- A view from the web: telematics of town planners issues and virtual piazzas.    49 kb by    Pietro, Elisei & Giovanni, Ginocchini & Tobias, Dietrich | p.elisei@planum.net    Short Outline It seems that some of interesting new practices present a strong degree of hybridism that cannot easily be explained with discourses on local capabilities or identities. How far is the metamorphosis of local practices influenced by the web? What’s the new role of the virtual piazzas? Abstract After a quadrennial experience of working on the web, the editorial board of www.planum.net (the European journal of planning online) is quite sure that Globalization is also a very extraordinary cultural fact!. The Planum network addresses daily issues in town planning and receives feedback from more than 80 countries around the world. The web truly offers a privileged viewpoint over the panorama of events, policies, urban projects and so on: a sort of telescope pointed straight at the universe of practices. We would like to explore some issues we encountered in publishing one of the most laborious of Planum’s publications (www.planum.net/4bie): the archive of projects of the 4th Biennial of towns and town planners in Europe (Rotterdam, Nov.2001), a virtual exhibition of projects from more than 40 European cities. From projects of “globalization” down to the “street of life” initiatives. In handling material embodying such different experiences a lot of diverse questions crossed our minds. A first simple question is: How important is the added value of exchanging experiences for planners on virtual platforms? The easy access to a data bank of practices is probably increasing the number of similar planning processes, but it shows, at the same time, that local answers to global shared issues retain their peculiar features and differences. Starting from these online publications, and from the practices reported, it could be of interest to present some observations on “where” and “how” local and global short-circuit. It seems that some of interesting new practices present a strong degree of hybridism that cannot easily be explained with discourses on local capabilities or identities. How far is the metamorphosis of local practices influenced by the web? What’s the new role of the virtual piazzas? Keywords virtual platform, the internet and the planners Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2003: Planning in a more globalized World   Click to open the full paper as pdf document   Click to send an email to the author(s) of this paper