A Smart City- Tensions Between Space of Flows and Space of Places

Contemporary urbanized populations are linked in many ways, both within their communities and across national and international borders. This research examines concepts associated with the notion of the informational city and is concerned with the tensions between knowledge flows in traditional placed-based cities and globalised flows of information. The organisations in the city use of a variety of mechanisms for production, consumption. communicating with other organisations and investing money across the globe. Some theorists argue that the city is a place with clear boundary with specific elements for information and knowledge exchange, such as universities, libraries, parks, cafés, etc, others argue that a contemporary city is made up of networks and their flows and scattered beyond its physical boundary. Some see the need for specific places where information is exchanged informally and others focus on the impact of globalization and the ability to attract expertise to local hubs and make it available in other locations. These two concepts are investigated by taking the essential characteristics of a range of theorists, Castells and Space of flows, Sassen and the Globalised City, Ergazakis and Knowledge Based urban design (KBUD) and Fisher and Information Grounds – to understand what really the organizations in the context of the informational cities. I hope to argue that an examination of a city and its development must facilitates the co-existence of two contradictory concepts, the space of flows (Networks) and the space of places (information grounds)