Social Networks in Inner-City Apartment Complexes and the Implications for the Residential Architecture of Public Space

The development of more and more compact cities draws critical attention to the design and architecture of apartment buildings and their role as elemental components of urban renewal. At the same time, new media and information and communication technologies afford networked individualism and emerging social formations that require a re-conceptualisation of the online vs. offline dichotomy. Public space is becoming a complex hybrid in which members of what Watters calls ‘urban tribes’ traverse seamlessly between cyberspace and physical space. This paper introduces an Australian case study of residents in three inner-city apartment complexes. Observations and interview results are used to illustrate the interaction between residents and public space, their friends, and their neighbours. The discussion of these findings highlights that there are unfulfilled promises and unmet challenges in the design and architecture of both virtual and physical public space to support the communication and interaction needs of urban dwellers. We suggest three areas of engagement: serendipitous encounters between residents, sociocultural animation of neighbourhoods, and digital augmentation of public space.