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For citizens, the model provides an interface onto the same processes, the same city. It gives them a user interface for governance, in which they play an intrinsic role. Holes in, say, the service of the bike-sharing networks are visible to all, over data feeds and multiple diverse platforms, and a delayed letter from the government department responsible, promising a subsequent investigation, is no longer going to be seen as an appropriate response. Where professional design interventions are not required, the city designs itself. With the model as common platform, there is sufficient data to indicate the likely impact of improvements, experiments, and adaptations to the city. A new mode of civic engagement emerges.

How do you set aside the mind space to see patterns, make connections, and read what people want? How do you find the right thing to work on?

During a 2006 field study in Uganda, Chipchase and his colleagues stumbled upon an innovative use of the shared village phone, a practice called sente. Ugandans are using prepaid airtime as a way of transferring money from place to place, something that’s especially important to those who do not use banks. Someone working in Kampala, for instance, who wishes to send the equivalent of $5 back to his mother in a village will buy a $5 prepaid airtime card, but rather than entering the code into his own phone, he will call the village phone operator (“phone ladies” often run their businesses from small kiosks) and read the code to her. She then uses the airtime for her phone and completes the transaction by giving the man’s mother the money, minus a small commission. “It’s a rather ingenious practice,” Chipchase says, “an example of grass-roots innovation, in which people create new uses for technology based on need.”