Designing for diversity: connecting people, places, and technologies in creative community hubs.

One of the prominent debates of the current era of increasingly networked economy and sociality relates to the concept of 'connectedness' (Price, 2013; Siemens, 2006). On the one hand, technologies extend, mediate, and reduce the need for physical spaces for social interaction; on the other hand, there has also been a resurgence in community hubs as existing and new forms of critical resources for diverse individuals and communities. This paper provides a comparative analysis of three creative community hubs in South East Queensland, each representing a case of bottom-up, middle-out, and top-down driven initiatives. By applying the transdisciplinary lens of Urban Informatics, it explores the juxtaposed values of physical space and digital technologies for connectedness within the context of creative communities. It then opens questions about how Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) might add to tactics of connection for meaningful and impactful community engagement.