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Apple Town Square: Digital Placemaking and Digital Transformation of Urban Public Spaces

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This explorative paper rethinks digital placemaking and urban digital transformation with an example of Apple's “town square” plan. A term without consensus on its definition, digital placemaking is an emerging phenomenon that describes the integration of digital technologies into urban environments. It is integral to the digital transformation of the urban public spaces concerning how the places are planned, designed, programmed and inhabited. This paper utilizes urban assemblage thinking and Latourian concept of oligopticon to examine a thwarted “town square” deal between Apple Inc. and Federation Square, Melbourne's significant public space. It views Apple “town square” as an intricate form of digital placemaking that reveals contemporary challenges faced with urban public spaces and cultural institutions. These challenges include architectural, business, digital and ultimately public issues.

Keywords: Apple ; assemblage ; Digital placemaking ; digital transformation ; Latour ; placemaking ; public space

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Apple Town Square: Digital Placemaking and Digital Transformation of Urban Public Spaces
Intellect , 222 (2024); https://doi.org/10.1386/9781835950326_14
/content/books/9781835950326.c12
/content/books/9781835950326.c12
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  6. Dovey, Kim . “Informal Urbanism and Complex Adaptive Assemblage.” International Development Planning Review 34, no. 4 (2012), 349–68.
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     [Google Scholar]
  10. Guattari, Felix , and Gilles Deleuze . A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by B. Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1987.
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  11. Harvey, David . The New Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
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  12. Hassan, Robert . The Condition of Digitality: A Post-Modern Marxism for the Practice of Digital Life. London: University of Westminster Press, 2020.
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  13. Hes, Dominique , and Cristina Hernandez-Santin , eds. Placemaking Fundamentals for the Built Environment. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020.
     [Google Scholar]
  14. Phillips, J.W.P. “Agencement/Assemblage.” Theory, Culture & Society 23, no. 2–3 (2006), 108–09, https://doi.org/10.1177/026327640602300219.
     [Google Scholar]
  15. Kitchin, Rob , P. Lauriault Tracey , and Gavin McArdle . Data and the City. London, New York : Routledge, 2017.
     [Google Scholar]
  16. Latour, Bruno . Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
     [Google Scholar]
  17. Latour, Bruno . “Turning around Politics: A Note on Gerard de Vries’ Paper.” Social Studies of Science 37, no. 5 (2007): 811–20.
     [Google Scholar]
  18. Latour, Bruno . An Inquiry into Modes of Existence. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013.
     [Google Scholar]
  19. Lewis, Peter , and Jordan Guiao . The Public Square Project: Reimagining Our Digital Future. Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing, 2021.
     [Google Scholar]
  20. MacLeod, Anna , Paula Cameron , Rola Ajjawi , Olga Kits , and Jonathan Tummons . “Actor-network Theory and Ethnography: Sociomaterial Approaches to Researching Medical Education.” Perspectives on Medical Education 8, no. 3 (2019): 177–86.
     [Google Scholar]
  21. McQuire, Scott . Geomedia: Networked Cities and the Future of Public Space. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2017.
     [Google Scholar]
  22. Offenhuber, Dietmar , and Carlo Ratti . Decoding the City: Urbanism in the Age of Big Data. Basel, Switzerland: Birkhäuser, 2014.235
     [Google Scholar]
  23. Papastergiadis, Nikos , ed. Ambient Screens and Transnational Public Spaces. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2016.
     [Google Scholar]
  24. Sweeney, Jill , Kathy Mee , Pauline McGuirk , and Kristian Ruming . “Assembling Placemaking: Making and Remaking Place in a Regenerating City.” Cultural Geographies 25, no. 4 (2018): 571–87.
     [Google Scholar]
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