The digital mundane and the experiential production of public space

The role that our engagements with digital technology play in producing urban public space are often and easily taken for granted. Seeking to remedy this, there has been a groundswell of scholarship in digital geography that explores how various digital technologies are experienced as part of everyd...

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Main Author: Robert Lundberg
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Elsevier 2025-12-01
Series:Digital Geography and Society
Subjects:
Online Access:http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666378325000145
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author Robert Lundberg
author_facet Robert Lundberg
author_sort Robert Lundberg
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description The role that our engagements with digital technology play in producing urban public space are often and easily taken for granted. Seeking to remedy this, there has been a groundswell of scholarship in digital geography that explores how various digital technologies are experienced as part of everyday life in public space. In this article I extend this scholarship by arguing that digital technology is not only an important experiential phenomenon, but that, through our mundane engagements, it also configures together with the urban bodies, mass, and matter to produce public space. To account for the spatially productive role of digital technology I develop an understanding of public space as contingent and dynamic, and show how this allows us to understand space as becoming public when it is experienced as such, by locating the everyday material and affective engagements with digital technology that contribute to those experiences. This orientation towards everyday life offers an important counterpoint to narratives that relate the production of public space to top-down engagements with digital technologies, as in smart and platform cities. It also contributes to the critical evaluation of public space by showing how digital technology is part of the ongoing configuration of that space, through the everyday life that takes place there.
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spelling doaj-art-5f504ae7675f4e20b59de5196e8ed1802025-08-20T02:05:13ZengElsevierDigital Geography and Society2666-37832025-12-01910012510.1016/j.diggeo.2025.100125The digital mundane and the experiential production of public spaceRobert Lundberg0Corresponding author.; FUTURES Hub, Emerging Technologies Research Lab, Monash University, Caulfield Campus, 900 Dandenong Road, Caulfield East, VIC 3145, AustraliaThe role that our engagements with digital technology play in producing urban public space are often and easily taken for granted. Seeking to remedy this, there has been a groundswell of scholarship in digital geography that explores how various digital technologies are experienced as part of everyday life in public space. In this article I extend this scholarship by arguing that digital technology is not only an important experiential phenomenon, but that, through our mundane engagements, it also configures together with the urban bodies, mass, and matter to produce public space. To account for the spatially productive role of digital technology I develop an understanding of public space as contingent and dynamic, and show how this allows us to understand space as becoming public when it is experienced as such, by locating the everyday material and affective engagements with digital technology that contribute to those experiences. This orientation towards everyday life offers an important counterpoint to narratives that relate the production of public space to top-down engagements with digital technologies, as in smart and platform cities. It also contributes to the critical evaluation of public space by showing how digital technology is part of the ongoing configuration of that space, through the everyday life that takes place there.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666378325000145Public spaceDigital mundaneEveryday lifeAffectEthnography
spellingShingle Robert Lundberg
The digital mundane and the experiential production of public space
Digital Geography and Society
Public space
Digital mundane
Everyday life
Affect
Ethnography
title The digital mundane and the experiential production of public space
title_full The digital mundane and the experiential production of public space
title_fullStr The digital mundane and the experiential production of public space
title_full_unstemmed The digital mundane and the experiential production of public space
title_short The digital mundane and the experiential production of public space
title_sort digital mundane and the experiential production of public space
topic Public space
Digital mundane
Everyday life
Affect
Ethnography
url http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666378325000145
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