Augmented Reality and the Future of Cities


Foundation: Knight Foundation

credit: Statesman

Niantic Inc. shared the outcomes of the first ever symposium, "Augmenting Cities: A Playful Path to Community," hosted in partnership with the Knight Foundation to leverage the latest Augmented Reality (AR) technology to positively impact communities.

The symposium was held at the Oakland Museum of California on September 23rd and 24th. The symposium is an invite-only event that gathered 150 attendees of diverse backgrounds and disciplines to reflect on "how the future of people, cities, and technology will be shaped and evolve through AR."

The symposium's topics include: Designing augmented cities, "Art of Rethinking Technology," Hybrid Flaneur, transforming urban environments, designing inclusive and accessible playable cities, how "place" impacts emotions, and enabling technologies of AR cities.

The symposium featured talks from thought leaders as well as AR audio experiences and walking tours to experience Niantic's location-based AR products around Oakland. Read the Entire Article


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Ganesh Natarajan is the Founder and Chairman of 5FWorld, a new platform for funding and developing start-ups, social enterprises and the skills eco-system in India. In the past two decades, he has built two of India’s high-growth software services companies – Aptech and Zensar – almost from scratch to global success.