Our friend Francesco has shared the abstract [in Spanish] that was accepted today for URBAN HYBRIDIZATION in Contemporary Territories. Here it is in English:

In the past 20 years, the communications revolution produced by the Internet substantially affected the way we interact with the world. This has driven us to a change of perception in the traditionally recognized opposition between real and virtual. Nowadays, a new paradigm is actually re-drawing reality as a complex system of relations between layers as “face” (physical) and virtual. Architects and urban planners can no longer ignore this new reality generated by ubiquitous computer technologies that we have translated to the reconfiguration of physical space in urban areas, with the term “hybrid public spaces”.

This “hybridization” of space is only an expression of wider radical changes between analytical systems (order and spacing) to synthetic (complexity, connectivity, permeability) ones. In a system characterized by its high capacity for communication, if space becomes a mix between reality and virtual presence, the separation between private and public space becomes obsolete. According to this theory of urban permeability, the concept of “filter” is important as a new indispensable (Technological? Architectural? Social? Cultural? ) device. Filter as a mean of connection with the capacity of handling private/public, real/virtual, inside a system where the channels are not separated anymore. Now these channels are communicating -APERTURE-.

In this model, public space is defined as the space in which information can flow freely. The public information consists in the communication generated from private channels screened by urban filters. In our point of view, this filter function cannot be automated: only people, through his sensitivity and emotions, can solve this function of discernment.

We propose an anthropocentric definition of these «hybrid public space»: considering the technological importance of information channels but restoring spirituality and intelligence that can only be provided by humans beings.

Submmited by: Francesco Cingolani, Domenico Di Siena, Manu Fernández, Paco González, César Reyes Nájera and Ethel Baraona Pohl