Considering Communities, Diversity and the Production of Locality in the Design of Networked Urban Screens

Abstract

Abstract.Highly diverse settings such as London (with people from ~179 countries speaking ~300 languages) are unique in that ethnic or socio-cultural backgrounds are no longer sufficient to generate a sense of place, belonging and community. Instead, residents actively perform place building activities on an ongoing basis, which we believe is of great importance when deploying interactive situated technologies in public spaces. This paper investigates community and place building within a complex multicultural context. We approached this using ethnography, complemented with workshops in the wild. By studying the relationships arising between different segments of the community and two networked screen nodes, we examine the place building activities of residents, and how screen nodes are incorporated into them. Our research suggests that urban screens will be framed (and eventually used) as part of this continuing process of social, spatial and cultural construction. This highlights the importance of enabling socially meaningful relations between the people mediated by these technologies.

Transdisciplinary approaches to urban computing

“…Place is also always affected by certain power structures that limit and create possibilities, and it is within this framework that people give meanings to spaces, making them places. Motta et al (2013) note that place-building activities people employ in their everyday life are highly varied, and are as much about appropriation as they are about the negotiation and control of space when interacting with other people. Further, place-building practices through situated technologies also involve an element of performance, which people enact when interacting with technologies in public spaces.…”

Urban computing in theory and practice

“…Motta et al [41] note that place building activities people employ in their everyday life are highly varied, and are as much about appropriation as they are about the negotiation and control of space when interacting with other people. Miller [40] describes place building as an intellectual, symbolic and material practice that not only enables the production of a sense of place, but also promotes "the human capacity to expand worlds towards other potentially distant horizons and more complex outcomes of life".…”

“…These performances can be understood to add to the sociological and cultural milieu in which the performance acquires its meaning and cultural significance. Hence, place building includes an intricate interplay between the space and the interaction with and between people and technology, and extends it with cultural dimensions, making it a useful addition to the tools that can be applied when considering the deployment of a technology in a given public setting [41].…”

Understanding future challenges for networked public display systems in community settings

“…North et al [34] and Motta et al [30] report on the processes involved in developing a public display network with multiple stakeholders across multiple settings, and on the process of cocreating the content for it with a local community. Their works are important as they show what North et al call tension-space, i.e., challenges involved in multi-stakeholder collaboration, and also point out the importance of involving the local community in the process of co-creating the content (similarly to Houde et al mentioned above).…”