Restricted Spatiality and the Inflation of Digital Space,an Urban Perspective

Introduction

Urban space is an evolving construct, continuously being redefined by its social content. Can urban space exist without the active presence of people? What happens to the interactions that are fundamental to the definition of a city if its spatial dimension shrinks? Urban space, in its essence, is about interactions—a constant stream of connections that link people with people and people with spaces. Looking at the object of urban life and what is possible, Lefebvre et al. (1996) saw the city as an agglomeration of past, present, and future in which new approaches must be sought. For Lefebvre, to understand new urban paradigms, new humanism, another man, and the new praxis had to be understood. Now, how can we approach the city for people who have suddenly lost their access (right) to its spatial structure? Accordingly, the interrupted presence might affect the aforementioned future, and this would affect how urban dwellers conduct their daily lives.

In various methodologies, the city is understood as a complex system of interactions or as a container in which time, space, and people are considered the constituents of socio-spatial engagement. Each methodology offers a different approach aimed at exploring the multidimensional relationships that form the urban realm: either they have more spatially oriented perspectives (Alexander, 1977; Bourne, 1982; Dupuy, 1991; Hillier & Hanson, 1984) or social perspectives (Amin & Thrift, 2002; Castells, 1991; De Certeau & Mayol, 1998; Giddens, 1984; Harvey, 2010; Lefebvre et al., 1996). In these approaches, the time–space interaction is considered either a pause that embodies temporality or a process that embodies spatiality. The overall equilibrium between temporality and spatiality is enabled by urban dwellers through urban practices by which the derived organic meaning is achieved.

The extent of urban practice has always been subject to change. Emerging occurrences reshape urban practice, forcing a reaction that slowly gives it a new form. Equilibrium evolves, eventually embodying responses to changes regarding social, physical, and/or economic dynamics. In addition to those dynamics, the state of isolation-guarantee, sometimes known as quarantine, should also be considered; its impact on the existing debates needs to be elaborated to support a dialog between theory and practice. Instead of the constituent entities (people-demographic setting, spatial-physical setting, and time-temporal dimension) that are considered central in urban studies, the relationships between constituents decide the consequent responses. The outcome of dissolving relations appears as an unforeseeable transformation, and it encourages exploration of the emerging pathologies for the future of urban forms.

The current article captures the changing meaning of daily practices during quarantine as they are transformed from the physical urban web (spatial urban grid) to the digital web. Urban practices are not territorialized anymore through spatiality and temporality but are dissolving components that enable individual representations of public contentions through the digital web. One of the goals of this study is to provide an insight into which real urban space shifted to a semi-digital entity through de-territorialization of engagements from spatiality and temporality.

Restricted Spatiality and Digital Space

The restriction of movement (quarantine) and its effects on the fundamental socio-spatial interactions of cities is not a new concept. For instance, in exploring the spatial dimension of the Ebola outbreak quarantine in Monrovia, Hoffman (2016, p. 258) defined it to be “Like the elemental geometry of modernist architecture, the quarantine’s formal logic is one of seemingly primordial shapes imposed in space. The hermetically sealed sphere is a ‘natural’ shape of enclosure, of defining and isolating space and its contents.” Cultural, contextual, and political characteristics of society can play a critical role in how quarantine affects a city in unprecedented ways. Jones (2002) explored the role of a pandemic in emerging types of interactions that formed across genders, cultures, and social classes. On the contrary, Bigon (2012) showed how pandemics became a source of segregation in West Africa and Hoffman (2016) narrated the course of violence caused by forced quarantine in Monrovia.

