Local Search Applications and Urban Public Space: Interfacing Networked Individualism and Tangible Urbanism

Applications based on user-contributed geographic information are expected to re-organise the users' everyday dealings with urban space. This article presents findings from an exploratory study about users of the Austrian local search portal Where2be for students. The study applies an analytical framework to reconstruct the interdependencies of local search applications with the users' experience of urban space. Results indicate that Where2be empowers the marginalized student community for tangible appropriations of public space as a stage for identification. As the experience of the city is shaped by fragmentation, dissolution and restructuring of spatial boundaries, Where2be supports new forms of communal relationships by linking people and places. While Where2be is utilized to conceive attached symbolic meanings of businesses, the relevance of distance-driven locational factors, like visibility, might be softened in favour of findability on local search platforms. Results add to groundwork for future research hypotheses, and implications for urban socio-spatial development.