Hybrid Places. Locating Media in Urban Public Space

mediated networks need not be global and disconnected from local spaces but are instead multiply emplaced; such that they may sustain neighbourhoods rather than oppose them (Crang et al. 2010), The presence and use of media in a neighbourhood offer a new type of localised sociality, where different affordances and opportunities for ties and actions can occur at different temporal and spatial scales simultaneously (Hampton/Wellman 2002). One of the key conditions that enables the creation of a local community is realized when neighbourhoods have more meeting places (Völker et al. 2007). By addressing the role of digital media in the use and creation of such spaces it is possible to understand how these sites of localised social experience directly impact upon the neighbourhood and how they can consequently reinforce social cohesion. On a more structural level, it requires that we question how we conceive and construct the concept of public in an urban sense and how changing patterns of behaviour affect the physical design of space needs in order to respond to the layering of a media environment onto the material environment.