Contemporary urban space faces a new paradigm shift with the integration of internet and mobile devices into the everyday life of cities—a new layer of socio-spatial ties that are adding to the complexity of the urban structure. Urban space, shared through territorialization of the interaction between the spatial process of social engagement and the temporal state of being, has shifted to a virtual shared space, enabling millions of virtual representations. As the ability of an urban network to allow spontaneous interactions of people based on spatial proximity and temporal coincidences is transferred to the digital web, enabling selective interactions in anonymity, the concept of urban web becomes a virtual setting that is, ironically, reinforced as people seek authenticity through individual representations instead of urban reproductions of practices and spaces. While practices were increasingly being reinterpreted, reimagined, designed, packaged, themed, and marketed (Ashworth & Voogd, 1990; Erickson & Roberts, 1997; S. V. Ward & Ward, 1998), today they are easier to manipulate as representations on the web replace the place of presences.

Mobile devices with their built-in recording capacity and connection to the network diminish the boundaries between public and private presences in space. Floridi (2005) argued that this telepresence is no longer Cartesian and creates a backward presence that extends the possibility of observation beyond the local reach of the social agents. Therefore, the relationship between setting and its constituents is complex and non-linear. Engagements are affected by the formation of the individual state of being: the presence of individuals instead of the existence of the interactions in relation to time and/or real space.

In this light, the socio-spatial structure of cities when imposed upon by quarantine is a new phenomenon that must be understood within its own ontological framework. This is particularly interesting due to the alternative digital space that could potentially contain social and socio-spatial interactions. Reading urban space requires a new perspective as it transforms into a semi-digital entity that is limited by restrictions to its spatial functionality. The critical importance of amending theoretical and methodological frameworks comes from the fact that the new generation of people who are born and raised with these mediums are changing the socio-spatial structure of urban form (Ulubaş et al., 2020). Consequently, the evolving ways that the digital space is weaving itself into existing urban forms must be better understood.

The current study sees the effects of social media on urban form occurring in two ways. First, it produces both information and misinformation, increasing the restriction of activities. This can happen as a result of governmental curfews, self-isolation as a survival measure, or the collective socio-cultural force. Coleman (2019, p. 14) elaborated on these emerging rights (or restriction of rights) as “cultural expression of spontaneous affective energies in relation to habitation and belonging.” The right to the city, here, becomes an agglomeration of different forces that are not necessarily enforced by the authorities but through collective judgment that is a product of the circumstances. Second, social media provides an alternative space for everyday social and socio-spatial interactions. In light of such conditions that restrict the movement of people, it is appropriate to explore whether or not the digital space assumes the role of spatial urban grid.

Urban Space and Digital Networks

Urban space is composed of a multitude of interwoven networks. Each network is a function of connections between nodes. These connections can be in their elemental form between actors of similar nature like a street network, or they can be the result of connections between nodes with different natures such as people and places. Ulubaş Hamurcu and Terzi (2020) argue that the most fundamental urban discourse happens through the second type; the interrelationship between social actors and space shapes the future of the urban realm. The articulation between individuals and society, both in part and as a whole, is marked by influences and attachments across positions, agencies, and scales that transcend both the individuality of the part and the integrity of the whole (Latour, 2004; Sennett, 2003). The overall positioning of this argument may be inverted when the individual becomes the center of digital space. In digital space, the relationship between setting and its constituents (or society and the individual) is even more complex and non-linear.

