When Public Space Goes Digital: Rethinking Urban Planning with Insights from Letra Ese

Abstract

Digital public spaces have become vital for organizing, belonging, and community-building, particularly for marginalized groups such as the LGBTQ+ community, who are increasingly excluded from both physical and online public spaces. Yet, the design of these digital spaces is largely shaped by profit-driven interests rather than the needs of the communities that rely on them. This thesis addresses this gap by asking: What if we treated digital spaces with the same care and intention we demand from our physical public spaces?

To explore this question, the thesis brings together frameworks from urban planning, LGBTQ+ advocacy, and digital design. It proposes a reframing of “urban planning” to include “digital urban planning,” grounded in principles of rights, care, safety, and collective memory. Through a feminist urbanist lens and systems thinking, the work challenges the separation between physical and digital cities.

Methodologically, the project moves beyond traditional research approaches, incorporating Conversational Design and the Relational User Framework to co-create knowledge with activists. The resulting contributions include both a prototype and a roadmap for a digital public space that supports and amplifies LGBTQ+ advocacy; not as a technical fix, but as a speculative and participatory framework for reimagining digital public infrastructure.

This research is grounded in a case study of Letra Ese, an activist-led LGBTQ+ organization in Mexico. The case illustrates how such groups navigate systemic neglect while leveraging technology to document violence and sustain community. Ultimately, the thesis offers a starting point for rethinking the design of digital public spaces and argues for the inclusion of digital environments within the domain of urban planning, recognizing that for many, especially marginalized communities, much of life is already lived online.