Making Places
From Non-Place to User-Generated Space Through a Diversity of Media
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 22018162 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Weijue Wang (0000-0001-8311-6081, University College London), Mark Tewdwr-Jones (0000-0002-8786-6434, University College London), Valerio Signorelli (0000-0002-1023-0366, University College London) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 10 |
| Publication date | 2025-04-16 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Urban Planning (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2183-7635 • E-ISSN: 2183-7635 |
| Publisher | Cogitatio (PUBLISHER • PT) |
| DOI | 10.17645/up.9063 |
| OpenAlex | W4409486048 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 31 |
The prevalence of rich and dynamic multimedia information has dramatically accelerated the development of communicative non-places over the last 30 years. This has prompted planners to consider the question of how the long-term shift from a place-based to a non-place-networked public realm can be achieved. This article proposes the hypothesis that users of digital infrastructure in non-places create temporary non-places. In this process, a “non-place,” as intended by Augé, is neutral and lacks identity, but digital technology endows this physical non-place with new characteristics: identical, relational, and historical. By focusing on London as a case city, this article proposes a new method for observing the transformation process of urban places and non-places from location-based social media data. The research involved collecting, quantitatively, geo-targeted contributions within London during a predefined period, and an analysis of contributions on social media over time, collected from X, Foursquare, and Instagram. Daily digital activity patterns show distinctive temporal narratives in non-place-based digital spaces. The key findings from these patterns are: (a) There is a rhythmic difference between digital and physical activities in non-places; and (b) non-places accelerate the use of digital technologies as they stimulate the desire to share personal status through social media. The study aims to understand what placemaking practices occur in spaces overlayed by invisible infrastructures, as well as users’ self-generated spatio-temporal perceptions
Architectural engineering · Media studies · Place making · Sociology · World Wide Web · Anthropology · Computer Science · Engineering · Geographic Information Systems Studies · Human Mobility and Location-Based Analysis · Urban Design and Spatial Analysis
Reading the Everyday
The positive and negative implications of anonymity in Internet social interactions
Remediation
Creating Ordinary Places
Racing against time
Space and place
Social media semantic perceptions on Madrid Metro system
Landscape and the Obliteration of Practice
Tourists with cameras
Performance and
Thinking about measuring Augé's non-places with Big Data
The temporality of the landscape
Driving Places
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2026 (2) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |