Digital Unitary Urbanism Investigating the role of the internet in the emergence of mobile and locat

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Digital Unitary UrbanismInvestigating the role
of the internet in the emergence of mobile and
location-based technologies in urban space

• Nicolas Cederstrøm
• Tau Ulv Lenskjold
• Rune Huvendick Jensen
• IT University of Copenhagen / CityNova

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Digital Unitary Urbanism (masters thesis 2004)

• Field of interest

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Digital Unitary Urbanism

• Theoretical conceptualisation of a new kind of
  urbanism characterised by the ability of
  individuals and groups to appropriate and
  co-create urban space
• Re-thinking of the situationistic notion of
  Unitary Urbanism
• A way to grasp changing social and cultural
  practices and phenomena in urban space
• From ubiquitous access to ubiquitous technology
  as an intrinsic condition of everyday urban life
• Urban space as constituted by social and physical
  space

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The internet as remote access to urban space

• Previously we have considered in situ access to
  urban space
• The internet as infrastructural backbone to
  ubiquitous technologies enables remote access to
  urban space
• How does remote access constitute the
  appropriation and co-creation of urban space
  identified in DUU?
• Two quick case-studies

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Urban Tapestries

• (Proboscis, London) A location-based system
  enabling people in a certain urban neighbourhood
  to annotate urban space and share everyday
  information.

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Mogi

• (Newt, Tokyo) A mobile game in which players
  online and players in the city cooperate to
  collect and exchange digital items placed in
  urban space.

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Urban Tapestries
Mogi

• Asynchronous
• Remote annotation of
• urban space
• Physical space as context
• Shared social knowledge
• Inclusive (public domain)

• Synchronous (real-time)
• Cross locational cooperation in
• urban space
• Physical space as gameboard
• Gaming communities
• Exclusive (subscribe to participate)

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A preliminary typology of remote access to urban
space

• As appropriation of physical space
• through augmentation.
• As co-creation of social space
• through (cross locational) collaboration.

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Further research

• Representations of remote presence in social and
  physical space (telepresence)
• Spatial ontologies (mixed reality, virtual vs.
  real)
• Location based games the significance of remote
  presence and co-operative social space