Abstract
Ever since William Whyte’s The social life of small urban spaces (1980) we have become preoccupied with analyzing, understanding and predicting how users are going to react, behave or interact with their surroundings. We’ve noticed patterns, we’ve come up with formulas, we’ve written about space consumption, about design and public space becoming goods or products. What experience and sensible research have shown is that in fact we are able to impact our environment just as much as it impacts us. Once you add social media to the mix you get the new urban citizen: the prosumer. He interacts with the city and his peers in a new way; within a slightly virtual, slightly surreal environment, he adapts design to his needs, he has the freedom to express himself with little regard to the (initial) intent of his surroundings. He is the Millennial. The undeniable force that is the power of the Millennials to see things differently, to experiment tirelessly, to brake rules without thinking about it has in fact changed the urban perception and social guidelines. Thus we observe a new trend, one that has developed organically throughout the last decade: the Space SELFIEfication. The concept derives from the already habitude of the space consumer, to take self-pictures with the surrounding landscape – natural or built landmarks. The study is an open-paper, continuing the preoccupation expressed in a previous research regarding the Landscape Consumerism and Social Sustainability, aiming to improve the relation between society and its surrounding landscape.
Highlights
The discussion about the Urban Landscape of the 21st century becomes more and more related to the spaces of social interaction
The landscape is that background of photos which supports the tags or posts and has that something that worth to be mentioned on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or Linkedin
The urban landscape offers contexts, situations, landmarks to be mentioned on internet posts
Summary
The discussion about the Urban Landscape of the 21st century becomes more and more related to the spaces of social interaction. The entire existence of the contemporary society takes place between real and virtual, between physical space and informational space This duality is not a competition, is the structure of our life, a life inbetween, in which the experience related to physical spaces becomes “real” when it becomes an internet post. Facebook, Twitter are the go to places to prove oneself, to live, to connect, all the while floating randomly within a space lacking both dimension and identity (Floroiu & Enache, 2018) This is the context of Millenials - generations grown-up with cell/smart-phones, personal computers / tablets, video-games/apps. Their personalities are marked and strong influenced by an increased use and familiarity with communications, media, and digital technologies They are the users and the creators of the real and virtual space, the information society leaded by the technology being continuously developed by them. Their living environment is more than the city with its streets, buildings and parks, is an infinite space where the limit does not exists and where everything is possible
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