Tuomas Toivonen, in the history doc of the Aula project discriminate four places in cities : home, workplace, third place (places of meeting like bars and cafes) and urban space.
The fourth, urban space, is made up of two different spaces :
– consumers environment : interiors like IKEA, shopping-mall.
– the non-place : and endless compilation of in-betweens (streets, squares, parking lots, roadsides).
He also introduces the concept of social capital : transfer and trust of information, “individuals with most cross-boundary connections allow for new ideas and innovations to be proliferated and adapted into new fertile soil.
-> Cities are the place of social capital
I really appreciate this idea of creating “a space that enhances social behaviour by the juxtaposition of territories with different rules, moods and realities. The space is a social gym – work-out generates social capita and situation sensitivity, not muscle mass”