THE SEARCH FOR NATURAL REGIONAL SPACE TO CLAIM AND NAME BUILT URBAN PLACE

摘要

The natural, non-built environment is being represented by new communications technologies to redefine urban space with mediated popular names and mental maps assigned to decentralized urban conurbations, replacing the iconic architectural monumentality of the old downtowns. This paper suggests that designers, planners, and architects consider this emerging communication as "virtual architecture, " with the power to identify, name, and create a sense of place. The new naming of places is often more cultural than scholarly or scientific. There is more media hype and hope rather than helpful hypotheses, since the contest for media monikers, civic images, and mental maps is tied to the packaging and promotion of urban turf for city growth, investment, trade, and commercial-consumer tourism. As the borders of geographic place expand and spill over historic political and governmental boundaries of cities, states, nations, and continents, global changes in transportation and communication may usher in new urban images in the media, which may blend the more stable and permanent natural regional images with those of the de-centered and ephemeral city and rely less on the built architectural icons of the traditional central city.