Internet : towards an increasing urban fragmentation ?

Internet : towards an increasing urban fragmentation ?

[SHS:GEO] Humanities and Social Sciences/Geography

Internet

infrastructures

practices

neighbourhood/area

segregation

splintering urbanism

digital divide

social cohesion

Internet appears as a ubiquitous way of access to the resources traditionally offered by the city. Internet fosters social interactions and give access to a wide variety of informations and services. Its large social and spatial diffusion could give credence to the thesis of vanishing disparities between urban areas thanks to an equal access for the different social groups to the resources of information society. <br />However, literature on the digital divide suggests that, also within the cities of the developed-world, uneven access' and skills to use the Internet contribute to social inequalities, since the uses of the Internet are highly correlated to the belonging to a social-economic class. Concurrently there is evidence of increasing social segregation within cities and of spatial concentration of poverty. What could be the social and spatial impacts of an uneven diffusion of the Internet throughout the urban dwellers ?<br />This papers attempts to investigate the factors which reinforce how and why the city becomes dissected into socially specialized areas through: disproportionate access to the Internet, the wide and varied spectrum of Internet uses, and the deliberate actions of the telecommunication network's operators.

Beauchamps, Margot

The UK-Ireland Planning Research Conference 2008, Sustainability, Space and Social Justice, Queen's University, Belfast, 18-20th March 2008

2008-03

ENG

conference, seminar, workshop communication

http://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00336006

http://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/33/60/06/PDF/Internet-fragmentation.pdf

Belfast

United Kingdom