Suburban nostalgia : the community building potential of urban screens

Abstract

Urbanely nomadic residents are increasingly forgoing the potential of locale based serendipitous encounters in favour of digitally mediated interactions within their walled garden of existing social networks. This limits a sense of community in urban neighbourhoods to members of one’s social network, but what of interactions with those outside of these networks, such as inhabitants of residential spaces? We report on our pilot study of open ended interviews which investigates the different user archetypes whose needs we consider when designing social technology for urban spaces. We propose a design to extend the sense of community in urban neighbourhoods beyond pure network sociality. Through a lens of ‘suburban nostalgia’ we envision how neighbourhood interactions might be retrofitted in new ways through civic engagement in the enhancement of environments.