Information Technology Reference
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cities as complex time-based media, symphonies produced by millions of people at
the same time in their polyphonic way of acting, moving, interpreting, perceiving
and transforming the ambient around themselves: a massive, emergent, real-time,
dissonant and randomly harmonic, work of time-based art with millions of authors
that change all the time.
In this, our mental maps - the personal representations of the city which we build
in our minds to navigate them to fulfill our needs and desires - live a complex life
as our perception joins into the great performance of the city.
Dissonance is the essence of the city itself, and represents its complexity, density
and opportunities for interaction.
Harmony represents affordances, the things which are recognized and shared by
different cultures. Those elements of the perceptive landscape onto which we can
agree
upon, which we recognize and attribute compatible meanings, allowing us
to collaborate, meet, do things together. For example, Haken and Portugali (
2003
)
have suggested a broad definition of landmarks to refer to any distinguished city
elements that shape our mental map. Or as Appleyard (
1969
), Golledge and Spector
(
1978
) who have conducted studies about the
imageability
of urban elements not
because of their visual stimulus but because they possess some personal, historical,
or cultural meaning.
We can imagine to design the affordances of places and spaces. We can use
the understanding of what is consistently recognized and understood to design the
elements of space/time which will describe to people what is allowed or prohibited,
suggested or advised against, possible or imaginable. Lynch's concepts of legibility
and imageability are closely related to James J. Gibson's notion of affordances
developed in his direct perception theory, according to which the objects of the
environment can afford different activities to various individuals and contexts. And,
again, in Haken and Portugali (
2003
), all elements of a city afford remembering, as
they shape in the mental maps in human minds.
In a further step in the direction of citizen activation, we can also imagine to make
this type of understanding widely known and usable, to enable people to express
themselves more effectively and powerfully.
These scenarios have become radically viable with the widespread of ubiquitous
technologies. Nomadic devices (such as smartphones) and their applications we are
able to merge our physical understanding of the world with the digital one forming
a new physicality, visuality and tactility which shape our everyday experiences of
the world.
According to Mitchell's “City of Bits” (
1996
), McCullough's Digital Ground
(
2005
), Zook's and Graham's DigiPlace (
2007
) we are constantly immersed in
emergent networks of interconnected data, information and knowledge which is
produced by millions of different sources and subjects in the course of their daily
lives. This data and information radically shapes the ways in which we have learned
to work, learn, collaborate, relate, consume and perceive our environment.
If we are strolling in a park and we receive a notification of some sort on our
smartphone, the natural environment could instantly transform into an ubiquitous,
temporary office. If we want to make a decision about a certain thing we would like
