In [[Future Histories]] Lizzie O’Shea is using urban planning as an analogy for thinking about how we could design our digital spaces. Riffing off [[Freud]]’s thoughts about the mind as a city, and [[Jane Jacobs]]’s work on cities and planning.
I’m liking this, I was thinking about it recently, with an online presence being like a person’s home on the web. Taking it up a layer you think about digital urban planning, how these homes (and other things) fit together to make a city. I like it as a frame. (Probably because I’ve been living in a big city the last 10 years.)
If you think of the web as an analogue of the city environment in which we live, at present the urban master plan is imposed by Facebook , Instagram, Medium, Twitter and all the other social networks: the buildings must be of a certain height, with a predetermined number of windows per facade, and the colors that can be used are reduced to a minimum.
Rendering context...