As the internet and computer and mobile device software make it possible for individuals and
groups everywhere in the world to communicate instantaneously and fast, our conception of
“space” is changing. This reality profoundly affects cities. No theorist has thought more
deeply or written more profoundly about the new reality than Manuel Castells.
The spatial experience of contemporary city life is expressed in part through the traditional
physical world of neighbourhoods and local business nodes within metropolitan regions
where people live their day-to-day lives and develop personal, familial relationships and
individual identities: what Castells calls “the space of places”.
But increasingly city life and the work of the new global economy is conducted is in “the
space of flows” - the electronic, computerized network of telecommunications.
The world has entered “a new age, the Information Age”, characterized by what Castells
terms a new “network society”.
Some aspects of the network society and informational cities are merely continuations of
earlier developments, for example: rapid urbanization and metropolitan regionalism, a
breakdown of the patriarchal family, increasingly multi-ethnic urban communities, and a
social segregation spurred in part by a growing criminal culture of urban violence and
paranoia. Others are totally new developments: a “new geography of networks and urban
nodes” based on telecommunications technologies.
Castells argues that mega-metropolitan regions without a name, culture or effective
institutions are becoming less important than local governments.
Castells builds his theoretical approach to cities along three axes that he calls function,
meaning and form.
- Function: the dynamic opposition between the electronic global and the face-to-face
local.
- Meaning: complex relationship between “individuation” (personal identity) and
“communalism” (the shared identities of ethnicity, social class, and culture).
- Form: a product of the interaction and conflict between the physical and online
dimensions of space.
The “space of flows” links up separate locations electronically.
Castells recognizes that the new urban world of networks and spatial oppositions calls for a
complete recasting of our ideas about cities and urban life. Cities can now only be
understood on the scale of metropolitan regions, and the challenge of urban planning,
design, and governance is to create a meaningful and effective “connectivity” between the
very different urban worlds where people now live their lives: the electronic space of flows
and the physical space of places.
groups everywhere in the world to communicate instantaneously and fast, our conception of
“space” is changing. This reality profoundly affects cities. No theorist has thought more
deeply or written more profoundly about the new reality than Manuel Castells.
The spatial experience of contemporary city life is expressed in part through the traditional
physical world of neighbourhoods and local business nodes within metropolitan regions
where people live their day-to-day lives and develop personal, familial relationships and
individual identities: what Castells calls “the space of places”.
But increasingly city life and the work of the new global economy is conducted is in “the
space of flows” - the electronic, computerized network of telecommunications.
The world has entered “a new age, the Information Age”, characterized by what Castells
terms a new “network society”.
Some aspects of the network society and informational cities are merely continuations of
earlier developments, for example: rapid urbanization and metropolitan regionalism, a
breakdown of the patriarchal family, increasingly multi-ethnic urban communities, and a
social segregation spurred in part by a growing criminal culture of urban violence and
paranoia. Others are totally new developments: a “new geography of networks and urban
nodes” based on telecommunications technologies.
Castells argues that mega-metropolitan regions without a name, culture or effective
institutions are becoming less important than local governments.
Castells builds his theoretical approach to cities along three axes that he calls function,
meaning and form.
- Function: the dynamic opposition between the electronic global and the face-to-face
local.
- Meaning: complex relationship between “individuation” (personal identity) and
“communalism” (the shared identities of ethnicity, social class, and culture).
- Form: a product of the interaction and conflict between the physical and online
dimensions of space.
The “space of flows” links up separate locations electronically.
Castells recognizes that the new urban world of networks and spatial oppositions calls for a
complete recasting of our ideas about cities and urban life. Cities can now only be
understood on the scale of metropolitan regions, and the challenge of urban planning,
design, and governance is to create a meaningful and effective “connectivity” between the
very different urban worlds where people now live their lives: the electronic space of flows
and the physical space of places.
