Ethereal city. Interpretations and communicative appropriation of the new digital urban space

The global pandemic that has hit the world between 2020 and 2021 has intensified the compulsive use of new information and communication technologies, aggravating the effects of social loneliness and rapidly transforming neighborhood relations in urban areas. The city sees its different analogic and virtual selves dissociated by an internet consumption that has revolutionized everything, despite occurring among a digitally illiterate population that does not properly assess the challenges and risks of overexposure and digital dependence. Risks, above all, associated with a lower control over an identity integration, recognition and re-politicization that was gradually returning as a model of communication in the physical city (through its squares, streets, and parks) after a dehumanizing neoliberal process that interpreted and designed cities as commercialized spaces of transition.