AT THE CROSSROADS OF THE PHYSICAL AND DIGITAL : DIGITIZATION AND THE URBAN EXPERIENCE IN THE CITY

Abstract

Cyberspace; virtual urban space. We are entering an era of electronically extended bodies living at the intersection points of the physical and virtual worlds, of occupation and interaction through tele-presence as well as physical presence. The rapid infiltration of the digital revolution refreshed how the society communicates and interacts in the last decade. The floodgates opened and the electronic proliferation is unstoppable. Emergence of telecommunications-induced fragmentation and a hybrid recombination of traditional urban physical types with new, “virtual” urban forms that parallel, complement or even compete with existing urban brick, concrete and steel is inevitable. Although a total devour of our existing urban spaces by the autonomous electronic paradigm is not foreseeable, dramatic changes will still be impacted on the experiential and physicality of urban form. Digital telecommunications is a superimposed layer of infrastructure onto the existing urban fabric and transformation will take place through the interface between electronic spaces and physical spaces. This new fragmented informational city; a “space of flows” which will become the new spatial logic underlying the urban transformation, contrary to the traditional concept of physical urban elements being essential to a city. However, through this layer of telecommunications induced fragmentation, I hypothesize that physical urban forms when cocktailed with electronic spaces will concoct new hybrid urban spaces which are multi-faceted, multi layered and they serve to restructure, (re)territorialise and reinvent urban forms that are once forgotten, abandoned or initially banal. It is also true that physical urban forms face the risks of spatial identities and "placelessness‟ due to the overwhelming layers of electronic spaces interfering with physicality but perhaps, because of this inevitable enmeshment of electronic spaces and non-places, the physical forms can also be synergised beyond its limiting boundaries.