2 November 2006

Exploring the digital city: space culture politics

The impact of new digital technologies and infrastructures on how people socialise and the types of spaces they socialise in, is the focus of an international debate at the University of Dundee on Friday November 3rd.

Featuring internationally renowned scholars Professor Leon van Schaik, from Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Professor Grahame Shane (Architecture and Urbanism) from Columbia University in New York, Professor Richard Coyne (Architectural Computing) from University of Edinburgh, and chaired by Professor of Cultural Geography Jane Jacobs also from Edinburgh, the `Urban Space + Infrastructure’ symposium will bring together architecture, planning and social science academics.

This symposium is the last in a series of four organised by Dr Lorens Holm, director of history and theory at the School of Architecture, who has organised the workshop with Professor Nicholas Fyfe, in the School of Social Sciences.

Funded by a grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the `Exploring the Digital City Workshop' has already looked at the impact of new media on how we use urban space, the impact of digital environments on freedom of speech and expression, and the use of new technology for surveillance and policing purposes. The last symposium in the series looks directly at how new digital infrastructures are shaping our cities.

"It is something of a coup to have been able to bring international speakers of the calibre of Professors van Schaik and Shane to Dundee,” said Dr Holm. “If you are involved in urban design, you have to have an idea of how urban space will be used; it is important to be aware of the way society is changing and the impact that will have."

"Our intention in organising the Workshop was to bring together researchers from across the arts and social sciences who are interested in how digital technology and media affect the design and use of urban space, with the intention of fomenting new areas of interdisciplinary research."

The Workshop is the inaugural event of the newly reshaped Geddes Institute for Urban Research, whose intention is to become a focal point for collaborative interdisciplinary urban research at the university. In the Spring, the Institute is sponsoring Richard Legates, a Visiting Fulbright Scholar, as the first Geddes Fellow. The intention is to develop the Institute through funded research projects and the development of a doctoral program that straddles different Schools and Colleges of the University.

For media enquiries contact:

Roddy Isles
Head, Press Office
University of Dundee
Nethergate Dundee, DD1 4HN
TEL: 01382 384910
E-MAIL: r.isles@dundee.ac.uk