Cyberspace Versus Citizenship: IT and emerging non space communities

In 1964 Melvin Webber challenged the notions of community and centrality used in urban studies by demonstrating that "community without propinquity" was emerging within certain social networks. He argued that individuals were enmeshed in an overlapping range of groups, and that increasingly these social networks were not limited by physical or geographical location. His definition of community acknowledges a differentiated range of "non-place" cultures. It reflects a change to a process, rather than product oriented view of urban form, triggered in part by the influence of general systems theory. Webber influenced and was influenced by the emergence of an orientation towards non-physical aspects of community, and a participatory approach to design which emerged strongly during the seventies. Reexamination of Webber's work in the light of current information technology offers some insight into the nature of the globalisation of the world economy, and consequent impacts on nationality and sovereignty. The technologies that will be commonplace by the end of the century can both empower and disempower and it will be necessary to reconsider our current notions of both citizenship and of access to and control of such crucial resources. Opportunities offered by IT for marginalised or peripheral groups, whether at the level of nation, region or local community, will challenge existing definitions of centre and periphery. The moral panics surrounding such activities as "hacking" and its supporting "cyberpunk" sub culture demonstrate a growing awareness of the importance of emerging non-space communities. WEBBER'S FORMULATION OF NON-PLACE REALMS Webber's 1964 paper addresses "metropolitan planning", in an attempt to move away from the agenda of city planning with its focus on "small scale physical aspects of urbanization" (Webber; 1964, p.80). He suggests his view is "oriented to metropolitan processes (a verb view) from which it seeks to identify the matching spatial form (a noun view), and hence it seeks to pose a dynamic portrait of metropolitan form in action (a gerund view). (Webber; 1964, p.80, emphasis in original) Webber's argues that the physical preoccupation of urban theory creates inadequacies. A processoriented re-evaluation of the components of urbanism that planners and architects claim to support and promote is therefore required. Urban communities are presented as spatially structured processes, with the physical fusing of US Atlantic seaboard settlement providing a striking example of the outcome of such processes. In order to move from the physical bias of established planning conceptions, Webber proposes the "city as communications system" (Webber; 1964, p.84). Planners "share a conviction that the physical and locational variables are key determinants of social and economic behaviour and of social welfare" (Webber; 1964, p.85). According to Webber, the unique commodity offered by the city is accessibility and he cites Meir's (1959) development of a system of social accounts as the basis of an index of cultural wealth reflecting the volume and variety of information flowing through public communication channels (Webber; 1964, p.87, note 9). Such an approach switches the emphasis of urbanity from physical built form to the quality of interaction in cultural life through the