TOWARDS A NEW POETICS OF URBAN SPACE

Abstract

The paper focuses on the ontological and narrative aspects of contemporary urban experience as simultaneously realized within two domains: actual and virtual. Examining the issue on the multidisciplinary horizon of spatial studies, we have attempted to establish a tentative analysis platform relying on Ricoeur’s concept of identity, be it human or urban, as produced within the continual process of self-narration. Such an approach has enabled the bridging of various scientific disciplines (urbanism, digital esthetics, ontology, cultural studies, and literary theory) and theoretical viewpoints (structuralism, poststructuralism, phenomenology, etc). Accordingly, the paper has treated the ontological status of cyberspace as an architectural and urbanistic issue, all the while concentrating on the following: inhabitability potential of cyber environments, identity and community formation in virtual worlds, and the possibility of reviving the poietic aspect of technological production. The exploration of the multifaceted narrative identity of contemporary city thus became a vantage point from which to interpret not only the past, present and future of our urban environments but also human narrato-ontological premises.