Cyberspace design: a new challenge for planners

This paper proposes a conceptual framework for planning and design practice to incorporate self-consciously the hybrid space of the virtual and physical. Cyberspace has now become a commonplace environment for social and public life, and its complex uses are entwined with those of the existential life in the physical environment. Therefore, it is argued, planners must engage in the design of the parallel realities of social and public life in these spaces. This paper proposes to look at them in a rhizome-like spatial formation, and in their future design to apply related planning knowledge on places and communities. Based on observations of online activity, the paper illustrates a method to analyse cyberspace's quality by means of Kevin Lynch's taxonomy of images, and of William H. Whyte's method to evaluate spatial uses. Spatial elements are identified through analogies between the virtual and the physical social environments, in order to derive alternatives for future (hybrid) spatial design.