Defining methods for the empirical analysis of placeness in the emerging elements of rapidly growing conurbations

Abstract

This paper discusses the theoretical framework and methodology developed for a research on comparative urbanism on emerging phenomena in Asian and Australasian cities. It focuses on problems related to the right to the city, particularly addressing questions of participation and relational life in the progressive social and spatial fragmentation of urban environments. It explores the important changes occurring in the main nodes of polycentric cities, focusing on the recent transformations on Changsha, Hunan. The study of the new centres aims to interpret and describe the specific forms of spatial transductions produced by these core places of heterotopic spatial introversions. The proposed methodology is designed to provide indications on the emerging transformation of the role of public space in the interpersonal sphere of sociability. This involves the exploration of the agency of new digital media in supporting independent and autonomous recombinant forms of individual participation in the production of urban space. Multiple methods were combined to comparatively analyse conceptions and experiences of physical, social and eidetic spatialities. Their application is expected to confirm and provide empirical evidence for the theoretically hypothesised, strong correlation between the increasing agencies of disembedding “infrastructural” territorialisation and of networked “representational” recombinations occurring in these malled metropolitan centres.