When one thinks of the health of cities, one thinks of a cities public space. The city is a network, a network of houses, buildings, spaces, people, schools, stores, streets, sidewalks, highways, cars, etc. A city cannot exist without interaction and communication. And that interaction occurs in a cities public space. “[D]emocracy resides, ultimately, with citizens who engage in talk with each other.”(Carpentier 2008) With this said, it is important to note the changes that have occurred in public spaces and the effects that they have had on people and societies. The aim of this paper is to explore the effects that mobile technology and wireless communications have had, have and may have on public space in a city, the use of the space, its changing nature and the social aspects that occur in the space. Many of the effects are already visible in the changing architecture and city policy, but many effects are still invisible to us. These are the social and psychological aspects of the people themselves. We will explore these changes, the significance of these changes, and the possible effects that they may have on city life, city health, and city people.
In order to understand the implications and effects that mobile technology has on a city and its public space it is important to first define what public space is and its importance to the city. In her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs says: “[t]hink of a city and what comes to mind? It’s streets.”(Pg 37) This is because the streets are the most used public space in a city. One cannot imagine a city without a street, much like one cannot imagine a street that is not within a city. Besides the most obvious use of these places as passages for transport they are responsible for the safety of a city. “When people say that a city, or a part of it, is dangerous or a jungle what they mean primarily is that they do not feel safe on the sidewalks.”(Pg 37) This is because as Jacobs said the streets and their sidewalks are a cities most vital organs. If one is too scared to be on the streets of a city then the city is considered dangerous, because it is not possible to get around the city without being out in the public realm. And one of the ways that safety is insured in a city is through the other inherent use of a cities public space and that is contact. Jacobs says that “public peace – the sidewalk and street peace – of cities is not kept primarily by the police” but by “an intricate, almost unconscious, network of voluntary controls and standards amongst the people themselves, and enforced by the people themselves.” (Pg 40) This is accomplished by what Jacobs calls “eyes upon the streets, eyes belonging to those we might call the natural proprietors of the street.”(Pg 45) The natural proprietors of a street are the people who are regularly seen on the street, if the street is a mixed use street, with small stores, bars, and residencies then the proprietors would be the owners of the stores, the tenants of the buildings, and the customers in the bars and stores. This network amongst the proprietors is created through contact amongst each other. “Reformers have long observed city people loitering on busy corners, hanging around candy stores and bars and drinking soda pop on stoops, and have passed a judgment, the gist of which is: ‘This is deplorable! If these people had decent homes and a more private or bosky outdoor place, they wouldn’t be on the street.’”(Pg 72) This is a mistake as Jacobs mentions many examples of garden cities and project housing that have “a more private” and “bosky outdoor place” that are left unused and abandoned most of the time. This idea about privatization of public space only serves to make neighborhoods more dangerous by taking eyes of the street. These eyes will make a neighborhood safer under a couple of conditions. One condition is that it is necessary “that there should be, in the brains behind the eyes on the street, an almost unconscious assumption of general street support when the chips are down.” This assumption Jacobs calls trust. “The trust of a city street is formed over time from many, many little public sidewalk contacts.” These contacts grow “out of people stopping by at the bar for a beer, getting advice from the grocer and giving advice to the newsstand man, comparing opinions with other customers at the bakery and nodding hello to the two boys drinking pop on the stoop, eying the girls while waiting to be called for dinner, admonishing the children, hearing about a job from the hardware man and borrowing a dollar from the druggist, admiring the new babies and sympathizing over the way a coat faded.” These “deplorable” contacts while seeming trivial and unimportant create “a feeling for the public identity of people, a web of public respect and trust, and a resource in time of personal or neighborhood need.” (Pg 73) From this one can see the uses of streets in a city, as they serve for communication and interaction and how they contribute to the safety of the same city, both of these not possible without the other. Much the same can be said about the other forms of public space in a city. These spaces are parks, which serve many functions. People often refer to parks as the lungs of a city, for their effect on the quality of air and temperature in a city, however the fact that parks are the lungs do not give enough reasons to make parks an important public space. In order for a park to function as a public space many of the same qualities as streets are needed. Jacobs speaks of many examples of parks that although offer a lot of public space and access are abandoned much like most green spaces within projects. In order for a park to be successful it needs the same eyes that a street does. Parks need to constantly have a steady amount of people traveling through and enjoying the park. This adds eyes to the park and allows for safety, with more safety comes more access to the park. In order to understand why some parks function successfully and why others are doomed to be drug havens it is necessary to look at the overall qualities of the neighborhood surrounding the park. The park needs to be situated in a mixed-use neighborhood, much like safe streets need to be on mixed-use streets. This creates the chance for people to go to the park for multiple reasons and allows them to enjoy it. Successful parks then serve the same functions that successful streets do. They facilitate community amongst residents, allow for public interaction and discourse, and provide people with a feeling of safety. In 1989 sociologist Ray Oldenburg distinguished the sociological functions between the “places” that people use. These were “first places (their homes), their second places (offices)” and their third places “the public spaces that serve as safe, neutral and informal meeting points.”(Economist, 2008) These would be the parks, the streets and sidewalks that are not directly connected to ones work or home, cafés, bars, community centers, etc. These third places serve the same vital functions that the streets do, some of them however are not public, but private owned spaces that accommodate public use. These could be cafés such as Starbucks and they could also be gardens that were created by businesses for extra floors in their buildings. Each space creates its own rules and regulations that the public must follow but they still hold the essential qualities of public space, which is creating community, creating safe cities, and allowing for communication and random encounters amongst the general public.
