Publication details
Enabling communication in the (post)socialist city – evolving spatiality of ICT infrastructures
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| Year of publication | 2022 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Citation | |
| Description | The paper examines the material and spatial aspects of the development of selected communication and information infrastructures in the context of post-socialist transformation. The ambivalent and highly centralized approach of socialist societies to the information flows and to the means of individual telecommunication was characterized by scarcity, underinvestment, and the technological underdevelopment. Socialist socio-technological relations were reflected, among other things, in specific infrastructural materialities, as well as in the complicated access to the communication infrastructure in the socialist urban space. We examine the post-socialist transformation in the ICT segment as a socio-technological shift that has clear implications for the communication cityscape. The liberalization and deregulation of the telecommunications market, together with the individualization of the communication demands of the population, have brought new communication technologies with radically different spatial patterns of underlying infrastructure. Using the city of Brno (Czech Republic) as a specific research case the network of traditional public payphones will be confronted with the datasets on spatial structure of Wi-Fi providers in order to discuss the connection between socio-technological narratives and the dynamics of place-based urban infrastructures. |