Virtual Cooperation of Creative Teams in a Hackathon for Urban Revitalization

Abstract

We are living in times of increasing interest in urban revitalization projects where new forms of collaborative practices emerge from transformation spaces to create new kinds of liveable cities in the future. These innovation projects are determined by interactions especially between actors of Creative Industries, corporates, entrepreneurs and citizens for the targeted promotion of creativity, innovation and sustainability on a regional level. Organized field-level-events such as hackathons, urban labs or sprints can be important mechanisms in the transformation of a field as they may configure it. They are characterized by interdisciplinary and creative teams and require collaboration practices. It is assumed, that the design of adjusted coordination and cooperation practices for the creative and interdisciplinary team participating in a hackathon is crucial to reach a set goal for this field-level event, especially in virtual setting, here caused by COVID restrictions. This leads to the defined research question: How do creative teams coordinate and cooperate during and virtually organized field-level event for urban revitalization in current times of crisis? Through research conducted as part of the dissertation initial results show important virtual cooperation and coordination forms of creative teams during an organized virtual field-level event for urban revitalization. Here, different teams worked on a solution to a pre-defined problem using digital collaborative tools (e.g. Zoom, Miro). Based on a qualitative case study, field investigations rely on multiple data sources such as video-observations, group discussions and expert interviews and were conducted in the EU-Project “CINEMA”.