This document discusses how digital technologies can remediate and strengthen communities at a regional scale. It presents a case study of Liskeard, Cornwall, where providing internet skills training to digitally excluded residents helped reconnect them to neighborhood ties and local organizations. Public libraries played a key role in supporting online and offline community interactions. The document calls for further exploring how online and real-world spaces can overlap to strengthen regional social infrastructure and sense of place.

1. Beyond the Digital City
Remediating Space at a Regional Scale
Katharine S. Willis*
Alessandro Aurigi
Pamela Varley
School of Architecture, Plymouth University
*http://www.plymouth.ac.uk/staff/kwillis1
@trolleytweet

2. space of flows
space of places
vs.
Realtime Graz
http://senseable.mit.edu/graz/

3. “social connections only within private spaces”
(Putnam 2000)
‘loss of time spent within the public and parochial
realms” (Lofland (1998)

4. “new ICTs may not create a ‘space of flows’ that is
separate from the ‘space of places’. ICTs may be
increasingly embedded into all aspects of everyday
life and existing spheres of interaction. In the case of
neighborhoods, the integration of ICTs into everyday
life could reverse the trend of privatization within the
parochial realm”
(Hampton 2007: 715-716).

6. urban – regional
http://brockleycentral.blogspot.com/2011_08_01_archive.html http://www.liskeard.gov.uk/Things-To-Do.aspx

7. questions
What are the characteristics of place-based
communities and the interplay between the invisible
networks and material world of regional life?

8. the ‘self’ as someone who is ‘constantly making and
breaking connections, declaring allegiances and
interests and then renouncing them – participating in
a video conference while sorting through email or
word processing at the same time’ (Bolter and Grusin1999: 232).
BUT media are just an extension of the way the self is
reconfigured in different situations “as people reach
out, connect and emphasize different aspects of
themselves” (Rainie and Wellman 2012: 126).
Remediation

9. ICT’s have always remediated spatial settings e.g.
telegraph and telephone (de Soja Pool 1977)
Remediation

10. ‘the whole raft of current new media innovations are
not being used in ways that are divorced from the
use of existing media, means of communication and
material practices in places’ (Graham 2004: 18).
‘the reality of the internet is more important than
the dazzle’ (ibid: 4–5).
Remediation

11. ICTs redefine ‘behaviours in ways we do not
fully know’ (Aurigi and de Cindio 2008: 8)
Need to ‘re-frame our existing spatial
concepts to accommodate this increased
range of possibilities’ (ibid).
Remediation

12. -living in one geographical area (Minar & Greer 1969).
-sense of community created from a localised set of
relationships
-sense of belonging or communion created by
strong personal ties and a feeling of belonging
amongst the members of the group. (Putnam 2000).
12
Neighbourhoods

13. Neighbourhoods
http://www.cornwall.gov.uk/default.aspx?page=26436

14. Neighbourhoods
http://www.city-data.com/forum/atlanta/1577701-discovering-atlantas-neighborhoods-3.html

15. ‘wired residents neighbored much more extensively
and intensively than their non-wired counterparts’
(Hampton 2002, p. 228).
15
Neighbourhoods

16. Presence and use of media in a neighbourhood
offer a new type of localised sociality, that occured
at different temporal and spatial scales
simultaneously (Hampton 2002).
16
Neighbourhoods

17. 17
In a study of Facebook friends, strong ties, or relationships that are more intimate and
personal, (close friends, family, and partners) tend to make up about 10 percent of the
network (Parks, 2010).
http://www.trendsspotting.com/blog/index.php?s=facebook+friends

18. the more local the sender-receiver, the higher the
density of messages (Goldenberg, Levy 2009)
http://arxiv.org/abs/0906.3202
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/413922/e-mail-traffic-data-casts-doubt-on-global-village-theory/

19. Mediated networks need not be global and
disconnected from local spaces but are instead multiply
emplaced; such that they may sustain neighbourhoods
rather than oppose them (Crang et al. 2010).
Augmented Neighbourhoods
http://blog.bryantpark.org/2012/05/wifi-10th-anniversary.html

20. The conditions that often characterise a marginalised
regional communities;
- lack of social mobility
- lack of access to good housing
- geographical isolation
provide the conditions for internet access to be
supported through existing neighbourhood ties.