Having examined the importance of public space to the people and to a city we can now look at some of the history of public space. “First there is a general agreement that we are experiencing a steady withering of the public realm… privatization – the ‘commodification’ of public goods and emergence of local governments as entrepreneurs – seems to be the order of the day.”(Banerjee 2001) This is in large due to the invention of technologies such as the radio and the television. After WWII people were spending less time out in the public realm, as news of the outside world was readily available through radio and television. Forms of entertainment such as theatre, movies, bars, and music venues were now slowly being replaced by music on the radio and gramophones, and shows on television. Slowly and slowly people started to spend more time indoors and public space fell into disarray. Taking into account major budget cuts in government regulation, parks and public spaces were subject to vandalism, disrepair and abandonment. This was further enforced by the creation of gated communities. “When asked why they chose to live in gated communities, most respondents spoke of the need for safety and a search for community, presumably one that is based on homogeneity and cohesion” (Banerjee 2001) This form of privatization as Jacobs said will only add to the danger of the city and undermine the very things these people are searching for. Slowly and slowly people started to migrate from the public realm to the private realm, and with the gated communities they even made their public realm private. “[T]his tendency to live in club-like communities with common spaces and facilities arises from a fear of strangers, especially of those who come from a different class, culture, ethnicity, or national origin, and not just a concern for personal and property safety.” (Banerjee 2001) And this can only lead to many other harms of society, such as racism, discrimination, segregation, etc. A divided city cannot be a healthy city, and a healthy city cannot be an empty city. These moves towards privatization and division can only contribute to the slow death of major cities. Continuing this trend was the advent of the Internet. It became “possible to conduct many of our daily activities, work, shopping, business transactions, socializing, through the Internet, minimizing the need for face-to-face communication and travel.”(Banerjee 2001) Another effect of the Internet was the beginning of a new structure of office work. Office workers traditionally slept and spent time with their family at home and did their work in an office. They had to be in the office in order to handle paperwork, and turn in files, do research and be in contact. The internet allowed many of these functions to easily be done from an internet enabled computer at work and the effect was that the distinction between “first places” and “second places” started to blur, people were beginning to spend even more time in their homes as they didn’t necessarily even have to go to work any more. And with services such as Netflix, Amazon, Freshdirect, and others, people no longer even had to leave their homes for food and entertainment. Privatization was excelling at an alarming rate.
With all of that said, we can now begin to explore the effects that mobile technology has had, has, may have on public space. The effects of mobile technology are not really known because it is a relatively new form of technology. This includes cell phones, laptops, WI-FI, PDA’s, music players, etc. These technologies have various different effects and offer many possibilities for the future of public space. All of these technologies allow for the creation of a private sphere in a public space. Ipod’s and music players allow for a person to phase out of the noise and life of the public sphere by allowing one to listen to music wherever he is. It is very easy to not hear anything that happens on a train as long as your headphones are on. Mobile phones allow for private conversation in an openly public space. People were now able to talk to each other no matter where they were. And laptops allowed for people to have access to their computer software wherever they were giving people the freedom to roam about, and WI-FI gave access to the Internet from “third places,” bringing the opportunity for even more private space in the public realm.
One of the major technologies that is affecting public space is the mobile phone. The first mobile call was made in Manhattan in April of 1983, since then approximately 2.8 billion people worldwide have become mobile phone subscribers.(Katz 2007) out of 6745 observations “a recent study at Rutgers University of ‘tele-density’ found that about 20% of people on campus were using mobile devices at any one time.”(Chen & Lever, 2006) One of the possible effects of this may be “a psychological ‘emptying out’ of public space – bodies remain, but personalities are engaged elsewhere.”(Katz 2007) In terms of public space this means that people are not interacting with each other in the same space but in a cyberspace. However one of the other occurrences of this is the increased use of public space. More opportunity is now given for people to locate themselves in public space because they do not have to be near a landline in order to be in touch with someone, indeed “Gergen (2002) holds that mobile phones can restore the comfort and intimacy that was degraded by twentieth century technologies, especially the television.”(Katz 2007) This is because of the various different functions of mobile phones. For instance “When the new iPhone ,with built-in tracking, was introduced in July, one million people began using Loopt, a piece of software that automatically tells all your friends exactly where you are.” (Thompson 2008) This in combination with other forms of contact enabled by the Internet such as Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and other such applications contribute to a phenomenon that Social Scientists call Ambient Awareness. “It is, they say, very much like being physically near someone and picking up on his mood through the little things he does — body language, sighs, stray comments — out of the corner of your eye.”(Thompson 2008) One such thing that allows for this is Twitter, which is a microblogging tool where people write about their day in short text messages, A man who decided to try it “logged on to his account, and his friends’ updates would appear as a long page of one- or two-line notes. He would check and recheck the account several times a day, or even several times an hour. The updates were indeed pretty banal.” But as the time went by he “discovered that he was beginning to sense the rhythms of his friends’ lives in a way he never had before.”(Thompson 2008) The man actually felt closer to his friends throughout the day, and even felt like they were next to him even though they weren’t. “[T]he idea of using communication tools as a form of “co-presence” has been around for a while. The Japanese sociologist Mizuko Ito first noticed it with mobile phones: lovers who were working in different cities would send text messages back and forth all night — tiny updates like “enjoying a glass of wine now” or “watching TV while lying on the couch.” They were doing it partly because talking for hours on mobile phones isn’t very comfortable (or affordable). But they also discovered that the little Ping-Ponging messages felt even more intimate than a phone call.”(Thompson 2008) This notion of mobile phone effect is the other direction for the future of social contact amongst people. Preliminary research on the subject shows that “mobile phones tend to be used in reinforcing strong social ties, while computer-mediated text-based media tend to be used in expanding the relationships with weak ties.”(Kim, Kim, Park & Rice, 2007) The effects of the Television and other technologies that led to privatization can now be reversed due to technologies such as the mobile phone. People were spending less time in the public making social connections and more time at their home or office reinforcing their strong times, making small communities of people with no contact amongst each other. Mobile technologies create the opportunity for a return to society for many people. However this is not a reverse effect like I mentioned, rather it is like a reincarnation of an old system. “In 1998, the anthropologist Robin Dunbar argued that each human has a hard-wired upper limit on the number of people he or she can personally know at one time.” He did a study of apes and concluded “that ape and human brains could manage only a finite number of grooming relationships: unless we spend enough time doing social grooming — chitchatting, trading gossip or, for apes, picking lice — we won’t really feel that we “know” someone well enough to call him a friend.” And “[s]ure enough, psychological studies have confirmed that human groupings naturally tail off at around 150 people: the “Dunbar number,” as it is known.”(Thompson 2008) But taking into consideration the notion that mobile technologies are allowing for less strong ties and more weak ties, the “Dunbar number” no longer holds true. And one of the possible effects of constantly devoting energy to all of these weak ties is that it “might, some critics worry, spread your emotional energy too thin, leaving less for true intimate relationships.”(Thompson 2008) This is also reinforced by many other problems that may arise. “[A] spiral of criticism has erupted over Blackberries, iPods, and mobile phones that decries them as having bled from human intercourse the (putative) beauty and depth of meaningful conversation.” Some theorists believe that “[t]here is no longer the need to unburden oneself with pent up thoughts because fleeting emotions are exchanged through a continual stream of interaction.”(Thompson 2008) This then leads to a new form of interaction, a new structure of social connections in public space. But whether this interaction is a healthy form or not is unclear. “‘Being put on pause’” is how a student of Sherry Turkles’ “describes the feeling of walking down the street with a friend who has just taken a call on his cell. ‘I mean I can’t go anywhere; I can’t just pull out some work. I’ve just been stopped in midsentence and am expected to remember, to hold the thread of the conversation until he wants to pick it up again.”(Turkle 2007) And this is not an uncommon occurrence amongst people. What effects will “pauses” such as this one have on strong social ties between people and what new form of interaction must we develop now that we are constantly in contact with each other?
