New media give rise to a new set of spatial strategies and tactics that can be employed to either build on a centralized technocratic view of the city or lead to the definition of a new type of public.
Published in Footprint Journal #16 – Commoning as Differentiated Publicness, this article examines the new ways in which the proliferation of data due to the unprecedented amount of available information as well as our computational capacity to geolocate, store and process it, is influencing our behaviour and spatial practices. Reading through 20th century theories of understanding space as an inseparable interweaving of the physical and the virtual, we attempt to explain how to understand new media and informational space in relation to the physical urban territory and note that its diminishing role related to globalisation is not as total as it may seem.
New media enable the interaction and mixing of information with the physical space by means of visual representation. They are able to stir and change the relationship between the material and immaterial layers of space, but they are never fully able to merge them into one entity.
We question how both informational space and its relationship with the territory relate to different urban actors, especially focusing on the individual user and his behavior in that new urban condition. A new type of citizen is emerging, engaging in a ludic attitude, not anymore towards his physical environment alone, but by adapting his course of actions based on multiple real time informational inputs. Multiplying this effect we face a new form of swarming collectivity emerging unintendedly, with new media playing a crucial role in the redefinition of the ‘common’ in urban environments. Technocratic use of information-rich applications upon which cities entrust more and more of their workings also inspire counter acts of artivism that use the same media in subversive ways.