This blog is a continuation of an earlier blog where it throws light on Manual castell’s network society and spatial manifestation. Public spaces are the lungs of our cities where the social-cultural and economic exchanges are evidently making our cities vibrant and livable. In today’s technologically driven era, we are heading towards artificial intelligence becoming a cyborg and a mediator of social-cultural and economic exchanges.
This blog is written by Varsha Verma, an urban designer from Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute for architecture and environmental studies. She is currently practicing as a Designer and Architect. Her works address the changing nature of softer and micro nuances in everyday life where people-meaning-spaces become the core interest. She is also a freelancing photographer and unravels the city through public expressions and architectural sensibility.
ICT refers to technologies that provide access to information through telecommunications. It is similar to Information Technology (IT) but focuses primarily on communication technologies. This includes the Internet, wireless networks, cell phones, and other communication mediums. ICT also manages techniques used in information handling, processing, and disseminating; their applications; computer networking and communication and their integration with humans and machines; and linked with the social and cultural matter. This penetrated into all areas of human life, promoting economic and social development and the improvement of people’s living standards. In the past few decades, information and communication technologies have provided society with a vast array of new communication capabilities. For example, people can communicate in real-time with others in different countries using technologies such as instant messaging, voice over IP (VoIP), and video-conferencing. Social networking websites like Facebook allow users from all over the world to remain in contact and communicate on a regular basis. ICT is having its impression on the evolution of cities in a new concept (virtual world) to make cities smart. Modern information and communication technologies have created a "global village," in which people can communicate with others across the world as if they were living next door. For this reason, ICT is often studied in the context of how modern communication technologies affect our society. Though ICT is a part of the third revolution but it changes the way of living and the way we interact with our cities.
Technology is leading towards isolation providing us everything at one spot resulting in reduced physical interactions, thus disconnecting us from the physical world around & for illustration work from home, online food delivery, etc. Then what about various beautiful urban spaces?? What will be the role of these??? Need to think about it.
All these are redefining the planning and purpose of designing. Public places like gardens, Streets, squares are changing their functions for various users. Social Gatherings spaces are converting into malls, cafes, Wi-Fi restaurants, etc. to meet present needs in this digital culture. IT sectors are designing everything in a building providing all amenities inside only. Online food delivery system handicapped us to move across streets various spaces which were design to form public realm. Streets become Road nowadays & vehicle is the main focus for design. All such important places of our cities are changing their functions which create a new way of living in a networked society. Cities work through in this era with three-parameter People, Place, and Technology. The below Figure shows the relation between these three to gives a clear idea of this digital era.
Public spaces - Function as a place to meet (new) people and as a place to participate in society. Whether this interaction is between next-door neighbors or the chat at the bus station, contributing to the neighborhood by co-designing or just being the ‘eyes on the streets’ and thereby contributing to neighborhood safety. (EUKN)
Public spaces are created for ways to stimulate encounters between people and ways to enhance and stimulate social participation mainly. Public spaces play a vital role in the social and economic life of communities. Public spaces are living organisms, which respond to varying socioeconomic conditions & cultural patterns of cities. All public space creates a gathering place, humanizing them by mutual contact, providing them with shelter against the haphazard traffic, and freeing them from the tension of bustling through the web of streets. The existence and identity of public spaces which may be planned or naturally evolved are open spaces, public parks, gardens, maidans, chowks or squares, plazas, lakes, streets & boulevards. In the beginning, people came together for social reasons. Later, public places also assumed religious, civic, and market functions. In the middle ages, social, economic, and religious life happened in the city’s squares and streets, in places adjacent to the cathedral or important civic buildings, and on the streets where people lived, and where shops and workshops were located. Our lives are actually lived more in the public realm than inside our homes. We spend the majority of our time outdoors than indoors. Good, well planned & beautiful public realm thus will create positive energy, enthusiasm and make a better happier society.
