Being and Becoming: Emerging Relationalities with Space/Place and Socio-Technical Geographies

Media technology has redefined our spatial relationship with the physical world as we are largely defined by locations and we no longer are mobile entities (Virilio in The vision machine: perspectives. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, p 74, 1994). With the pervasiveness of media practices, at one end of the spectrum, debates and discourses in architecture and urban design delve into how the role of space and place in everyday spatial practices has been ensconced in superficial connectedness through ‘virtual co-emplacements’ (Casey in The fate of place: a philosophical history. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, p XIV, 1998). And on the other end, scholars argue that performativity through spatial practices, is a compelling notion for re-inscribing oneself in the world (Butler in Gender trouble. Routledge, New York, 2006). This implies the need for understanding potential and emerging alternatives and possibilities of people–place relationships enabled through media technologies. Spaces and places serve as significant realms of becoming and unbecoming which are particularly crucial in contemporary dynamic spatialities. To delve into the complexity of emerging complex relations, this chapter as a first step, discusses how our relationship and engagement with urban environments in cities have been, and are understood and perceived by the changing conceptions of space/place relations and meanings within the urban environment.