Digitalization of public spaces: sensory and emotional issues in people’s relationships to places

Abstract

The rise of digital objects in urban space is changing the relationship to places, to others and to ourselves. Our hypothesis is that digital tools have an impact on the relationship between people and places. The research, NUMCES (Numérique et Création des Espaces urbains), takes a psycho-urban approach to question the evolution of relationships to places created by the development of digital objects in Montreuil-sous-Bois, a suburb of Paris. More precisely, it questions urban and digital experiences by taking into account the representations and affects that govern them, the meaning of the spaces they create, as well as the socio-spatial and temporal rules they promote. An important result describes a relational dynamic that on the one hand expresses a social and urban distancing and, on the other, a re-anchoring through the body in motion and through the person's sensations. This relational dynamic is accompanied by an emotional state that is not linked to time or space. This evolution then questions urban quality.

Keywords

• digital urban object
• representation
• sociability
• sensation
• emotion
• sensitive urban world