Digital Urban Acupuncture

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This book examines the potential to observe city life through ubiquitous information from social networks, sensors, and various data sources, proposing a new form of Public Space that redefines citizenship and participatory city governance. Drawing on years of interdisciplinary research across sciences, arts, design, ethnography, and cultural geography, the authors analyze the Relational Ecosystems of cities—encompassing the flows of relationships, information, knowledge, and emotion—and reinterpret Urban Acupuncture in the context of digital environments. The exploration begins with various theories and methodologies that seek to harness the revolutionary potential of urban daily life, referencing thinkers like De Certeau, Latour, Bateson, and Castells. The narrative progresses through concepts such as the Third Space, Third Landscape, and Third Generation City, ultimately arriving at the Third Infoscape, which offers a new legibility and imageability of urban environments. Central themes include understanding the transformations of public and private spaces across cultures in the information age and formulating hypotheses for constructive, participatory uses of these transformed spaces. Techniques like Urban Acupuncture, Actor-Network Theory, and Peer-to-peer Urbanism are employed, supported by real-life research scenarios and case studies from four continents.