One other result of mobile phones that some believe is that it allows for gender equality in the use of public space. Many studies have shown that women are disadvantaged in the use of public space. And one of the beliefs is that “the mobile phone … may have particular significance for cultural change in the leisure patterns of young women … in the sense that it offers them a sense of security and new confidence in accessing public leisure spaces.”(Foley, Holzman, Wearing, 2007) This is because to many women it is dangerous to be alone in public space because of things such as the male gaze and overall safety concerns. And in the past women have not been exploring public space like men have because of their fear. And “mobile phones not only help to confirm the right of adolescent women to be in public spaces, and to claim public spaces as their own leisure spaces but improve the quality of their experiences in these places.”(Foley, Holzman, Wearing, 2007) Many women are now more likely to go and spend more time in public space, because they know that at any time they can be in contact with someone. Many times women will pretend to be on the phone talking to someone so that no one will bother them. This sense of security allows for identity development also as “leisure is a ‘social space in which there is an openness for important new interactions and self definitions’.” Women “ may be more inclined to further explore their leisure opportunities, and perhaps take riskier options in an attempt to ‘safely’ experience more, ‘intense, identity seeking experiences’.”(Foley, Holzman, Wearing, 2007) This identity development leads to an equality in the use of public space in the context of gender. “[M]obile phone use- can impart a sense of self-confidence, sexuality and autonomy which defies the male gaze in public spaces and may allow adolescent women to reject traditional images of femininity at a formative stage in the life course and” allows “ entry to an arena, that of public space, that has hitherto been limited by the male gaze and other stereotypes of adolescent women.”
Another important technology is that of WI-FI. Wireless Internet can have a profound effect in the use of public space and in its structure. One such observation states, “I have traveled 36 hours to a conference on robotic technology in central Japan. The grand ballroom is WI-FI enabled, and the speaker is using the Web for his presentation. Laptops are open, fingers are flying. But the audience is not listening. Most seem to be doing their e-mail, downloading files, surfing the web or looking for a cartoon to illustrate an upcoming presentation. Every once in a while audience members give the speaker some attention, lowering their laptop screens in a kind of digital curtsy.”(Turkle 2007) This is not an uncommon occurrence as Turkle states, “what most people want from public space is to be alone in their personal networks.” This is of course not true all the time, as there are exceptions but it is a very shocking idea nonetheless. And Wi-Fi is now available in many “third places” and “[i]t is unclear whether wireless internet use in public spaces will facilitate greater engagement with people in public spaces or encourage a form of ‘public privativism’.”(Hampton, Gupta, 2008)
Hampton and Gupta did a study of WI-FI use in wireless café’s and attempted to sketch “a theoretical framework for how interactions and networks may be augmented in the context of wi-fi.” Their study consisted of 120 hours of observation spread between 4 café’s split between Seattle,WA and Bostion, MA. Two with free wi-fi access and 2 with paid access. The results of the study were that “[t]he settings observed attracted users with two distinct activities.” These two ideal types were: ‘true mobiles’ and ‘placemakers’. Both came to the café’s with their laptops but the social interaction observed between them was very different. “True mobiles identified the café as a ‘space of productivity’.” These were people who wanted to get away from work and felt that the café’s allowed for better concentration and at times a change of pace. And as the study noted “[a]ll true mobiles spent their time almost completely engrossed in wi-fi and laptop use.” And “both reported and were observed repeatedly avoiding the gaze of staff and other store inhabitants.” As Goffman (1963) would describe, “true mobiles employed ‘portable involvement shields’.” These were as Goffman described things such as “fans, masks, and the use of people’s hands to conceal facial expressions, used literally to shield oneself from others and to signal unavailability for more overt interactions.” True mobiles strayed away from most form of communication and when “other patrons ignored the subtle (or not so subtle) signals of a shield and attempted to initiate verbal communication with a true mobile, they were unlikely to be met with eye contact and were more like to be met with no response (completely ignoring the other) or an abrupt one or two-word retort.”
