CyberParks aims at advancing knowledge on the relationship between information and communication technologies and the socially sustainable production and usage of public open spaces. Such research necessitates a solid methodological base. Urban ethnography brings together a number of perspectives and approaches to deal with cultural and social aspects of urban life, and as such it is able to provide an integrated methodological framework for the study of technology-public space relationship. The ethnographic approach means, by definition, an in-depth, micro-scale look at the phenomena under concern. However, the technological dimension makes the relationship between people and space more complex. This is not simply because an additional layer of analysis is added; it comes as a result of the emergence of multiple connections between the real and the virtual. From an ethnographic perspective, this requires the researcher to capture, explore and understand the cyber-social phenomena and dynamics in a multifaceted, hybrid, triangulated and crossreferenced way. This makes ethnographic research much more complicated but more interesting as well. The current chapter attempts to outline such an analytical framework to guide empirical research on the issues. This framework draws on the public space literature and adds the technological dimension brought in by the CyberParks project. We argue that this enriches the ethnographic approach providing a more integrated framework for the analysis of the relationship between people, space and technology.

Co-creation can be defined as the involvement of citizens in the initiation and/or the design process of public services in order to (co)create beneficial outcomes and value for society. Mediated public open spaces are ideal environments for co-creation to emerge due to the involvement of the community and ICT in the knowledge creation. The aims of the research presented in the chapter are two-fold: to conduct a mapping activity in order to collect the insights on civic technologies promoting the creation of open public spaces through the use of ICT and to define the critical dimensions in designing cocreative ecosystems. The mapping strategy was conducted by evaluating the civic technologies in Lithuania and Bulgaria. The insights from the empirical exercise allow to draw managerial and organizational recommendations for strengthening the collective efforts of citizens, IT developers, public and governmental institutions in creating open, inclusive and reflective open public spaces.

This paper delivers actionable recommendations towards building a rationale for activating and promoting Underground Built Heritage (UBH) based on the nexus heritage, territory and society, and making use of existing literature and findings from five international cases. The research was conducted in the framework of the working group on Planning Approaches of the COST Action Underground4value. The analysis of the cases aims to provide guidelines for this working group and to benchmark good practices in activating UBH. It highlights the importance of community-led initiatives, leadership and dialogue and power sharing between the local/regional authorities and communities aiming for better understanding of the potential of UBH. The successes and/or failures of the five cases emphasise the importance of knowledge and experience in participatory approaches. Success was verified, when effectiveness and democratic principles were combined in the planning process, and local history is integrated with citizen science, co-creation and placemaking. The analysed approaches stimulate a new hybrid layer for activating UBH, provide mechanisms of mediation between people and heritage, and contribute to cultural and social dimensions of sustainability. This is a highly challenging endeavour, as it seeks to support and advance a sound understanding of UBH as a sustainable resource, backed by strategic stakeholder dialogue and contextual knowledge. Such effort requires a dynamic understanding of UBH values, knowledge, abilities and skills, towards creating more effective coalitions of “actors” within localities, by developing structures, which encourage long term collaborative relationships.

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The centre point of this chapter is how to increase the resilience of the urban environment by integrating the cyberpark in its spatial planning and policies. Disaster prevention and preparedness are a priority in resilience, and two major related sectors are infrastructure and information. Significant components of prevention infrastructure in cities are public/free spaces. Public spaces are used as refuge in cases of natural disasters (earthquakes, fires etc.), but also as spaces of physical contact, communication, community bonding, and provision of social services in cases of social crises (the cases of refugees). Information, as the other major sector of prevention, may vary from dissemination of information in an individual basis, to information exchange in a collective basis, the latter being of significant value in cases of prevention. The collective basis of information exchange is further expanded and technologically improved through Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). This chapter focuses on the psychological and social roles of 'the cyberpark' in extraordinary events and illustrate the importance of its physical form and spatiality. Cyberparks combines and explores the relationship between Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and urban open/public spaces. In this sense, they combine elements of both, prevention infrastructure and information, and they constitute significant components of urban resilience.