Sergio Amadeu da Silveira - Cidadania e Redes Digitais

eng
c i t i z e n s h i p a n d d i g i t a l n e t w o r k s
are no longer just a movement of extinction and rebirth of industrial cities, as in the
U.S.. New networks turn production systems more flexible and allow territorially
decentralized and distributed production structures.
Digital city, differently from early experiences of informational cities, enables
a social incorporation of technology by allowing a digital inclusion strategy and
ensuring access to information and the knowledge management 8 . Referencing to
the real city, a new territory’s organization and integration form are established,
networked by a public network transmitting voice, data and image, in which the
citizen becomes the main individual in production, management and use of new
technologies benefits.
Cities persist and resist, producing new utopian energies, but this time designed
from new collective subjects that affect the production of space through local and
global networks in which the territory confronts the world and the place confronts
the territory. The city is reorganized with a technical and informational materiality
that arranges places, establishes territorial identities in articulating places, as a work
of human relations.
Just as stated by Lefebvre concerning the industrial urbanization, in this new
urban organization there is no return to the past or run to the future. Past and present
are indivisible. Place and non-place, city and urbanization differ between the
present and immediate reality, practical sensitive and architectural data, and social
reality comprised of relations to be designed, built and rebuilt by thought.
Digital city recovers the utopia, finding in urban format the material support for
production process of new social relationships through man’s creative ability. That is
not an utopia that arises only at aspiration level, but which incorporates a transformative
praxis and conceived as work, with goals set in the creative and democratization
level of access to information and communication channels.
A digital city is defined as being a place:
• fully connected through a voice, image and data public network with broadly
territorial coverage, linking public and private sectors;
8. In regard to cybercities and digital cities, refer to: TACMAN, Michele, A (CIBER) GEOGRAFIA
DAS CIDADES DIGITAIS, Dissertação de Mestrado, Instituto Geociências da Universidade Federal
Fluminense (UFF), Magister (http://www.tamandare.g12.br/cidadedigital/, accessed on September
10th, 2005).
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