Pervading Mediatisation and the Metastable Social Space of Urban Centres: An Analysis of the Digital Networks of Emerging Ultra-prosumerist Places

The accelerating depoliticization of the contemporary civic space has its epitome in the privat-ised urban centres. The transition from the spatialites of the transactional, spectacular and eventful consumerist modern shopping centre to the Pseudoidentitopia, faux relational civic simulation of the ultra-modern mini-city of universal consumption has dramatically increased the abstractive, decentring and exclusionary condition of the civic centre. By addressing how the pervading spatialised digitisation has contributed to consolidate the public relevance of these places, this paper sheds light on the sociospatial effects of this transition focussing on the depoliticization agency of the new paradigm. Driving on studies on spatial inequality and social exclusion, privatisation and commercialisation of public spaces, as well as research on the reas-sembling potential of locative social media, it investigates the production of “agonistic” counter-spaces for emancipatory commoning in digitally augmented public spaces emerging as ul-tra-prosumerist metastable spaces that combine both physical and virtual relational capacities. The emerging differential, autonomous and independent spatial production of counterhege-monic instances of resistance and emplaced dissensus are used to articulate an affirmative reading of the emerging metastable urban centralities that contributes to the growing discourse on the Right to the Mediatised City.