Abstract:
This article discusses the theoretical framework and methodology developed for research on comparative urbanism devoted to emerging phenomena in rapidly expanding cities. It focuses on problems related to the right to the city, particularly addressing questions of participation in the production of space. The exploration of progressive social and spatial fragmentation of urban environments concentrates on the peculiar changes occurring in the main nodes of Auckland, the largest polycentric urban area of New Zealand. Primary places of this urban transformation are the shopping malls of latest generation that dominate the newly formed metropolitan centres. The presented methodology aims to interpret the heterotopic spatial introversions of these centres and describe their specific forms of spatial transductions. Its specific analytical methods are designed to provide indications of 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 as instruments for the emergence of independent and autonomous recombinant forms in the new urban condition. The methods are combined to analyse and compare conceptions and experiences of physical, social and eidetic spatialities. Their application is expected to provide empirical support to the theoretically hypothesised, strong correlation between the increasing dis-embedding strength of territorial infrastructure and the emergence of networked “representational” recombinations occurring with the latest „malling‟ form.
