Conference article

The current paper presents design of urban public space as a problem framed by experience affordance. We proceed analytically. First; we note that people harbor and approach desires. Next; we observe that people inhabit space and their desires are enacted in space. We claim that urban public spaces are sites that afford realization of desires. Urban spaces; however; do present their own contradictions. In particular; we identify walls as capable of fragmenting space and the experience of space. We partially deconstruct walls and look for points of rupture; penetration and transcendence. Then we seek strategies for exploiting these in affordances of transcendence prompted by communications technologies. Our objective is to contribute to discourses surrounding human inhabitation of urban spaces and those concerned with adding value to the experience of inhabitation.

Desire; boundaries/limits; communications technologies; public space; urban space