Social networks are partially spatial, and all spatial networks are social entities to some extent. All interactions that are being formed on the actual ground of the city, therefore, possess a spatial dimension (Scellato et al., 2011). Moreover, the elemental forms of interactions are not without social dimensions; as Hillier and Hanson (1984) argued, the mutual relationship between how people think, move, and interact shapes the construction of these elemental forms. In return, those spatial structures shape people’s movements and interactions. Here, the quarantine is an unnatural force that removes urban dwellers from their common ground of interaction. Lefebvre et al. (1996, p. 158) stated, “urban dwellers carry the urban with them”; so the urban realm cannot be separated from its social form. Within the framework of an extended quarantine, those two become suddenly isolated from one another. Some early traces of theoretical framework for understanding this phenomenon can be found in the works of Anthony Giddens (1991). He conceptualized the concept of time–space distanciation regarding the possibility of the absence of actors from space or time. While Giddens (1984) used the example of the telegraph and considered its invention as significant as the wheel, human society has come a long way by integrating time-less and distance-less communication mediums into the routine of everyday life. Public social media platforms offer the possibility of communications that are not bounded by time or space. Castells (1989) used the term space of flow to represent this new hybrid space that is an agglomeration of physical and digital spaces. He defined it as “re-conceptualiz[ing] new forms of spatial arrangements under the new technological paradigm” (Castells, 1989, p. 146). According to Castells (1996), new information and communication technology create new rules. The new rules imposed by digital communication can be better understood in the context of urban public space. The network society is a structural form of social connections that operates by transferring the flow of information through digital means of production. In the network society, knowledge is being accumulated or produced in the nodes and can be accessed from other nodes (Castells & Cardoso, 2006; Van Dijk, 2012). Figure 1 (top row) shows the transition from a pre-Web 2.0 society into a society that has integrated the digital mediums into everyday life. The mobile digital communication comes with GPS, cameras, and inherent connectivity, creating telepresence and backward presence (Floridi, 2005). Furthermore, as the term mobile suggests, they have an intrinsic spatial dimension. The new equilibrium includes the impact of the digital web supported by distant relations where engagements becomes important, not through public presence, but through representations of individual being. When public life is to be suspended until the end of quarantine, virtual representations become central in urban practice.

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Figure 1.

Top: The transformation of urban space with emerging digital space. Bottom: The transformation of digital space under quarantine.

A quarantine pushes against the strength of local proximity as a critical force in urban life (Iranmanesh & Atun, 2018; Kotzias et al., 2015; Tobler, 1970), forcing interactions to become more virtual. Consequently, the affordance that the urban space provides for interaction shifts toward digital space. The norms, cultures, and spatio-temporal restrictions that physical space imposes on human interaction might change form. The spatial form of daily routine is minimized to basic survival mode. The interactions between people and spaces shift to the virtual space that is provided and enforced by the rise of the networked society (Castells, 1996; Van Dijk, 2012). The public interactions via digital space penetrate the private space of the home, and the meaning of what is public becomes more obscure. Accordingly, a question arises regarding the degree to which the digital space carries the socio-spatial functionality of urban space. Does the inflation of digital space assume some characteristics of socio-spatial space? Quarantine provides a window into answering this question by removing the public spatiality from urban space (Figure 1, bottom).

Redefining these concepts through the evolving framework of social media seems to be central in contemporary urban dialogue. Contemporary human interaction is not necessarily restricted by physical forms. The worldwide quarantine challenges the idea of presence in public space and provides a window into the pathology of these emerging semi-virtual realities. Therefore, research needs to explore the mutual interactions between society and space in a new light.

A Brief Case Study

The existing theories can be interpreted in various ways. The increasing usage of social media during quarantine is expected as it provides an alternative space for daily routine. The emerging apparatus of networked society does not stop functioning because it is not bound by proximity. However, the spatial nature of those semi-virtual, socio-spatial activities is not well understood. Here, the study investigates these concepts by looking at the counts and content of Twitter data in the small city of Famagusta located on the eastern coast of Cyprus. The research looks into a Twitter dataset that is a part of ongoing data collection regarding the spatial dimension of digital interactions (Iranmanesh & Atun, 2018).

Twitter data has shown promising results in reading the socio-spatial interactions of the urban context (França et al., 2016; Gao et al., 2017; Lansley & Longley, 2016; Zhan et al., 2014). The current dataset regularly collects public tweets from 420 residences in the city of Famagusta. This target group was selected based on their intact geo-tagged tweets that show their daily interaction with the city ¹ . As a result, 7,677 tweets were collected between February 10, 2020, and April 8, 2020, and were used for this analysis.

