"What’s missing in the World of Tomorrow, or its latter-day counterpart in cyberspace, or anytime-anyplace version of ubiquitous computing, is the world itself. Homo Faber has an Achilles’ heel; his artifice cuts him off from his nature."

Visions of future cities from the early 20th century brought us ambitious foresight of flying automobiles, weather-regulated domes and post-apocalyptic dystopias that lacked all kinds of human activity. Even today, thinking about the future seems to focus on urban efficiency by reducing everyday interaction to a world dominated by self- service, driverless cars and communication via touch-screens. Cities have become hybrid spaces (de Souza e Silva 2006) with inhabitants drifting toward a life with their heads in the cloud.

These hybrid spaces that exist in urban areas encompass a virtual framework that enable new forms of game and play (Raessens 2006). Due to the multiple extensions of media infrastructures like mobile technologies and locative media that have been installed largely in the city, the way people play has shifted intensively over the last years. Urban space itself has now become a complex interface, which is a dominant form of human self-organization and orientation. Over the last few years, many academics have written on the subject of hybrid cities and hybrid play. Although the concept of hybridity does recognize the existence of a digital layer within urban spaces, it tends to look upon this digital layer as a separate reality usually accessed by an Internet-enabled phone. This dependency on screens for interaction and play with the digital layer has huge implications the way we play in these hybrid environments. It forces users to focus on the interface (i.e. the screen) instead of the physical environment thereby making play primarily a digital experience. This causes a loss of collective link with space, produced by replacing the conditions of life experience. The most vivid and intense experiences have gone from being developed in a physical and social context to take place in a private virtual environment.

Eliminating the identification of the person with urban space impoverishes social life. If citizens fail to understand public space as an essential element of their life experience, it will increasingly suffer more qualitative degradation. When public space loses its function as an element of citizenship cohesion and identity, it runs the risk of becoming a mere decoration with a total lack of social functionality.

This paper will focus on how to use digital technologies to encourage physical play in urban settings by embedding media within urban space. Embedded in this sense stands for tangible connections between the digital and the physical layer within the urban settings. Therefore, embedded media does not necessarily rely on the mobile phone for representation of the digital space. These embedded media objects lead to new perspectives on using public space in unusual and alternative ways where real and virtual spaces intermingle. By embedding media directly within the physical environment, urban space itself becomes a ludic interface, a playful environment, and an urban playground.