“In contrast with True mobiles, the primary activity of ‘placemakers’ was ‘not to engage in paid work’. They came to wi-fi coffee shops to ‘hang out’ … to “engage in the ‘social hubbub’ of the space.” These were people for whom “the laptop was never” a “primary focus” rather “the availability or potential for co-present socialbility” was the primary activity. These patrons would typically buy a coffee and sit next to a window and engage in ‘people watching.’ They would set their laptop down and “become masters of the ‘momentary diversion’ (Goffman, 1963). A great deal of time was spent gazing out the window, looking around the café, adjusting personal belongings, slowly sipping coffee, searching for a power outlet, powering up and then casually surfing the web and checking email, with prolonged intermittent pauses to glance around and outside the café.” And placemakers also did not avoid or ignore the other people in the café, “a casual glance from another customer was more likely to be met with a fleeting smile than a quick look away.” The study found that placemakers “were almost always regular customers at the same café and lived or worked in close proximity. Placemakers were more frequent visitors to wi-fi cafes than truemobiles. And unlike the truemobiles “[p]lace makers did not immerse themselves in shielded, private cocoons of interaction with the goal of completing work. Placemakers were openly, if not actively interested, in communicating with co-located others: it was their primary activity. In terms of the future of public space and interaction it is difficult to tell which direction it will go towards. There are paths that lead to ‘public privativism’ as in the case of true mobiles and there is the path of increased social interaction as shown by the placemakers.(Hampton, Gupta, 2008)
One other aspect of mobile technology and public space is the physical transformation of the space and the use of mobile technology by the government in terms of providing services and amenities to their citizens. Recently their have been many services provided by governments worldwide to give their citizens a better public experience. For instance Santa Monica, CA plans to “increase the city’s wi-fi network to 23 hotzones throughout the cities public space by summer 2008.”(M2PressWire, 2008) And Paris “has launched Europe’s biggest free wireless internet network as part of a scheme to turn the French capital into a “world digital city”.” (The (United Kingdom) Times 2007) In places like NYC public parks have access to free wi-fi, and New York soon plans to emulate California in tackling the problem of parking and congested streets. “San Francisco will test 6,000 of its 24,000 metered parking spaces in the nation’s most ambitious trial of a wireless sensor network that will announce which of the spaces are free at any moment.” This now means that drivers no longer have to circle around the block looking for a spot, they can now simply check their smartphones.(The New York Times 2008)
The next thing to look at is the changing effect that mobile technology has had on architecture and physical space. It is clear that with mobile technology we have started to return to “a very old idea: nomadism.”(Economist 2008) No one needs to be rooted to one place anymore, it is possible to be in touch with anyone from nearly anywhere and with wi-fi it is now possible to bring your work out from the office and operate anywhere. This is called ‘digital nomadism.’(Economist 2008) And that is something that architects and public planners now need to account for. One such architect that accounted for that is Frank Gehry. His Stata Centre at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology was “conceived as a new kind of ‘hybrid space’.” The building was meant to accommodate any new nomadic need. “This is best seen in the building’s ‘student street’, an interior passage that twists and meanders through the complex and is open to the public 24 hours a day. It is dotted with nooks and crannies. Café’s and lounges are interspersed with work desks and whiteboards, and there is free wi-fi everywhere.” People are observed “flirting, napping, instant-messaging, researching, reading and discussing.” And “every bit of it can instantaneously become the venue for a seminar, a snack or romance.” Another such building is the Googleplex, headquarters of Google in Mountain View, California. The building “is famous for its good and free victuals, doled out at food courts throughout the sprawling campus, and for the casual mixture of play and work.” Google naturally also has wi-fi access everywhere and at times it is possible to observe a software engineer “writing some code on his laptop, sweaty in his clothes, from the volleyball game in progress on the lawn.” And “Google even extends this workspace, virtually, throughout the entire San Francisco Bay Area by running a fleet of commuter shuttles, all of which have wi-fi on board to allow for uninterrupted coding.” These new forms of architecture and space and the wi-fi provided by them are allowing for an increased use of public space. Again whether or not this will lead to a form of public privativism or lead to new profound social connections is unknown, but one cannot argue that the services and opportunities for being physically present in a space have only increased. Another interesting effect of nomadism is that many people are realizing that it is not good for the office industry. There is no longer such a need to have offices and cubicles because everything is so easily accessible from everywhere. And some architects and landowners are taking that into effect. Robert Dykstra has developed a new office park in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The building is “unlike any traditional office and ‘more like a community centre’.” Wherein instead of renting the space, Dykstra plans “to sell membership as a club does—by the hour, week or month—to nomads dropping by. Mobile workers come in, find all the services they might need—from tech support to copying—and satisfy their needs for ‘work, love and play’ as well, with the aid of fitness studios, restaurants, cooking classes and music rooms.”(Economist 2008) One of the results of this digital nomadism is that it is making architects and city planners make spaces intentionally multi-functional as any space can now be suited to fit virtually any need, the need for specialization is starting to disappear. Perhaps this will lead to a much safer city because as Jacobs said spaces and streets need to be multi-functional in order to draw people and in order to live.
Overall it is clear that Mobile technology has had a great effect on public space: the physical space, and the psychological space. What direction this will lead to is unclear. Are we replacing ‘privativism’ with ‘public privativism’ or are we creating new unimaginable structures for social contact, will only be clear in time. As of now it is clear that there are paths running in both directions.
