Experiencing hybrid space as a long-term relationship
People experience space through movements and by doing, but the bodily experience is entangled with social, cultural and temporal experiences (Ingold 2000). How we move and what we do is not just a performance in a certain place; instead these actions simultaneously structure and organize power relations related to it (Bell & Dourish 2007). These relations are controlled by urban design because it defines what kind of actions and occupants are considered proper in that specific space. The hybridisation of space makes the accountability of the design even harder to trace, Anne Galloway argues (2004). By their own actions, people interpret the spatial orders, but they can either play along with or resist the normative definitions. The choice is nevertheless free, since the position of an individual affects her/his possibilities to act. This position is defined by gender, age, and other social prerequisites.
The northern Finnish city of Oulu has been designed as a prototype of an intelligent city which is full of ubiquitous computing technology like interactive public displays and different wireless networks. By this new technology the designers aim to improve citizens' everyday lives and claim that it is designed for everybody, from “the smallest child to the oldest citizen”. In my study I'm discussing what kind of hybrid spacethis new city centre is for the aging citizens, i.e. people over 65 years. I'm doing this by analysing the technological biographies I've collected by interviewing elderly citizens. In their interviews, people talk about their ICT usage and how they occupy public spaces in the biographical context, thus as long-term social relationships. Consequently, I will discuss how the rhetoric goals of the designers and the lived practices of the elderly citizens meet in this intelligent city; and how biographical material could be utilized in designing new technologies.