ABSTRACT
The Routledge Companion to Urban Media and Communication traces central debates within the burgeoning interdisciplinary research on mediated cities and urban communication. The volume brings together diverse perspectives and global case studies to map key areas of research within media, cultural and urban studies, where a joint focus on communications and cities has made important innovations in how we understand urban space, technology, identity and community.
Exploring the rise and growing complexity of urban media and communication as the next key theme for both urban and media studies, the book gathers and reviews fast-developing knowledge on specific emergent phenomena such as:
- reading the city as symbol and text;
- understanding urban infrastructures as media (and vice-versa);
- the rise of global cities;
- urban and suburban media cultures: newspapers, cinema, radio, television and the mobile phone;
- changing spaces and practices of urban consumption;
- the mediation of the neighbourhood, community and diaspora;
- the centrality of culture to urban regeneration;
- communicative responses to urban crises such as racism, poverty and pollution;
- the role of street art in the negotiation of ‘the right to the city’;
- city competition and urban branding;
- outdoor advertising;
- moving image architecture;
- ‘smart’/cyber urbanism;
- the emergence of Media City production spaces and clusters.
Charting key debates and neglected connections between cities and media, this book challenges what we know about contemporary urban living and introduces innovative frameworks for understanding cities, media and their futures. As such, it will be an essential resource for students and scholars of media and communication studies, urban communication, urban sociology, urban planning and design, architecture, visual cultures, urban geography, art history, politics,
cultural studies, anthropology and cultural policy studies, as well as those working with governmental agencies, cultural foundations and institutes, and policy think tanks.
General Introduction
Part I: Trajectories of Mediated Urbanity
Chapter One: An Archaeology of the Media City: Towards a Critical Cultural History of
Mediated Urbanism
Chapter Two: The Semiotics of Urban Space
Chapter Three: Understanding Urban Screen Media and Cultures
Chapter Four: Urban Cinema and Photography: On Cities and "Cityness"
Chapter Five: Television and the City
Chapter Six: Journalism: An Urban Affair
Chapter Seven: Outdoor Advertising and the Remediation of Public Space(s):
Commercialization and Beyond
Chapter Eight: Consumption-centered Urban Restructuring and the Mediation of Urban Life:
From Spaces of Production to the Worlds of Seduction
Chapter Nine: On the Move: On Mobile Agoras, Networked Selves, and the Contemporary
City
Chapter Ten: Cities of Feet and Hands: Urban Habitations
Chapter Eleven: Subjectivity in the Media City: The Media Life and Representation of the Cosmopolitan Stranger
Part II: Media as Urban Infrastructure; City Spaces as Media
Chapter Twelve: The City Is Not a Computer: On Museums, Libraries, and Archives
Chapter Thirteen: Urban Monuments and the Spatialization of National Ideologies
Chapter Fourteen: Artificial Light and the Modernist Redefinition of Urban Space: Reading
the "Electropolis"
Chapter Fifteen: Urban Transport and Telecommunications: Dual Forms of the
Communicative Skeleton of the City
Chapter Sixteen: Global Cities as Mediated Spaces: The Role of Media in Forming
Contradictory Places
Chapter Seventeen: Our Own Devices: Living in the Smart Home
Chapter Eighteen: Surveillance as an Urban Way of Life
Chapter Nineteen: Urban Media as Infrastructure for Social Change
Chapter Twenty: In the Air Tonight: The Struggles of Communicating About Urban
Environmental Quality
Chapter Twenty-One: The Promises and Pitfalls of Cyber Urbanism: Governance and
Participation
Chapter Twenty-Two: Tools of the Trade: Urban Planning, Urban Media, and theRefashioning of Urban Space
Part III: Media Cities as Sites of Creative Industries and Post-Industrial Urbanism
Chapter Twenty-Three: From "Creative Cities" to "Media Cities": The Cases of Manchester
and Shanghai
Chapter Twenty-Four: Branding, Promotion, and Urban Tourism
Chapter Twenty-Five: "European Capital of Culture" and the Primacy of Cultural
Infrastructure in Post-Industrial Urbanism
Chapter Twenty-Six: The Mediat(izat)ion of Urban Leisure: Screening the Event
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Media Architecture: Post screens, Ante [Insert here]
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Fashion: An Urban Industry of Style
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Digital Public Art: Installations and Interventions
Chapter Thirty: Urban Nightlife Cultures
Chapter Thirty-One: Urban Gaming: Mobile Media, Spatial Practices and Everyday Play
Chapter Thirty-Two: From Subculture to Scene: Urban Media Practices from Below
Chapter Thirty-Three: Documenting Urban Neighborhoods and Claiming the Right to the City
Part IV: Spaces and Practices of Daily Life in Mediated Cities
Chapter Thirty-Four: The Senses and the City: Attention, Distraction and Media Technology
in Urban Environments
Chapter Thirty-Five: Navigating Hybrid Urban Spaces: Smartphones and Locative Media
Practices
Chapter Thirty-Six: Media Audiences in the Urban Context
Chapter Thirty-Seven: Temporary Inscriptions: Exploring Graffiti and Street Art in the Age of
Internetization of Everyday Urban Life
Chapter Thirty-Eight: Creating a Situation in the City: Embodied Spaces and the Act of
Crossing Boundaries
Chapter Thirty-Nine: Mediated Urban Protest: Practicing Dissent in Hybrid City Spaces
Chapter Forty: Community, Media, and the City
Chapter Forty-One: "The Street is the Message": Racial Violence and the White Control of
Mobility
Chapter Forty-Two: Living in the Disadvantaged End of "Dual Cities": Understanding the
Urban Poor and the Precariat
Chapter Forty-Three: The Politics of Sexuality in Mediated Cities
Chapter Forty-Four: Methodological Approaches in Urban Media and Communication
Research
