only predecessors. Integrated experiences happen on a spectrum. They can be functional solutions to everyday problems like accessibility or way finding. Or they can be artistic and creative moments that spark delight and wonder.
Again, take Singapore as an example. Digitising the healthcare system made it easier for Singapore’s ageing population to access face-to-face patient care through their smartphones, creating a healthier city and healthier citizens. AI chatbots were created to talk to the elderly in a bid to reduce loneliness and isolation by facilitating ongoing conversation and sharing relevant community events.
Through Singapore’s Smart Nation app, citizens can report municipal issues, receive location-specific environmental alerts on air quality, temperature and rainfall and access information tailored to young families and elderly residents.

Approaching innovative placemaking in a more creative, emotionally-connective way, Minneapolis installed a 40’x75’ inflatable ‘collective mood ring’ that changed minute-to-minute according to the real-time moods of Minneapolis’ Twitter users in order to encourage meaningful connection and conversation in an under-utilised park.
In the UK’s most playful city, Playable City Bristol was the launchpad for Watershed’s global vision. Putting people and play at the heart of the future city with smart technologies that cultivate connections, the programme linked innovators from all over the world with one goal: to playfully rethink public space and experiment with digital innovation to infuse fun and meaning into them.
One project, Urbanimals, saw origami-like creatures projected onto surfaces across the city. Using motion sensors to trigger the projections, locals found themselves visiting previously unexplored areas of the place they call home in a Pokemon-Go-esque hunt for cute digital creatures and instead finding a newfound appreciation for their urban landscape.