Editorial | Open Access
The Urban Canvas: Spatial Computing in Planning, Analysing, and Representing the Cityscape
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Abstract: This thematic issue is dedicated to the memory of Heejung Kwon of Yonsei University. Her research, intellectual generosity, and the many enriching conversations over the years helped shape its vision. We challenged the contributors to consider how urban planning, a discipline long reliant on visual tools like maps, plans, and models, might evolve through spatial computing. While these traditional forms of representation have been effective for communicating and evaluating urban changes, they often limit people’s ability to directly experience proposed environments. The articles in this issue show how spatial computing draws on a broad range of approaches, including: augmented, virtual, and mixed reality; digital twins; photogrammetry; situated visualisation; and audio-based experiences. Together, these approaches help bridge this gap by enabling immersive and participatory encounters with our lived environments. Spatial computing emerges as a set of practices that reconfigure relationships among planners, citizens, data, and place. It positions space not solely as an object of analysis, but as an interactive medium. Rather than focusing exclusively on technological development, the collection explores how digital and physical environments are becoming increasingly intertwined and its implications for how urban space is experienced, understood, and produced. The contributions reveal spatial computing as an evolving field whose significance lies as much in the questions it raises as in the tools it provides. Issues of access, governance, and representation run throughout the collection, highlighting the ways in which spatial media reshape the relationship between digital systems and urban life, opening new possibilities for the future of planning.
Keywords: digital futures; participatory urbanism; phygital city; public engagement; spatial computing; urban situated media
Published:
© Valerio Signorelli, Andy Hudson-Smith, Heejung Kwon. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction of the work without further permission provided the original author(s) and source are credited.