Internet, Society and Space in Indian Cities
The monograph on Internet, Society and Space in Indian Cities, by Pratyush Shankar, is an entry into debates around making of IT Cities and public planning policies that regulate and restructure the city spaces in India with the emergence of internet technologies. Placing his inquiry in the built form, Shankar manoeuvres discourse from architecture, design, cultural studies and urban geography to look at the notions of cyber-publics, digital spaces, and planning policy in India. The findings show that the relationship between cities and cyberspaces need to be seen as located in a dynamic set of negotiations and not as a mere infrastructure question. It dismantles the presumptions that have informed public and city planning in the country by producing alternative futures of users’ interaction and mapping of the emerging city spaces.
Click here to download the Monograph
CEPT to Set up Centre to Research Role of Internet in Social Development
Nishant Shah, Director (Research) at the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) in Bangalore who will assist the centre, said: "No one predicted the outcome of the Arab Spring, because everyone was looking at the way Internet was being used globally, not at the local level. We had the pink chaddi campaign, the anti-corruption calls of the Hazare camp, and those against sexual violence in New Delhi, but they were largely ad-hoc and temporary, and disappeared."
Internet, Society & Space in Indian Cities - A Call for Peer Review
Pratyush Shankar's research project on "Internet, Society & Space in Indian Cities" is a part of the Researchers @ Work Programme at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore. His monograph explores the trajectories of transformation and perception of cities in India in context with the rise of Information Technologies for communication and presence of an active digital space.
Internet, Society & Space in Indian Cities - A Call for Peer Review
Pratyush Shankar's research project on "Internet, Society & Space in Indian Cities" is a part of the Researchers @ Work Programme at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore. His monograph explores the trajectories of transformation and perception of cities in India in context with the rise of Information Technologies for communication and presence of an active digital space.
Transforming urbanscapes: ATM in cities
This is the first in series of posts where I will try and articulate the transformation in the urban landscape that one can attribute either directly or in-directly to information and communication technologies. I am keen in discussing changes that are more fundamental in terms of architectural typology and spatial constructs and all this while looking for things that are specific to an Indian city. And that is where the story becomes rather interesting; Indian cities are unique and so when a shift occurs in its material constructs it must be analyzed with reference to its peculiar context.
From the Stock Market to Neighbourhood Mohalla
The stock markets have been the symbol of trade and commerce of the city and the region. In this post I will analyze the stock market; an important commercial institution and try and articulate its changing architectural configuration and its impact on neighborhoods and other public domain of the city. The change in information technology has had a profound effect on the business methodologies of the stock brokers and traders in the last few years with possibilities for buying and selling during the market hours from any internet enabled device. The pundits have announced that the “market is in your pocket or at the comfort of your home”. Is it really so or is the change more subtle? Moreover how will our cities and their public place transform from such shift?
City in the Internet 1: Geography Imagined (Part 2)
In the last post, I have articulated the nature of understanding and imagination of our urban and rural geography. As mentioned, the understanding of the land, its water and people is an essentially one, that comes through living and experiencing. In this post I will be posing issues around the historical legacy of maps in the Indian context. The issues of imagination of our cities is very much related to this legacy along with the shift that we are witnessing in geographical representation of maps on the Internet.
City in the Internet 1: Geography Imagined (Part 1)
“The estuaries that flirt with the land mass before they finally perish in the vast deep blue ocean beyond were perfect in their shape and grace. And you know what; from top it appears like a surreal landscape that is so restive and peaceful, almost heaven. The countryside is actually very beautiful”, says Pratyush Shankar in his latest blog post. A random conversation between two person discovering the joys of seeing our existence through Google Earth!
The Binary: City and Nature
A continuation of the last post wherein I am looking at various other representation of the city in both classical and popular medium, today I am writing my views on the analysis of certain Miniature paintings.
Internet, Society and Space in Indian City: First Report
This is the first report on the progress of the research on Internet, Society and Space in Indian City. The post is a collection of some of the initial focus of these studies. I have started simultaneously exploring and testing various arguments and have listed some key observations from the ones that are nearing completion.
IT, The City and Public Space
In the Introduction to the project, Pratyush Shankar at CEPT, Ahmedabad, lays out the theoretical and practice based frameworks that inform contemporary space-technology discourses in the fields of Architecture and Urban Design. The proposal articulates the concerns, the anxieties and the lack of space-technology debates in the country despite the overwhelming ways in which emergence of internet technologies has resulted in material and imagined practices of people in urbanised India. The project draws variously from disciplines of architecture, design, cultural studies and urban geography to start a dialogue about the new kinds of public spaces that inform the making of the IT City in India. You can also access his comic strip visual introduction to the project at http://www.isvsjournal.org/pratyush/internet/Dashboard.html