The average count of returned tweets per day almost doubled after the initiation of the quarantine on the March 6, 2020 (Figure 2). Therefore, it seems that the assumption regarding the increasing integration of digital communication holds some merit. Even though a small sample of data is being analyzed, the inflation of digital space is obvious. Still, numbers do not express anything regarding the nature of these interactions; they only show the surge in the usage of social media which is expected given the circumstances. For this reason, the contents of returned tweets were further investigated. After the elimination of the pronouns, prepositions, irrelevant verbs, conjunctions, and symbols (Lansley & Longley, 2016), the remaining keywords were counted and presented in a word cloud.

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Figure 2.

The number of returned tweets per day from the sample.

Analysis of the Twitter dataset content shows two different pictures: one that is almost entirely populated with the names of places and urban public functions (Figure 3, left), and one that is mostly related to pandemic-related terms (Figure 3, right). The study did not identify any significant public spatial- or urban-related keywords in the database after the quarantine. After the quarantine took effect, the outliers indicating physical space were home (ev) or stay home (evde kal). These terms would be used less frequently under normal circumstances, but were observed in abundance after the curfew was officially announced.

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Figure 3.

The Twitter content analysis before (left) and after (right) the quarantine was initiated (March 6, 2020).

The quarantine-time tweets also included plenty of political-related content as protest against the poor performance of the government in the face of the pandemic. For instance, “Ayırma Yaşat Komisyon” (equity and justice for all) was frequently used as a hashtag related to the spread of the pandemic through prisons. In addition, the number of religion-related keywords (e.g., Allah: god, Amin: amen) was much higher during the quarantine.

The change in the number of education-related tweets was another prominent trend. Famagusta is identified as a college town, and a large portion of the city’s population is students. All educational activities were suspended on March 14, and the local universities started to shift toward online distance learning within two weeks. Thus, the pre-pandemic tweets include many keywords such as lecture, university, and dormitories, but the under-quarantine tweets show little trace of education-related content. As the city moved into a full lockdown, all public space-related tweets disappeared; some of the normal keywords for the city, for instance, would relate to waterfront activities and places.

Discussion and Conclusion

Cities have always been subject to emerging challenges and paradigm shifts. New challenges create temporary disruptions; cities, as socio-spatial entities, have the intrinsic power of organizing their evolving complexities (Jacobs, 1961). The concept of quarantine comes with one of these challenges: the restricted spatial access to the social life of the city brings forward many interesting questions regarding the definition of urban space. Moreover, the contemporary city is integrated with digital networks that are no longer Cartesian nor bound to physical presence (Floridi, 2005). Accordingly, new theoretical frameworks must be explored to address these issues. This article provided a glimpse into the effects of quarantine on the potential of transfer of urban life from the spatial structure to the inflated digital space. Our findings suggest that digital space cannot assume the role of the spatial urban grid. Although the inflation of digital space is clear, the analysis of Twitter content does not reveal any transference of the spatial content of the city to the virtual space. Although the digital revolution has transformed the way people experience urban space through those mediums, the embodied spatial dimension of those experiences cannot be easily replaced with digital mediums (Frith & Kalin, 2016). As the state of being in the ontological process of the urban web moves towards being on the web, new urban practice becomes a combination of spatial and virtual interactions that are less affected by socio-cultural and geographical bonds. These interactions limit the articulated relationship between temporality/spatiality and human interaction.

Analysis of the case study indicated a strong transition in how people used Twitter after the quarantine began, and this could potentially apply to other public social media platforms for further studies. The majority of tweets after the quarantine originated from residential areas; thus, private space became an extension of the public space. As public space was no longer dominated by the backward presence that allows people to record and recall their activities, it became more of a forward presence: an extended agglomeration of interactions that tries to remotely control a persona in a space without tangible spatiality. In this case, the type of interactions via the digital space changed from public space interactions to the dissemination of worries and political statements. There is a strong case for the de-territorialization of engagements in the absence of spatiality; however, further studies are needed for exploring its nature and extent.