Stadtplanung und soziale Netzwerke im Web 2.0 (I)

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In late October 2007, Robert Basic, then author of the blog www.basicthinking.de (which he later sold), asked me if we wanted to participate in the > Barcamp in Mannheim, which took place in early November 2007, as well as at the > Barcamp in Munich to lead a session together. In Munich, the focus was on “Blogging: Practice and Theory” (> my Barcamp highlight). But during the discussion I mentioned, I said that we wouldn’t be presenting on the same topic, but that we’d talk about social media, for example. “Okay,” said Robert, “but how social are they?” “Very well, that’s the topic.”

Summary: The following four contributions examine the importance, scope, or potential of social networks. We illustrate our reflections by looking at urban planning. Let’s take a look at Wilhelmsplatz in Stuttgart-Bad-Cannstatt. Here, all road users are assigned the space they can use. Wilhelmsplatz functions like a social network on the Internet, with its many features—for which you have to register online and even pay if you want to use all of them. Or let’s take a look at Place de l’Homme de Fer in Strasbourg. Here, the entire square is open to all users—only the trams are required to stay on their tracks for technical reasons—Homme de Fer Square is like real life, with no spaces imposed as on Wilhelmsplatz, but only restrictions like in real life, so that no one gets hurt.

Social media are internet platforms, such as > www.xing.com, > www.schuelervz.net/, > www.studivz.net, > www.facebook.com, or > www.myspace.com, to name just a few of the best-known examples of this type, which have emerged on the Internet under the umbrella term “Web 2.0,” the participatory web.

On Saturday, we held the session How Social Are Social Networks? in Mannheim. And since we were in a room where—despite the otherwise perfect hospitality of the University of Mannheim—the projector wouldn’t connect to my laptop, I’m now sharing the photos in the following three articles that I used to illustrate the connection between urban planning and social networks on Web 2.0.

Continued: > Urban Planning and Social Networks in Web 2.0 (II)
> Urban Planning and Social Networks in Web 2.0 (III)
> Urban Planning and Social Networks in Web 2.0 (IV)