Urban Atmospheres: Proactive archeology of our urban landscapes and emerging technology is a project coming from Intel Research Berkeley. One phenomenon the group is studying is Participatory Urbanism; they explain:

Participatory Urbanism presents an important new shift in mobile device usage - from communication tool to “networked mobile personal measurement instrument”. We explore how these new “instruments” enable entirely new participatory urban lifestyles and create novel mobile device usage models. . . .

We argue there are two indisputable facts about our future mobile devices: (1) that they will be equipped with more sensing and processing capabilities and (2) that they will also be driven by an architecture of participation and democracy that encourages users to add value to their tools and applications as they use them.

Urban Atmospheres has a detailed, illustrated discussion here.
Via Mobile Audience