Places, Situations and Connections

The impact of new technology facilitating social networks and peer-to-peer interaction on the design and architecture of physical urban spaces has not been met with the level of attention necessary to invoke a truly cross-disciplinary exchange that goes both ways. This chapter presents the relevance and significance of an ongoing trend towards more and more compact cities in the light of urban renewal, and findings from urban sociology that describe the emergence of networked individualism. The context of urban renewal in SEQ suggests that innovative models of housing will need to be considered in addressing the impending pressures on the availability of residential accommodation. The new emerging social formations and communicative ecologies which are at the same time networked and individualistic have implications not only for systems architecture of online urban space but for the residential architecture of physical urban space. The chapter explores the case study that examines the public spaces of three inner-city apartment buildings in metropolitan Australia.