Augmenting Communities with Knowledge Resources: The Case of the Knowledge Commons in Public Libraries

This chapter presents how security policies led by local authorities tend to resort to Information and Communications Technology (ICT) according to a reactive control attitude, as tools to analyse traditional spatial and social problems. It explores how projects aiming at experimenting in the urban domain the potentialities provided by ICT have been developed by artists and media-activists worldwide. The chapter focuses on the relationship between the communicational model implied by ICT applications in security policies, citizen’s agency, the political pattern underpinning the discourse on urban disorder and the process of privatization of public spaces. The theoretical perspective allows the comparison of government-driven ICT initiatives concerning urban disorder with artist/activist projects addressing issues like the blurring of the dominant images of a city and the hybridization of identity. Direct observation by researchers compared to citizen’s perceptions demonstrated that feelings of insecurity occur even when the probability of being victimized is very low.