Virtual cities & the digital divide Ian Babelon, Architecture & Built Environment, Northumbria University, Newcastle
[email protected]
V
irtual cities and the Web 2.0
Allowing people to participate in urban planning can make planning processes and outcomes more legitimate and accountable (Healey, 1997; Wagenaar, 2007; Innes & Booher, 2010). The Web 2.0 (O’ Reilly 2012) enables internet users to become “produsers” or “prosumers”: they are no longer passive consumers of online material, but can contribute new material themselves. Over the past five years, new virtual city applications have emerged that can mediate high levels of interaction (e.g. Dambrusch & Krämer, 2014; Wu et al., 2010). Such applications allow to collect people’s views about places, suggest alternative land uses, assess development proposals, or explore development scenarios such as impacts of climate change. They can be used at all planning stages e.g. early stages.
H
urdles to inclusive virtual cities
The presence of digital divides in society is the main hurdle to virtual cities. Lack of access to internet, low skill levels, and various motivational factors are obstacles that can prevent people from benefiting from online services in general (Selwyn, 2004; Helsper & Reisdorf, 2016), e-Government services (Bélanger & Carter, 2009) and online civic engagement (Cavallo et al., 2009). There also inequalities in participation in virtual cities, reflecting social exclusion in the real city (Aurigi, 2006; Brown, 2012; Crutcher and Zook, 2009; Menke, 2013). In turn, virtual cities risk aggravating social exclusion. Other hurdles include people’s lack of interest in urban planning, lack of trust of public agencies and local authorities, and time constraints due to busy modern lifestyles (Brown 2012).
In the city of Sunderland, where penetration of digital technology alongside unemployment are both high:
“
Technology may certainly improve the quality of life of users, but not necessarily in relation to the areas of education, employment or local civic participation
and ultimately in terms of and beyond this city”
inequalities within
(Clayton & MacDonald, 2013, 962). Participant suggests public park on parking lot in Norrköping, Sweden. Courtesy of Agency9.
T
ake home:
Virtual cities can help improve public participation, yet overreliance on technology will further exclude those who are already excluded. Digital inclusion can improve quality of life and makes e-government services more accessible... ...Yet making government services digital by default also contributes to the digital divide. Digital inclusion does not automatically lead to social inclusion.
D
igital divides have multiple dimensions
The greater the penetration of internet technologies into society, the more the digital divide runs along traditional lines of social exclusion (Helsper & Reisdorf, 2016). Dimensions of exclusion/inclusion in different local and national contexts are mainly: • Professional status and social class, including cultural capital (Clayton & MacDonald, 2013; Selwyn, 2004) • Race/ethnicity (Cavallo et al., 2014; Crutcher & Zook, 2009) • Digiteral literacy (Clayton & MacDonald, 2013; Go On UK, 2015) • Access to and frequency of use of digital technologies and online services (Bélanger & Carter, 2009; Cavallo et al., 2014; Go On UK, 2015) • Age and life stage (Choudrie et al., 2013) • Social ties and networks (Clayton & MacDonald, 2013; Choudrie et al., 2013) • Various personal motivational factors (Clayton & MacDonalad, 2013; Tsatsou, 2011) More systematic longitudinal research is needed to understand the complex interactions between these different dimensions at personal, local and national scales, and how they are shaped by both policy and industry (cf. Selwyn, 2004; Zhao et al., 2013).
Read: the digital divide
Read: virtual cities
Clayton, J., & Macdonald, S. J. (2013). The limits of technology. Information, Communication & Society, 16(6), 945-966. / Helsper, E. J., & Reisdorf, B. C. (2016). The emergence of a “digital underclass” in Great Britain and Sweden: Changing reasons for digital exclusion. New Media & Society. / Selwyn, N. (2004). Reconsidering Political and Popular Understandings of the Digital Divide. New Media & Society, 6(3), 341-362. / Zhao, F., Collier, A., & Deng, H. (2014). A multidimensional and integrative approach to study global digital divide and e-government development. Information Technology & People, 27(1),
Aurigi, A. (2006). New Technologies, Same Dilemmas: Policy and Design Issues for the Augmented City. Journal of Urban Technology, 13(3), 5-28. / Dambruch, J., & Krämer, M. (2014, 2014). Leveraging public participation in urban planning with 3D web technology. Paper presented at the 19th International ACM Conference on 3D Web Technologies. / Wu, H., He, Z., & Gong, J. (2010). A virtual globe-based 3D visualization and interactive framework for public participation in urban planning processes. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 34(4), 291-298.
