Empowered Place
Empowered Place: a place where a particular technical system widens the range of what can be done, or accessed, giving it a totally new character. 1. A place can be described as empowered when endowed with a technical system that ‘augments’ its properties, generating a particular form of augmented reality which acts like a kind of prosthesis, but extending the possibilities of a place rather than of an individual. The role of place aid can also be, and indeed has been played by more traditional technology: from building technology to the fixed telephone system. However, a new family of technologies (from tele-presence to ambient intelligence) has now appeared which opens new and unexpected possibilities 2. An empowered place is a hybrid place, both physical and virtual, which networks with other places. It is a place where totally new forms of organisation, knowledge and social interaction can occur, with flexible relationships, reversible but potentially stable in that they are rooted in a locality (such as a neighbourhood) and linked to the local network of communities which intermingle there. In empowered places a variety of complementary activities can be carried out, where different flows of energy and material can merge and different networks (relating to specific issues and the
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provision of specific services) join to generate multi-functional combinations. They are connoted and connoting places where it is the linking of a particular set of networks and services of special importance that establishes its specific character, contributing to the shaping of its identity on a wider scale. 3. The hypothesis of developing empowered places seems to run counter to the recent dominant trend towards a growing crisis in sense of place, with all that this implies on a social, economic and cultural plane. On the other hand, over the years it has become clear that this dominant tendency has generated, and is still generating, an opposing trend in which the question of a sense of place is taken up and proposed in new ways. The concept of empowered places fits with this line of thinking but unlike some other tendencies towards localisation, does not hold any special nostalgia for the past. The new sense of place this implies would seek to be congruent with the deepest elements of human experience (which is always located experience, set in a well-defined physical and social context), but also to accept the challenge of contemporary life. In this case, that would mean betting that this new sense of place will emerge when new behaviour and new technological potential meet. (☛ also BOX Local Connectors).
Functions, places and behaviour Let’s return to our initial question. The scenario of a sustainable city outlined in the previous chapter can be better understood, in its general features and the possibilities it provides, by considering some daily functions and developing design proposals to answer the questions they raise. To answer these and to paint a clearer picture of the multi-local city with its possibilities and limits, we present various daily functions as so many multi-service centres relating to those functions and responding to their various requirements. In the sustainable city, intended as a multi-local system, these centres are service places where meeting the requirements of daily life provides an opportunity for new ways of living and socialising. They become empowered places where new technology makes new forms of organisation, expertise, and socialisation all possible. The functions associated with these places are the most basic. When seen as macro-themes, daily functions do not change much over time – the preparation of food or the mainte162 ı SUSTAINABLE EVERYDAY