Institute for Policy and Practice
Newcastle University
UK

Augmented Urban Spaces

Despite an ever-increasing usage of spatial and urban metaphors, such as the ‘digital’ or ‘virtual city’ of the 1990s and early 2000s, or the more recent ‘u-city’ developments in hi-tech intensive countries like South Korea, which have been widely used by agencies and companies involved in urban internet developments, the history of the relationships between the city and high technologies is not an entirely positive one. For many years, commentators from a variety of disciplines – architecture, planning, human geography, sociology and so on – have highlighted that if it was true that - on the one hand – physical public spaces in cities were threatened by a variety of problems related to commodification, fear of crime and lack of participation, the emergence of their virtual counterparts was not necessarily going to improve the city, potentially widening the gap between its spaces and its users. In the meantime, governments all over the World, including many developing countries, have been and still are promoting a degree of place-independent digitisation of civic functions and participation, under the e-government umbrella. These initiatives, initially conceived as Web portals to be used from home or public access points, but now being extended with mobile and wi-fi functionality, have often bee n based and predicated on the ‘anything, anytime, anywhere’ logic of displacement proper to the internet. This is all very well as long as delivering generic services to citizens is concerned, but its impact on how we use the city could still be seen as a potentially negative one. In the u-city, what is the point of being there, or being somewhere at all?

This presentation looks at ICT in the city from the point of view of the design and shaping of augmented spaces. It therefore rejects any ‘dualist’ and deterministic vision of a technological dimension ‘impacting’ on the city and changing it for the better, which is the scenario often portrayed by those technological entrepreneurs who have a primary interest in pushing – and selling – their technological ‘solutions’. It tries instead to look at space as one, un-divisible, complex and increasingly tech-rich, environment, which presents some interesting and indeed very challenging tensions. On the one hand it is argued here that traditional urban design principles and ways to look at the city should still inform and guide the shaping of urban augmented spaces. On the other hand it is acknowledged how some of the ‘normal’ spatial and social relationships described and dealt with by these principles can be extended and somehow challenged by ICT augmentation.

The presentation will therefore mention themes and raise issues like the need for a multi-disciplinary, strategic approach towards the shaping of augmented spaces; the centrality of ‘place’ in the debate and the need to focus on ways to enhance place specificities; the tension between ICT reinforcing ‘movement’ Vs ‘social’ space; the potential of ICT to encourage virtuous or vicious circles in the development of places, as the new capabilities of an augmented space can mean a decrease of spatial coherence and legibility as well as an increase of opportunities.

Can the ‘landscape of events’ that Paul Virilio has been referring to as an increasingly anti-spatial, real-time way to shape our living environment, be configured into something that reinforces place-based existences, something that is indeed a true, meaningful, human and urban landscape?

This presentation will try and conclude by reflecting on this and proposing a few ideas, guidelines and caveats which could help to inform those teams involved in conceiving the urban ‘living laboratories’ which can become the incubators for developing a place-positive augmented city.

Biography:

Alessandro Aurigi holds a Laurea in Architecture from Florence University (Italy) and a PhD from Newcastle University (UK). He currently works as a senior lecturer at Newcastle University, School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, where he is head of Architecture and member of the Global Urbanism Research Unit (GURU). In Newcastle he teaches architectural design and theories on the information age, high technologies and architecture. Previously, he has worked as a lecturer at the Bartlett School of the Built Environment, University College London and as a research fellow in the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA), UCL. His main research interests are studying the relationships between the emergence of the information society and the ways we imagine, conceive, design, and manage buildings and cities. Alex has produced several publications on the topic, among which the 2008 multi-disciplinary book Augmented Urban Spaces: Articulating the Physical and Electronic City (Ashgate, edited with Fiorella De Cindio), and the 2005 book Making the Digital City: The Early Shaping of Urban Internet Space (Ashgate). He has also published in a variety of international journals, including the Journal of Urban Technology, the Journal of Architectural and Planning Research, Knowledge, Technology and Policy, Springer’s LNCS and Town and Country Planning. He is has been invited to address conferences and participate in debates on urban development and the role of ICT in it. He has given invited speeches in South Korea (2008), Portugal (2007 and 2002) Italy (2005, 2004, 1999 and 1997) The Netherlands (2003) and Spain (2001), and has been invited and funded to participate in research in Japan by Japan Science and Technology (JST) governmental agency in 2004. He has refereed for research councils, academic journals and publishers, such as AHRC, Environment and Planning B, Journal of Urban Design, Journal of Urban Technology, Urban Studies, MIT Press, Ashgate, Knowledge Technology and Policy, LNCS.