Public Space, Urban Space and Electronic Space: Would the Real City Please Stand Up?

Mike Crang
Additional contact information
Mike Crang: Department of Geography, University of Durham, Science Laboratories, South Road, Durham, DH1 3LE, UK, MA.Crang@Durham.ac.uk

Urban Studies, 2000, vol. 37, issue 2, 301-317

Abstract: Commentary around the electronic media has raised issues of political action, community formation and changing identities. This paper explores how the notions of 'public space' can inform this debate over electronic media. It examines the metaphorical adoption of urban models to look at electronic sociality and suggests four principle approaches: cities set in or against world flows, suburbanised telecities, communitarian visions and accounts that appeal to a renewed public sphere. The paper examines how these share many assumptions. However, instead of trying to sift these metaphors by contrasting them to a purported real world, the paper examines how they shape an electronic architecture. Spatial metaphors and electronic practices are seen as entangled and shaping each other. The paper suggests that the different metaphors for the city reflect a range of anxieties about and desires for urban life. In this sense, the 'real' city is the indefinable complexity and folding of spaces—lying outside the visualisations offered of cyberspace.

Date: 2000
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1080/0042098002203 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:37:y:2000:i:2:p:301-317

DOI: 10.1080/0042098002203

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Urban Studies from Urban Studies Journal Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().