Making the Digital City: The Early Shaping of Urban Internet Space

Alessandro Aurigi

Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2005 - Architecture - 224 pages

Since the late 1990s, Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have been hailed as a potentially revolutionary feature of the planning and management of Western cities. Economic regeneration and place promotion strategies have exploited these new technologies; city management has experimented with electronically distributed services, and participation in public life and democratic decision-making processes can be made more flexible by the use of ICTs. All of these technological initiatives have often been presented and accessed via an urban front-end information site known as 'digital city' or 'city network.' Illustrated by a range of European case studies, this volume examines the social, political and management issues and potential problems in the establishment of an electronic layer of information and services in cities. The book provides a better understanding of the direction European cities are going towards in the implementation of ICTs...

Contents

• Cyberspace and the Citys Public Sphere: 8
• Exploring the Digital City: 32
• The Web Cities Phenomenon in Europe: 71
• Iperbole in Bologna: 101
• When Bristol Went Digital: 147
• Lessons to be Learnt from Bologna and Bristol: 181
• What Next for the Digital City?: 197
• Bibliography: 215

About the author

Alessandro Aurigi, Alessandro is Professor of Urban Design in the School of Architecture, Design and Environment at the University of Plymouth. He holds a Laurea in Architecture from Florence University, Italy, and a PhD from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. He has worked previously at University College London. His main research interest is studying the relationships between the emergence of the 'information society' and the ways we imagine, conceive, represent, and manage buildings and cities.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Making the Digital City: The Early Shaping of Urban Internet Space; Design and the built environment series
• Author: Alessandro Aurigi
• Edition: illustrated, reprint
• Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2005
• ISBN: 0754643646, 9780754643647
• Length: 224 pages
• Subjects: Architecture / Urban & Land Use Planning