The Invisible Boundaries in the City

Abstract

1. Perhaps physical frontiers are less important since somehow the world has become a global entity, in which information passes through the physical walls.

Many of them have been destroyed (Berlin) and some others such as that of Cyprus resist, but they are certainly less effective than in the past. The major concern of the future is the identification of invisible borders within the cities.

It is difficult to identify exclusion, and marginalization is hiding within the cities, even in the weal- thiest ones.
The spaces of the cities have invisible borders, but they are not easy to cross.

2. An MIT study (Xu Y, Belyi A, Santi P, Ratti C. 2019) highlights these problems after processing data on human movements, social networks connections and the socio-economic status of people, the document proposes two indices to measure segregation in Singapore.

The index segregation of communication measures the relationship between people within each so- cial network, considering the frequency of communication and the socio-economic attributes of each person. The physical segregation index indicates the social exposure which people have towards each other belonging to similar and different socio-economic groups as they move more and more around the city.

3. The MIT study shows how it is possible, through the management of big data, to be able to bring out invisible marginalization situations which can not be seen in other ways.

4. The “documedial process” (Ferraris, Paini, 2018) in which the digital breakthrough has transformed the city, allows not only to bring out areas of border and exclusion but lays the foundations for an analysis of reality capable of highlighting cultural isolation.