Hybrid Public Spaces

Everyday urban social life is increasingly hybrid, shaped both by built environments and by digital platforms. Digital technologies influence social life not only online but also in streets, squares, parks, and other public spaces. Neighbourhood apps, group chats, and algorithmically curated feeds can amplify some voices while muting others, producing new forms of exculsion, polarization, and a privatization of public resources.

Hybrid Public Spaces (HPS) is the name of a proposed transdisciplinary, pan-European research network that will investigate how issues circulating online reshape offline encounters, belonging, and conflict, and how cities and communities can respond. The initiating partner is Amsterdam University of the Arts (lead; design and urbanism), the University of Plymouth, UK (media and digital infrastructures), and Western University, Canada (platform use and digital inequalities; knowledge partner). Together, we will recruit European collaborators in behavioural psychology, anthropology, sociology, and mediastudies, alongside municipalities, public agencies, civic organizations, and cultural institutions, in order to make the network truly transdisciplinatory and intersectoral.
During the network-building phase, HPS will develop trust, shared language, and practical modes of collaboration through mutual visits and interdisciplinary work sessions that will help identify real-world challenges and design comparative cases across diverse European contexts.

The main outcomes will be a consolidated consortium and a proposal blueprint for a full application aligned with the Horizon Europe Strategic Plan and New Eureopean Bauhaus values. The network will jointly determine the most suitable funding strategy route: 1) a Horizon Europe Cluster 2 call (Culture, Creativity and Inclusive Society), or 2) participation in the Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values (CERV) programme by joining or strengthening an existing civic partnership, contributing a focused research-and-design component. In both cases, HPS will produce actionalbe knowledge and design strategies for more inclusive, plural, and equitable hybrid public spaces in Europe.