Abstract
In the knowledge economy era, with appearance of smart tools and communication technologies, not only the production process and information industry, but also people’s movement and interaction with urban spaces is altering more rapidly than ever before. Digital mutations in the cities, have created a new different layer beyond the physical context: a digital meta-context which have taken the spatial system of the cities towards a multi-dimensional complexity. More often, the convergence of these two contexts, in the cities, occurs in coincidental, temporary and unstable spaces, without spatial persistency. On the other hand, although the increasing use of trendy ‘smart-like’ issues such as smart cities, smart apps, etc., in today business and academic terminology, there has been very few quantitative studies regarding the potentials of digital flows in spatial development of urban configuration – especially public spaces- and land use system. In a general typology, areas that contain the qualities of both-or one- of the physical and digital layers, can be classified into four types: 1.Spatially defined; with digital trait: Active Public Spaces. 2.Spatially defined; without digital trait: Potential Public Spaces. 3.Spatially not-defined; with digital trait: Hidden Spaces with Public Potentials. 4.Spatially not-defined; without digital trait: Inactive Spaces. Among these four types, in a simpler look, “hidden spaces with public potentials” are gravity areas containing urban digital flows –information and communication transactions-, without spatial definition in the architecture and urban design and program fields. On the other words, these are spaces with great potentials of being re-integrated to the active and dynamic system of the city as emergent public areas. In a wider analogy, establishing a balanced state of efficiency in cities-as flow based systems- requires to identify areas with high pressure and high density of flow and then distributing and directing them to areas with lower pressure and density. From this perspective, the integration and activation of these four types of areas together, is a process that cannot be fruitful using only traditional methods of urban management and static data analyzing. The main focus of this project-as a methodological experiment- is to create an analytical model for reading, analyzing and re-integrating the two physical (the spatial organization and land use) and digital (Cellular Masts Transactions-Payload) contexts in the city of Amol – in Mazandaran Province, north Iran - in the following three phases: First Phase. Contextualization: reading of the two contexts through a mapping process. Second Phase. De-Contextualization: discovering the four types of previously mentioned areas by the superimposition of the two context as well as measuring the inter/intra relations between city layers in a system of attraction and repulsion land-use fields. Third Phase. Re-Contextualization: developing an optimizing configurational model by transforming the previous fields into a node-based system of adaptive and disruptive forces (accumulative land-use compatibility orientation) for the re-integration of potential and inactive areas to the active ones; A model for the future spatial and land use development of the city of Amol. The main achievement of this research-besides the methodological innovations and experiments- is a multi-layer analytical system with monitoring and evaluation ability for university and education purposes as well as for municipalities and city actors. This system, is a tool for exploring and extracting hidden and high potential areas to evaluate the dynamic state of the city in a temporal context. As a result, the developed system, is a regenerative model to study emerging areas for urban revitalization, public services and development investments in constantly-changing urban dynamics.
