Reappropriation of Centrality and the Reproduction of Relationality in Emerging Core Urban Spaces
An Analysis of the Resilience and Territorialisation of Place-Based Social Networks in the Pseudo-Public Space of the Malled Metropolitan Centres of Auckland, New Zealand, During COVID-19 Lockdown
- DOI
- 10.2991/assehr.k.201009.017How to use a DOI?
- Keywords
- Public Space and COVID-19, Shopping Centres, Spatial Data Analysis, Instagram, Auckland, New Zealand
- Abstract
COVID-19 restrictions have exacerbated the effects of an urbanisation mode that, through the combination of rampant neoliberalism, pervasive translocalism and ubiquitous digital transduction, has produced a fragmented and enclavic space with high spatial inequalities. Threatening to enhance these inequalities, centres of public life, as shopping and entertainment malls, are subject to an inexorable process of creative destruction determined by transnational capitalist logics. The system of distributed centrality of the modern shopping centre is further polarised by the ultra-modern mega-enclosures. The ultra-modern mega-enclosures introduce a participatory transductive experientialisation that supplants the scripted eventfulness of the modern shopping centre. This form of experientialisation integrates consumption and production to exploit free labour and further dispossess the public and private local entities of their asset ownership and control. However, this new form of consumerism, here defined as post-consumerism, also seems to support a countering agency of the individual prosumer by providing infrastructure and materials for autonomous reproduction of socio-spatial relationality. Yet, if the resilience of the networks of these countering processes is uncertain, their vulnerability and readiness to cope with sudden disruptive changes are unknown. An observational study on the effects of COVID-19 pandemic lockdown shed light on the hybrid actual– virtual realities that are strongly anchored in places with a high degree of participatory transductive experientialisation. Crowdsourced Instagram data from two case studies, a modern and an ultra-modern centre in Auckland, New Zealand, were comparatively analysed. Findings showed that during the period of closure, the networks of the ultra-modern centre maintained the sustained autonomous activity of the previous period, while those of the modern centre saw a sharp activity decline. This indicates a stronger resilience of the relational networks of the ultra-modern centre, here described as a place of superlative abstract civicness, suggesting a higher individual appropriation and association of its meta-stable spatialities, underpinning a critical affirmative interpretation of the post-consumerist urban condition.
- Copyright
- © 2020, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.
- Open Access
- This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).
Cite this article
TY - CONF AU - Manfredo Manfredini AU - Jennifer Jie Rong AU - Franco Manai AU - Luciana Rech AU - Jacky Yongjie Ye PY - 2020 DA - 2020/10/10 TI - Reappropriation of Centrality and the Reproduction of Relationality in Emerging Core Urban Spaces BT - Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Dwelling Form (IDWELL 2020) PB - Atlantis Press SP - 161 EP - 169 SN - 2352-5398 UR - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.201009.017 DO - 10.2991/assehr.k.201009.017 ID - Manfredini2020 ER -