The City in the Age of Web 2.0 A New Synergistic Relationship Between Place and People

Hardey, M. (2007). The city in the age of web 2.0 a new synergistic relationship between place and people. Information, Communication & Society, 10(6):867 – 884.

In this paper Michael Hardey examines how the development of Web 2.0 resources is providing new ways of seeing, experiencing and understanding the city. A particular focus is on the increasing role of user-generated geolocational data and the opportunities this affords to reimagine and experience the metropolis with mobile technologies acting as a conduit. It considers the raise of ‘citizen media’ and ‘new cartography’ as ways to map and visualize the city through images and narrative descriptions. These new services of the city might help people base a decision about whether or not to move home. It could be informing long-term choices such as deciding where to live or what school children should attend, and the more everyday such as which park or shop to visit may be shaped by a mesh of user-generated and other data.

Michael Hardey describes this emergence of digital traces in the city and the feedback loop they generate as follow:

As Sheller and Urry (2003) observe, ‘individuals increasingly exist beyond their private bodies. Persons leave traces of their selves in informational space, and can be more readily mobile through space’ (p. 116). Indeed users of social networking sites may always be immersed within them, as they and others are dynamically geolocated. This marks the emergence of new ways of experiencing and living in the city as people make nuanced choices about places to avoid, visit, live or work. Such choices can be increasingly fleeting, unplanned and dynamic as mobile technologies deliver personalized data about places and people. There is a potential rapid feedback loop here as locations in the city may experience sudden flows of visitors or customers as people follow lines of information or seek the presence of those from their social networks.

Relation to my thesis: This text consolidates well the claims supported so far in Tracing the Visitor’s Eye. However, I am rather dubious about the wisdom of citizen media to support decision making in the city. As explained in I rather believe in the richness of implicit traces people leave in using web 2.0 and mobile systems to understand the city and places as expressed in Leveraging Urban Digital Footprints with Social Navigation and Seamful Design