Futurible Heterotopias of Phygital Spectacle: Understanding How Digital Technologies Intensify Spatial Segregation in Quasi-Public Commercial Centres

Abstract

In contemporary cities, the disruption caused by new consumption practices, most notably e-commerce, has intensified the creative destruction of shopping environments. A prominent reinvention of the extra-ordinary experience offered by hyper-consumption centres involves the phygital (physical + digital) augmentation of spectacle leveraging multireality and interaction technologies. This reinvention catalyses translocal, multilevel and asynchronous sociospatial interactions, challenging the inherent city-antagonist logic of these centres by seemingly removing their enclavic character. By transcending the quartering barriers of complicit self-segregation that characterise their function as Foucauldian heterotopia of compensation and illusion, they reassociate the highly fragmented space, culture and society of our cities. This article analyses the effectiveness of the city-antagonism reversal by reintegrating and repoliticising quasi-public space or, as suggested by Foucault’s genealogy theory, cunningly remodulating its insular functions. Through an empirical investigation of a prominent shopping centre - Beijing’s SKP-S - featured with advanced phygital spectacles, this study analyses both people-to-people and people-to-space interactions. The methodology combines behavioural observation with a multidimensional social media analysis of 8,827 Weibo posts from 5,392 users spanning 2019-2024, including an expedited computer vision classification of visitor-generated images. It examines posting patterns, engagement metrics, and content characteristics. Findings indicate that the subversion of the city-antagonist heterotopian character is only apparent: while digital technologies introduce new compensatory functions that promote digital social engagement, and new illusory functions that enhance the spectacular potential to foster the collective imagination of positive possible futures, these innovations deploy new mechanisms of socio-spatial control that intensify, rather than diminish their segregative capacity. Instead of de-privatising urban experiences, advanced phygitalisation enables commercial spaces to further colonise private social relationships through social media sharing practices; it exacerbates the contradictions intrinsic to these compensatory spaces, which - as per Foucault - are “as perfect, as meticulous, as well arranged as ours is disorderly, ill construed and sketchy.”