Abstract
A city is experienced through the senses. Traffic, buildings and the streets create an amalgam of sight and sound, touch and smell. As our bodies move through cities, our senses deliver information about threat and interest, alongside patterns of behaviour. Although our analogue bodies move through streets, shops and sporting organizations, digitization attends this movement through mobile phones, tablets and applications. This digitized strategy is not only detailing branding and marketing for a small city. Digitization also improves the life of those resident in a city. Progressive city administrators have discovered the positive benefits of providing free-of-charge wi-fi facilities in the hub of the city. Norwich was an early adapter of this strategy. Mandurah in Western Australia also rendered this a priority. Digitization matters to small cities. Many are located in rural and regional areas. In some nations, including South Africa, Canada and Australia, there is an incredible disparity in online connectivity, particularly with regard to broadband in regional and remote areas. This is a particularly problematic inequality. Social media have great uses for the men and women in small cities and towns. As facilities and public services leave, the online environment can manage some of these needs.
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Notes
- 1.
M. Madden, “Older adults and social media use,” Pew Internet and American Life Project, August 27, 2010, http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Older-Adults-and-Social-Media.aspx.
- 2.
“The Internet and Rural Health,” Silver Surfers, Simon Fraser University, http://www.sfu.ca/silversurfers/?page_id=28.
- 3.
Ohler (2010).
- 4.
Quelch and Jocz (2012).
- 5.
ibid., pp. 9–10.
- 6.
Quelch and Jocz state that, “Supposedly, the ability to make new friends and connect to people anywhere, regardless of their physical location, is one of the appeals of social media and social networking. However, one study found that half of Facebook friends are in the same metropolitan area; for teenage users, as many as 90 percent of friends are in the same area … People use Facebook more to solidify existing or geographically near relationships than to initiate or continue geographically distant ones.” ibid., p. 105.
- 7.
ibid., p. 18.
- 8.
To investigate this QR code strategy in greater depth, refer to Brabazon et al. (2014).
- 9.
De Chant (2010).
- 10.
V. Kostakos, “Space syntax and pervasive systems,” from Jiang and Yao (2010).
- 11.
P. Jagtap, A. Joshi, T. Finin, L. Zavala, “Privacy Preservation in Context Aware Geosocial Networking Applications,” http://ebiquity.umbc.edu/_file_directory_/papers/563.pdf, pp. 1–3.
- 12.
Please Rob Me, http://pleaserobme.com/.
- 13.
FourSquare, https://foursquare.com/.
- 14.
Groupon, http://www.groupon.com/.
- 15.
N. West, “Urban Tapestries: the spatial and social on your mobile,” Proboscis, 2005, http://proboscis.org.uk/publications/SNAPSHOTS_spatialandsocial.pdf.
- 16.
L. Evans, “Geo-Social Networks—A Local Business’ Best Friend,” ClickZ, March 16, 2011, http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/2034249/geo-social-networks-local-business-friend.
- 17.
Anderson (2009).
- 18.
Winter (2011).
- 19.
Green and Haddon (2009).
- 20.
Quelch and Jocz op. cit., pp. 33–34.
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Brabazon, T. (2015). Digital Distinctiveness. In: Unique Urbanity?. SpringerBriefs in Geography. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-269-2_7
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