Locality and globality: The production of new space in maintaining the identity of urban areas

Abstract

Globalization has brought modernity to big cities but this led to a contradiction between abstract spaces (quantity) and social spaces (quality). The modern environment tends to disrupt the daily life of local communities with its cultural diversity and eliminates social relations. Moreover, modernity which offers uniformity does not consider local identity and cities are planned similar everywhere. This paper uses Lefebvre’s trialectics of spatiality comprising ‘spatial practice’, ‘representation of space’ (abstract space), and ‘space of representations’ (lived space) to study the spatial phenomena in Medan city. The research used qualitative methodology via in-depth interviews with respondents from various societal groups. The study focused on the phenomenon of space according to each group. The findings show that there are unique dynamic relationships between the local community and the newcomer communitythat brings modernity. The Tamil communitylives in the periphery area while their presence in the modern commercial center strengthens the identity of the area as a “home town” for the local community in the modern city.