Relations between technique, technology and place in contemporary metropolis

a research agenda

Abstract

In this paper, we seek to reflect on how techniques influence the way we perceive space and time, whether by their physical existence or by the way they affect our sensations and our imagination. We assume that different places offer very different levels, in terms of density and accessibility, for the creative use of technique and its transmutation into “appropriate” technology. We question which digital city is this that is outlined, in Brazil, in a glaring framework of socio-spatial inequalities, even more aggravated at all scales, as can be observed from the second decade of the 2000s on? The operationalization of the notion of digital city allows us to think about the creation/production of digital places at different scales, from the block or neighborhood scale to those of the city and the metropolis/metropolitan agglomeration, as in “a zonal system of innovation distributed in several levels” (KOMNINOS, 2008, p. 1). At the end, a research agenda is proposed based on four fronts of empirical surveys, with the focus on the metropolitan agglomeration of Salvador-Bahia: - Policies and cultural production; - Education; - Popular entrepreneurship; - Participatory/collaborative mappings.