Digital Frameworks / Modern Urban Frames

Abstract

This critical essay investigates the interaction between digital landscapes and inherited urban morphologies. Digital technologies have impacted our cities as much as the changes brought about by modern planning. Like modernism, streamlined strategies are propagated globally under the discourse of efficiency through technology. Their seemingly technical neutrality hides their capacity to function as dominant frameworks, which are infrastructural in nature and comparable to modernism’s structuring urban frames. Through a discussion of recent authors, the essay explores the main spatial characteristics of the digital landscape, examining urban morphological and infrastructural heritage as a preexisting ground for overlaying technological frameworks. Conflicting and common concepts with contemporary urbanism are subsequently analyzed. The discussion proposes that similar tools and frameworks acquire different meanings between urbanism and digital technologies. The Rio de Janeiro, Brazil case study further examines the complexity of contemporary digital-urban interactions within a layered fabric. It exemplifies the tensions in translating globalized frameworks to prominent cities in the Global South. Results point to the limitations of the spatial framework within the digital debate and underscore the need for cross-referencing with contemporary urban strategies and specific urban contexts.