Shows how digital media connects people to their lived environments Every day, millions of people turn to small handheld screens to search for their destinations and to seek recommendations for places to visit. They may share texts or images of themselves and these places en route or after their journey is complete. We don’t consciously reflect on these activities and probably don’t associate these practices with constructing a sense of place. Critics have argued that digital media alienates users from space and place, but this book argues that the exact opposite is true: that we habitually use digital technologies to re-embed ourselves within urban environments. The Digital City advocates for the need to rethink our everyday interactions with digital infrastructures, navigation technologies, and social media as we move through the world. Drawing on five case studies from global and mid-sized cities to illustrate the concept of “re-placeing,” Germaine R. Halegoua shows how different populations employ urban broadband networks, social and locative media platforms, digital navigation, smart cities, and creative placemaking initiatives to turn urban spaces into places with deep meanings and emotional attachments. Through timely narratives of everyday urban life, Halegoua argues that people use digital media to create a unique sense of place within rapidly changing urban environments and that a sense of place is integral to understanding contemporary relationships with digital media.

This book looks at what makes a city smart by describing, challenging, and offering democratic alternatives to the view that the answer begins and ends with technology. Drawing on worldwide case studies documenting the redevelopment of old and the creation of new cities, it provides an essential guide to the future of urban life in a digital world.

Evolving out of a research project on information technology and society, the book explores the digitization of the American city. Laguerre examines the impact of changes to various sectors of society, brought about by the advent of information technology and the Internet upon daily life in the contemporary American metropolis. The book focuses on actual information technology practices in the Silicon Valley/San Francisco metropolitan area, explaining how those practices are remoulding social relations, global interaction and the workplace environment.

Shows how digital media connects people to their lived environments Every day, millions of people turn to small handheld screens to search for their destinations and to seek recommendations for places to visit. They may share texts or images of themselves and these places en route or after their journey is complete. We don’t consciously reflect on these activities and probably don’t associate these practices with constructing a sense of place. Critics have argued that digital media alienates users from space and place, but this book argues that the exact opposite is true: that we habitually use digital technologies to re-embed ourselves within urban environments. The Digital City advocates for the need to rethink our everyday interactions with digital infrastructures, navigation technologies, and social media as we move through the world. Drawing on five case studies from global and mid-sized cities to illustrate the concept of “re-placeing,” Germaine R. Halegoua shows how different populations employ urban broadband networks, social and locative media platforms, digital navigation, smart cities, and creative placemaking initiatives to turn urban spaces into places with deep meanings and emotional attachments. Through timely narratives of everyday urban life, Halegoua argues that people use digital media to create a unique sense of place within rapidly changing urban environments and that a sense of place is integral to understanding contemporary relationships with digital media.

Since the late 1990s, Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have been hailed as a potentially revolutionary feature of the planning and management of Western cities. Economic regeneration and place promotion strategies have exploited these new technologies; city management has experimented with electronically distributed services, and participation in public life and democratic decision-making processes can be made more flexible by the use of ICTs. All of these technological initiatives have often been presented and accessed via an urban front-end information site known as 'digital city' or 'city network.' Illustrated by a range of European case studies, this volume examines the social, political and management issues and potential problems in the establishment of an electronic layer of information and services in cities. The book provides a better understanding of the direction European cities are going towards in the implementation of ICTs in the urban arena.

This book examines the phenomenon of the “digital city” in the US by looking at three case studies: New York City, San Antonio, and Seattle. Kristin Scott considers how digital technologies are increasingly built into the logic and organization of urban spaces and argues that while each city articulates ideals such as those of open democracy, civic engagement, efficient governance, and enhanced security, competing capitalist interests attached to many of these digital technological programs make the “digital city” problematic.

Edited by thought leaders in the fields of urban informatics and urban interaction design, this book brings together case studies and examples from around the world to discuss the role that urban interfaces, citizen action, and city making play in the quest to create and maintain not only secure and resilient, but productive, sustainable and viable urban environments. The book debates the impact of these trends on theory, policy and practice. The individual chapters are based on blind peer reviewed contributions by leading researchers working at the intersection of the social / cultural, technical / digital, and physical / spatial domains of urbanism scholarship. The book will appeal not only to researchers and students, but also to a vast number of practitioners in the private and public sector interested in accessible content that clearly and rigorously analyses the potential offered by urban interfaces, mobile technology, and location-based services in the context of engaging people with open, smart and participatory urban environments.