- Reading of Post Modern Public Spaces As Layers Of Virtual Images and Real Events   57 kb by    Fahmy, Wael Salah & null, null & null, null | wael_fahmy@hotmail.com    Short Outline Parallel Session 3: Cyberspace and the Loss of Concentration Reading of Post Modern Public Spaces As Layers Of Virtual Images and Real Events Recently, the relationship between real and virtual spaces have produced a new urbanity, extending from post-modernity and deconstructivism on the one hand, to super-modernity and minimalism alternating on the other hand. By creating virtual metaphors and mental maps of different spatial layers within post modern cities, public spaces are experienced as sequences of several images overlapping and evolving through different scales of space and time. -How can we begin to envision such an urbanity in the information age ? -What is the range of newly-created urbanism as being influenced by the digital and virtual representation of space ? The media culture has put people into a space of ''total flow'', resistant to interpretation, yet the juxtapositioning of their mental images calls to attention a line of conflict. This is concerned with the nature of those other (unconscious) spaces, the ones so successfully erased that they have fallen off the map. As such spaces have become invisible, they attempt to map themselves into entirely different worlds. The current paper nevertheless explores the possibility of re-mapping a city through finding the flows of events, and through locating the hidden spaces in the ''unconscious'' of the city. Spaces emerge and disappear, they overlap and interpenetrate one another, with the virtual city being at once a transmutation of the known, whilst standing alongside and being interwoven into real urban life. However spaces constantly juxtapose themselves one against the other, with digital technology bringing various areas into proximity of one another. Moreover, in the information-knowledge culture, existing urban order is being replaced by highly complex new networks. Therefore there is a need to deconstruct the contested (post)modern city, with the current paper aiming to examine the fragmented multi-layered nature of public spaces in an attempt to emphasise the nature and institutionalisation of post-modern spaces. The examination of such fragmented urban patterns will try to unravel the contested nature of sequential images and overlapping layers of events as they emerge in people?s daily interaction, with such social relations being mobilised through public spaces. Such spaces could nonetheless represent the (re) (de) construction of identities with new urban spaces signifying a focus for fragmentation and proliferation of social patterns which are contested and juxtaposed in post modern cities. Key words: virtual representation- mental map/images- events-deconstruction- postmodern city Abstract The relationship between real and virtual spaces has produced a new urbanity, extending from post-modernity, deconstructivism to super-modernity. By creating virtual metaphors and mental maps of different spatial layers within post modern cities, public spaces are experienced as sequential images and overlapping layers of events as they emerge. An urban experiment is introduced that proposes a conflation of urban spaces mapped into fictional terrain of perceptive imagery and virtual reality. There is a need to deconstruct the contested postmodern city, with the current paper aiming to examine the fragmented multi-layered nature of public spaces in an attempt to emphasise the nature and institutionalisation of post-modern spaces. This will try to unravel conflicting forces that when initially encountered resisted the subversive rhythms of deconstructivism that challenge the stable institutionalised construction of space. Keywords - Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2001: Honey, I Shrunk the Space   Click to open the full paper as pdf document   Click to send an email to the author(s) of this paper