AR and Public Participation in Maputo City: An Exploratory Study

This study examines the potential of using Augmented Reality to increase urban participation to deal with identified problems in Maputo city, Mozambique, southern Africa. The study’s aim is twofold; first, it seeks to add to the nascent literature on Augmented Reality (AR) in Africa; second, to experiment with AR for public participation in urban Maputo to explore the affordances of AR and examine the possibility and limitations of deploying the technology for such purposes. The study concludes that AR can enhance public participation and engagement with public spaces in Maputo city. However, technical and economic limitations must be considered when designing projects to deploy AR technologies in the city.