Chapter 3
Beyond the Flatlands: Digital Ethnographies
in the Planning Field
Giovanni Attili
New technologies represent a system of constraints and possibilities that consti-
tute the foundation of new rhetorical spaces: the spheres of new communicative
and persuasive procedures. Nowadays, urban planning has the chance to critically
and rigorously experiment with these new spaces. It has the chance to transgress
traditional representational codes and to expand its semantic horizons.
This chapter portrays one such challenging exploration: the fecund crossroads
between qualitative analytical approaches and digital languages within the planning
field. It is a path that embraces diverse dimensions: media and messages, analysis
and rhetoric, ethics and aesthetics.
A path which springs from a visionary metaphor.
3.1 A Methodological Kidnapping
In 1882, Edwin Abbott writes an imaginary novel about a bi-dimensional reality:
Flatland. It is a completely level world, a vast sheet of paper in which houses, inhab-
itants, and trees are straight lines, triangles, polygons, and other geometric figures.
Through a striking narrative, Abbott invents a place and fills it with entities charac-
terized by abstract and linear contours. These figures move freely on a surface but
without the power of rising above or sinking below it. In this reality nobody has
the perception of a third dimension. The irruption of a Sphere in Flatland provokes
bewilderment in the Square-Narrator who doesn’t accept the existence of a world
with another dimension. His reaction is violent: a three-dimensional world is not
possible. It is a deceit. The Square tries to kill the Sphere. He wants to hand the
Sphere over to justice. For its part the Sphere tries to convince the Square with an
analogical reasoning, in vain. There is no solution for the Sphere but to kidnap the
Square and carry it to a higher position, separated from Flatland, from where it is
possible to discern new shapes and dimensions.
G. Attili (B)
Dipartimento di Architettura e Urbanistica per l’Ingegneria, Università “La Sapienza” di Roma,
Roma, Italy
e-mail: giovanni.attili@gmail.com
39L. Sandercock, G. Attili (eds.), Multimedia Explorations in Urban Policy and
Planning, Urban and Landscape Perspectives 7, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-3209-6_3,
C
© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010

40 G. Attili
Fig. 3.1 Ethnographic analysis. Photo and graphic elaboration by Giovanni Attili