Digital Places: Fid-Bau Portal

Digital Places

Horan, Thomas A.

While less visible than the artifacts of the industrial era, digital technologies and infrastructures represent a major new force in the design of homes, communities and cities. Drawing upon an interdisciplinary design orientation, the author outlines several principles for creating digital places that are both wired and livable. After first defining the concept of digital places and the scales at which they operate, the author suggests how these digital places should be designed to embrace multiple uses, connect with traditional space, link to community networks, and involve diverse parties. Based on these principles and supporting case applications, the author then outlines several specific actions that can be taken to support digital places at the setting, community and regional scale. These actions include enhancing wired live-work designs, creating collaborative and seamless work environments, linking “bricks to clicks” through local e-commerce, creating connected learning communities, ensuring community access through local institutions, pushing local government to offer e-services and eforums, and linking high-tech growth to smart growth designs. The author concludes with comments about the need for policy leadership to forge public-private partnerships in enacting new digital place designs.