The Narrative of the City Spaces—— How Technologies Tell the Stories of the City

In the widespread context of the debate on the effects of globalisation in urban space and the evolution of smart cities, this study focuses on the role of design as an activator of identity pro- cesses in urban space and the defence and development of cultural diversity. More specifically, the study investigates a strategic dimension of ‘narrative’ design in the dynamics of city deve- lopment. The aim of the research is to identify the ways in which cultural diversity can become, through design practices and, specifically, narrative design, a resource for innovation and the development of urban space. It has been pointed out in many researchs how each city has its own identity, and how this is composed of aspects generated by the natural, constructed environment (Sönmez, 2020). In- creasingly, there is an awareness of how the competition between cities in the 21st century is a competition for identity, and how the perception and image of a city has a significant impact on economic, political and social well-being. (Anholt , 2007). Faced with the loss of identity in contemporary urban space, designers and creative people are working on the construction of new forms of expression (Parente.2006,2016 ;Rodrigues, Schmidt, 2021) that can counteract this trend. Narrative can become an important tool of expressing urban identity today. The study of narra- tive is proposed as a way of understanding and cognising memory and identity (Bruner, 1986, 2004). The narratives of a community become an important resource for the identity awareness of its members (Stapleton , Wilson, 2017). Currently, urban narrative research has broader appli- cations in urban planning, cultural tourism, urban communication, cultural geography and even film language. These narrative studies concern, for example, the collective narrative as an embo- died human experience in the process of identity building in urban spaces (Satama, Räikkönen ,2020); How the physical space of the city plays its role as a medium for communicating and telling the identity of the city ( Sun ,2012); The interdisciplinary study of literature and the city (Salmela,Ameel, Finch, 2021); The study of the symbol as a narrative medium in the city. (Kale- lioglu ,2021); Narrative dimensions of urban space in film (Penz,2012). However, there is a lack of research analysing how the variety of elements in urban spaces con- vey spatial identity through narrative and communication. There is a lack of observation regar- ding the manner in which contemporary urban spaces build identities between their physical and virtual aspects. In other words, it is necessary to comprehend how technology in the context of smart cities implies identity, memory, and history, how it connects stories and scenarios in the physical space of the city, how it contributes to the formation of a sense of place, and how urban identity is related to both physical and virtual spaces. The starting point of this research is therefore the awareness that narratives can, on the one hand, contribute to urban identity and, on the other hand, enhance the interaction between pe- ople and space in the city. The narrative elements in urban spaces should be regarded as impor- tant components that constitute the identity of a city, and they should be able to be scientifically observed, analysed and assessed in order to contribute to the preservation and management of city identity. This is particularly important in the context of smart cities, where technology can be a tool for stifling diversity, but it can also be a tool for blurs geographical and temporal bounda- ries, triggering new cultural contexts and communicating cultural diversity. In fact, the assumption of using narrative as a tool for interpreting the world in the context of technology has been echoed in a number of recent projects promoted by local authorities, plan- ners or academic institutions. Examples include the Hello Lamp Post project in Bristol, the Places Parlanti project in Florence, the location-awareness-based game Ingress, etc. These projects also fully involve the applied aspects of the design discipline, where new digital information technolo- gies are used in the interaction of urban exploration through design practice.Through innovative interactive processes, users obtain emotional and perceptual involvement in their relationship with the urban space. At the same time, new connections between the city and literature and ways of exploring the city in a poetic sense are being established in the context of hybrid spaces. Such as the whaiwhai platform or Movimento per l’Emancipazione della Poesia (Poetry Libera- tion Movement). All of these projects are working in different spaces, levels and fields, but there is still a lack of scientific tools or ways to analyse and observe urban identity. There is a lack of design models and data sharing platforms for an interdisciplinary and collaborative approach. Based on these questions. This research conducted a research on urban spatial narratives using both qualitative and quantitative research methods. The research process was divided into three main phases, they are Desk research phase, Empirical research phase and Project proposal phase. The desktop research phase provided insights for subsequent analysis through literature rese- arch on the identity dimension of urban space, the perceptual dimension, the tools and methods of narrative design, and the analysis of case studies of some projects that develop a hybrid space dimension. The empirical research phase consisted of four activities: The first is a university workshop that involved students from an Iranian institution in the application of methods for investigating the narrative dimension of space; The second is a field investigation on a case study located in the historical centre of Florence aimed at identifying the physical elements of the narrative of urban space; The third is a text semantic model mining analysis of user-generated narrative texts in ur- ban cyberspace ; In conclusion, the fourth is an organisation of interviews with scholars of urban space from different disciplinary fields. It attempts to establish a system of indicators and some evaluation criteria for the evaluation of contemporary urban identity in a pedagogical experimental process. It attempts to integrate field investigation of Florence and semantic mining of web textual to obtain narrative mecha- nisms of the physical and cyberspace of the Florentine city. Through an empirical dialogue with scholars from different cultural fields, an interpretation of the experiences of different cultural fields on this theme is obtained. The project proposal phase aims to develop a data-based web platform“City Narrative Dashboard” . The “City Narrative Dashboard” is intended to be a tool available to researchers and spe- cialists from different backgrounds, contributing to develop knowledge on issues of city identity and to obtain inspiration and strategies for implementing work in urban spaces by combining quality of life and social well-being with urban cultural heritage. The project proposal should be developed in more detail in subsequent research programmes and completed on the basis of the actual situation in some sample cities. Subsequently, in order to illustrate and test the potential of the platform in different cultural fields, it could be tested in a comparative evaluation. A test activity will be organised in which architects, designers, other experts and some students will be invited to participate in order to test the “City Narrative Dashboard” platform.