New kinds of public spaces and meeting places are now being created in towns and cities, which can be an important social resource. The penetration of technology in people’s lives and the use of the city are transforming our physical living space into a meditated and hybrid place. Digital development poses a societal challenge with reflections on social practices and on planning and design approaches to public spaces. Today’s conception of outdoor space cannot escape from being injected inside the relatively new scene of simulation which constantly changes the way people experience the given inputs. This scene has dramatically modified the series of our somehow culturally pre-structured views or habitual frames of reference about what is real, virtual, represented, perceived, fragmented, or holistically experienced. (Cyber Parks – The Interface between People, Places, and Technology)
Transformation in various spaces in the digital era. : Shows the influence of technology and changing scenarios for our cities.
1) Traditional Street to High Street. 2) Physical interactions to virtual interaction 3) Traditional housing to gated societies 4) Traditional market to shopping mall 5) Common space to the privatization of spaces 6) Connecting era to disconnect era.
An isolated individual, cut loose from the sociability of urban life. The spaces which are formed due to ICT parks have an impact on their social life also disconnection and distance happened in between these people due to lack of such kind of interaction. All are busy focusing on individual work with isolation from the community bonding hence urban experience seems problematic since many of the classic locales of public interaction were commercial. Need to think of the solution to re-establishing the public realm in this era with the help of communication technology.
As we grow up with this century, the internet seduces us & further removes us from our localities. It is true that we need a global connection and technology to work in this globalized world but what about its disconnection from society? It promotes an individual to work globally, which results in a fractured public space that reduced the meaning of socialness in their life.
“Social life is atomized, leaving individuals seeking narcissistic pleasure in ‘placeless’ environments devoted to consumer capitalism” (Reference: Public space, urban space, and electronic space: Would the Real City please stand up? – Mike Grang)
The rise in virtual technologies had somehow become bound tightly with the decline in the amenity of urban communal space. This rise in networked technologies creates a realm inside or within the building premises which blurring the dimension of inside and out and declining urban interaction with the communities and public spaces. And this kind of public realm converted into a digital realm within buildings. It is true that we can use digital techniques to some extent to design such spaces to re-establishing the public realm or to make spaces more interactive in terms of social connection and behavior. Also, communication and information technology have allowed us to isolate ourselves from public life and spaces even further minimizing the need for face-to-face communication & travel. Wired and wireless technologies of these spaces erode the systems and function of traditional urban public spaces like boulevards, squares, urban parks that was to connect people from various social groups and statuses.
So main focus here is to analyze the changing nature of urban spaces due to the influence of digital technology usage in urban spaces and creating the framework for public life. Public spaces as living organisms, which respond to varying socioeconomic conditions & cultural patterns of cities create a gathering place, humanizing them by a mutual contact, and freeing them from the tension of the bustling web of streets.
1. Strategies to address and bring back the vibrancy and liveliness to public spaces in this technologically driven era.
For humanizing this contemporary geography we need to focus on an amalgamation of physical as well as a digital public realm to maintain interest for various user groups. The diagram shows the basic criteria for quality of space with respect to any site to maintain its vibrancy and liveliness to public spaces.
If we talked about this technology-driven era main focus should be to combine the digital realm with physical spaces to increase more inclusive spaces. Also need to focus on four main parameters with respect to any site such as
1) Connect: As exclusive design and planning promote disconnection from various spaces which leads towards isolated and less active spaces.
2) Recreate: Recreate small plazas or vacant spaces via a digital platform to make them vibrant and socially active.
3) Mix: Encourage diversity through a variety of built forms. (As a diverse mix of residential and non-residential land use reduces the travel and ensures the activation of public spaces at all hours.
4) Walkable: Provision of buffer space between built form and street allows maintaining streets lively and more users friendly.
5) Strategies to address and bring back the vibrancy and liveliness to public spaces in this technologically driven era categorize into three parts with respect to any site.
6) Strategies for open spaces & built form: Interesting events with the help of digital media or function to attract people which increases the visibility of spaces. For e.g. digital library, automated yoga center.
7) Strategies for urban streets: Activate streets with the help of digital streets of digital intervention. Strengthened neighborhood interaction and encourage active transformation & safe streets.
8) Strategies for edge improvement: Increase Access to open space at the local level, district level
And regional level. Also creating new connections, adding biodiversity.
Do like her work.
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