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Constructing Authenticity: Location Based Social Networks, Digital Placemaking, and the Design of Centralized Urban Spaces

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Mediated Identities in the Futures of Place: Emerging Practices and Spatial Cultures

Part of the book series: Springer Series in Adaptive Environments ((SPSADENV))

Abstract

In urban lives conducted through mobile devices, locative services, and social media discourse, the ability to interact with the image of the city and its public spaces makes it appear more liberal, heterogenous, and democratic. However, in this chapter the collection of data within digital and urban platforms is seen to facilitate an underlying political and economic value system that frames the way in which this image is constructed. Much research has addressed the ways in which social media platforms attempt to centralize online discourse to monopolize revenue from advertizing and data analytics. Less has been done to identify the ways in which governments, private developers, and nonprofit cultural institutions utilize these platforms to encourage the growth of centralized urban spaces. This chapter analyses the relationships between location-based social networks and emerging practices of digital placemaking to understand how discourse of a more authentic and communal “public” space masks the emergence of “Hypermediated Space”—places where architecture and other forms of cultural production are “optimised” to increase the profitability of centralized spaces for urban stakeholders.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia

    Robert Cameron

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  1. Robert Cameron
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Correspondence to Robert Cameron .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Senior Research Fellow in Future Cities, Faculty of Science and Engineering, School of Engineering and the Built Environment, Anglia Ruskin University, Chelmsford Campus, Bishop Hall Lane, Essex, Chelmsford, UK

    Lakshmi Priya Rajendran

  2. Course Leader, MSc Town Planning, School of Engineering and the Built Environment, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Anglia Ruskin University, Chelmsford Campus, Bishop Hall Lane, Essex, Chelmsford, UK

    NezHapi Dellé Odeleye

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Cameron, R. (2020). Constructing Authenticity: Location Based Social Networks, Digital Placemaking, and the Design of Centralized Urban Spaces. In: Rajendran, L., Odeleye, N. (eds) Mediated Identities in the Futures of Place: Emerging Practices and Spatial Cultures. Springer Series in Adaptive Environments. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-06237-8_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-06237-8_8

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-06236-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-06237-8

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