Platforms for re-localization. Communities and places in the post-pandemic hybrid spaces

Abstract

Beside addressing the emergency, design practice and research could focus on how COVID19 is influencing existing trends in order to strategically plan for a post-pandemic phase where the “new normality” means living in ecological and socio-economic crises. This article focuses on what the pandemic crisis teaches us on the issue of local communities and related digital technologies. How can we design for and with the new kind of communities emerging because of COVID-19? The background of this research is the experimentation and research at the intersection of two themes (as they were before the COVID-19 crisis): the construction of communities related to the place where they are located (community of place), and the design of enabling platforms of re-localizing processes (place-making infrastructure). The article draws an overview of the changes that the pandemic has brought to communities, the emerging hybrid communities of the new normality (i.e., communities before, during and after COVID-19). Finally, it proposes 10 design guidelines for the development of resilient, fair and open platforms supporting and assessing the new emerging hybrid communities and their distributed activities (i.e., platforms for communities after COVID-19).