Digital Cities and Events

The urban consequences of the digital revolution are far from clear. The present article discusses and criticizes a number of assumptions that have been made in the recent past regarding these consequences. Assumptions like the dematerialization of urban circulations or the substitution of a delocalized sociability to traditional place-dependent social relations, present strong flaws. After discussing these flaws, the article moves forward with the hypothesis that the main impact of digital media has to do with the rising importance of events in urban life and sociability. Digital media not only make events more conspicuous than in the past; it often creates events. The consequences of this trend can already be traced in architecture. Regarding urban planning, it may well go a step further, and translate into scenario.