21. ‘more marginalised neighbourhoods tend to be
characterised by instrumental and episodic ICT usage
patterns which are often collectively organised through
strong neighbourhood ties…. It is those neighbourhood
ties that enable on-line access’ (Crang 2006: 2405).

22. Method
communities that lack social cohesion have ‘low levels
of social interaction between and within communities
and low levels of place attachment’ (Forrest and Kearns 2001: 2128).

24. Case Study

25. Context- the rhetoric
“Broadband is one of our top priorities.
Effective, reliable and secure
communications infrastructure is
increasingly essential to life in our rural
communities and we must make sure that
they can benefit from the convenience of
the delivery of online services– we want
communities to have the tools to
participate fully in the Big Society.” (Department for
Communities and Local Government 2010)

26. Context- the infrastructure
http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Technology/Pix/pictures/2008/02/01/SeaCableHi.jpg

27. http://www.falriver.co.uk/news/maritime-museum-reveals-porthcurno-s-place-in-history

30. The town centre neighbourhood has an
IMD (Index of Multiple Deprivation)
rating of 6230 (out of 32,000), putting it
in the bottom twenty per cent of the
most deprived areas in UK.
http://www.cornwall.gov.uk/default.aspx?page=22139

31. methods

34. Linda, retired, 55, children live abroad
lived in Liskeard for 25 years.
Anne, 71, retired, recently widowed, no immediate family
lived in Liskeard for 45 years
Terry, 52, long term sick, no family,
lived in Liskeard for 29 years
Thomas, 68, retired, children live in next county
lived in Liskeard for 48 years

35. Results- Social inclusiom

36. “I don't even know what Google is”
“I just want to know how to get out of trouble. I’m
scared it (the computer) will blow up on me”.
“I’m getting fed up with all the family saying “When are
you going to go online?”
Social inclusiom

37. “because I felt I wasn’t getting connected with
everything that’s going on” (Mary)
“you feel connected if you're on the computer. It’s the
modern times - on the television everything always
links to something online so you feel that everyone’s
online and you’re not“ (Jean).
Social inclusiom

38. “I just want to be able to surf the net without bothering
junior family members” (Bridget)
Internet and computer skills as social capital.
Social inclusiom

39. “I used to have to wait for a phone call, but now I log on
every day to not miss anything from the secretary of
the club” (Linda)
Going online corresponded with many of the
participants feeling less socially excluded in their
neighbourhood.
Social inclusiom

40. internet skills for the digitally excluded resulted in a re-
localising of community connections.
Social inclusiom

41. Results - Sense of Place

42. “we moved here in 1968, and one time we used to
know everyone, but the neighbours have changed
since we first moved and now we are the old
stalwarts” (Tessa)
“we’ve lived here for forty years, but we don’t speak to
our neighbours very much. It’s not that close knit.
People come and go all the time, the houses on both
sides have changed hands several times” (Thomas).
Sense of Place

43. “I know the library. I haven’t got a computer at home
and if I need to know something it helps. I know all
the staff. I asked about getting some information and
the staff helped me.” (margaret)
‘
Sense of Place

44. Public places provide everyday opportunities for social
interaction and social inclusion, and can facilitate the
development of community ties.
Small-scale activities, ‘which lead to a feeling of
belonging and an affective connection with place- or
non-place-based social groups” (Doering 2008: 8)
Role of ICTs to support this process
Summary

45. If, as Wellman claims, ‘most people operate in multiple,
thinly connected, partial communities as they deal
with networks of kin, neighbours, friends, workmates
and organisational ties’ (2001: 227)
key public places such as the central library became
spaces of remediation in that they allowed for the
‘glue’ (Martin 2008) to reconnect with some aspects of
community life.
Summary

46. Context: Moving from a digital infrastructure to social
infrastructure (networks)
How can we create the conditions for this process of
remediation of neighbourhood ties at a regional and
rural scale?
How can we support the links between online spaces
and offline spaces and find ways to design the point
at which they overlap becomes a site of
remediation?
Summary

47. Summary

48. We would like to thank
Jay Chapman at Citizens Online
Peter Finlay at Cornwall Libraries
Participants in the Get Online computer courses in Liskeard for their
assistance in the case study.
The research presented in this paper is part-funded by the European Regional
Development Fund bringing greater connectivity to Cornwall and the Isles of
Scilly (Superfast Cornwall).
Acknowledgements