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CONTRIBUTIONS: C. H. BETANCOURTH's 'Virtualization and Multi-cultural...' about |
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about 'Virtualization and Multi-cultural...' by Carlos Hernan Betancourth This essay briefly examines the implications of both the technical capacity for instantaneous transmission and the capacity to link people at indeterminate locations, for civic culture and public space. To explore these issues is important at least for the following two main reasons: it may contribute to an understanding of the role of virtuality in both, causing and helping to solve the civic problems faced by multicultural cities. And second, such an explora tion could also contribute new ways of thinking about public space that offer a way into thinking a politics of difference. This imaginary net-city is a differential space in which politics is possible and conflict unavoidable. It is then a dimension of the experience of city life and a metaphor of politics. And it is as a result of this that it becomes important to explore the main implications for multi- cultural cities of the net potential to eliminate a dimension of social legibility. To explore these issues implies at least to look at the implications of virtuality for civic culture, economic space and governance. But due to space limitations, in what follows, I can only deal with these questions in relation to the problem of civic culture and of public space. Reference Carlos H Betancourth is a Researcher and a PhD Candidate in City Planning at Columbia University, New York. Betancourth has worked as an architect, urban designer and as a planner in Colombia, The Netherlands, Spain and in The United States. He has written an study on The Dutch Model of Urbanization for The RandStad(VINEX),(Dutch Version; VROM/RPD).1993 .He is also the assembler of Virtuality, Architecture and The Question of Control, that appeared in The ACSA European Conference 95 Proceedings, Autumn, 1995. His most recently essay -Virtuality and Civic Problems in Multicultural Cities- appeared translated in German as Virtualisierung und Multikulturelle Globale Stadte. In, Ansichten von Telepolis (S.Iglhaut, A Medosch, F. Rotzer (Hrsg,). Stadtam Netz. Bollmann Kommunikation& Neue Medien. 1 996. A French version entitled "La virtualisation et les villes-mondes multiculturelles" also appeared in, Futur Anterieur, La Ville-Monde Aujourd'hui, Entre virtualite et ancrgae, 1995/4 No 30-31-32, Paris: L'harmattan, 1996. Betancourth is currently doing research that examines the relation betwen telecommunications and cities. mail to: chb13@columbia.edu |
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