OII SDP 2007 (XXIII): Designing for Place-Based Social Interaction of Urban Residents in MÃ©xico, South Africa and Australia

Ismael Peña-López

17 years ago

Lead: Marcus Foth

How do residents connect with each other to create and maintain social networks?
How can technology dbe degisned to neotiate a balance between the opportunitiews of interactive services vs. identity, trust and privacy?
What is the role of content?

What’s community? Social network, urban village, swarm, neighbourhood, me and my friends… Have something in common?

Shift from the “little boxes” model to personalized social networks: more permeable boundaries…

Urban tribes: swarms of interconnected friends, filling the gap between college and married life, fluidity of social networks, place and proximity matters.

Communicative Ecology

Discursive layer
Social layer
Technology layer

global vs. local; collective vs. individual; online vs. offline

Community as Collective vs. Community as Network

interest in the community vs. interest in the individual
community activism vs. personal, social networking
public vs. private
many-to-many vs. peer-to-peer switchboard
formal discussion vs. informal chat
asynchronous vs. synchronous
permanent vs. transitory
hierarchically structured vs. networked to the “edge of chaos”
discussion board, mailing lists vs. instant messenger email, SMS
Gemeinschaft vs. Urban Tribe

	collective interaction	networked interaction
geographically dispersed	online communities	online social networking (e.g. MySpace, Facebook)
place based	collective interaction for discussion about place	networked interact for sociability in place

Connectivity does not ensure community. If you build it, they will not necessarily come. On the other hand, social capital rich communities are likely to progress and also to have a preference for “social isolation”.