Possibilities for Micro-Urbanism
The weakening of city centres and disappearance of public space have been listed as problems of contemporary urbanization. At the same time it could be claimed, that there are, more than ever, existing and emerging several possibilities for a person to be connected with cityscape and affect it. If we ask who creates the city, how the actual cityscape is formed it is usually hardly possible to track the exact cause of changes. Contemporary urban theory describes city as an organized complexity. However, we have to deal with that complexity through material mediums or through (re)creating the meaning. The flow of events in cityscape is intensifying and changing more complex. How to mediate this information and how it acquires a meaning? The Estonian exhibition at Venice Architecture Biennale searches for possibilities to create superpersonal space combining mobile positioning with an on-line medium Ð jointspace.ee webpage. Architects, urbanists and geographers have cooperated with geo-informatics to cut through the lifelessness of traditional planning.
Our work considers the mapping and displaying of real-time movement information and peoplesÕ activity spaces. Main question is which changes might be brought about by the wide-spread accessibility to real-time information. Jointspace.ee gives opportunity for a person or interest groups to display the spaces they use and through feedback affect the events in cityscape. The basis of these influences are personal and maybe more strategic decisions on using cityscape. What role do those short-term micro-influences play?

www.jointspace.ee
www.urbanmark.ee/venezia

Yoko Alender is MA student in the Department of Architecture and Urban Planning at the Estonian Academy of Art. Works as an architect in Urban Mark architectural office. Main field of interest concerns studying and creating awareness and perception of space amongst larger groups in society, also the role of social networks in this process. Involved in mobile positioning studies since january 2006, mainly developing the Art Academy project into a study of the essence and quality of mobile positioning
Kaja Pae is an MA student in the Department of Architecture and Urban Planning at the Estonian Academy of Arts and an undergraduate student in the Physics Department at the University of Tartu. In co-operation with Urban Mark architectural office she has participated in several exhibitions, including the Emerging Identities - EAST exhibition organised by DAZ in Berlin in 2005-2006 and Venice 10th Architecture Biennale in 2006. Her main field of interest includes theory of self-organising systems and its connections with planning theory and applications in the field of urban studies. She is interested in urban theory in broader sense, being also the editor of the book “Joint Space. Open Source on Mobile Positioning and Urban Studies”.