“MEDIACITY: Situations, Practices and Encounters” investigates how the social settings and spaces of the city are created, experienced and practiced through the use and presence of new media. It takes the position that new media enables different settings, practices and behaviours to occur in urban space. Contributions from academics, practitioners and activists from disciplines such as Media Studies, Architecture, Urban Studies, Cultural and Urban Geography and Sociology present a critical reflection on the processes, methods and impacts of technologies in urban space.

Every day we share encounters with others as we inhabit the space around us. In offering insights and knowledge on this increasingly important topic, this book introduces a range of empirical and theoretical approaches to the study of shared encounters. It highlights the multifaceted nature of collective experience and provides a deeper understanding of the nature and value of shared encounters in everyday life. Divided into four sections, each section comprises a set of chapters on a different topic and is introduced by a key author in the field who provides an overview of the content. The book itself is introduced by Paul Dourish, who sets the theme of shared encounters in the context of technological and social change over the last fifteen years. The four sections that follow consider the characteristics of shared encounters and describe how they can be supported in different settings: the first section, introduced by Barry Brown, looks at shared experiences. George Roussos, in the second section, presents playful encounters. Malcolm McCulloch introduces the section on spatial settings and – last but not least – Elizabeth Churchill previews the topic of social glue. The individual chapters that accompany each part offer particular perspectives on the main topic and provide detailed insights from the author’s own research background. A valuable reference for anyone designing ubiquitous media, mobile social software and LBS applications, this volume will also be useful to researchers, students and practitioners in fields ranging from computer science to urban studies.

Going beyond current scholarship on the “media city” and the “smart city,” Shannon Mattern argues that our global cities have been mediated and intelligent for millennia. Deep Mapping the Media City advocates for urban media archaeology, a multisensory approach to investigating the material history of networked cities. Mattern explores the material assemblages and infrastructures that have shaped the media city by taking archaeology literally—using techniques like excavation and mapping to discover the modern city’s roots in time. Forerunners: Ideas First is a thought-in-process series of breakthrough digital publications. Written between fresh ideas and finished books, Forerunners draws on scholarly work initiated in notable blogs, social media, conference plenaries, journal articles, and the synergy of academic exchange. This is gray literature publishing: where intense thinking, change, and speculation take place in scholarship.

Proceedings from MediaCity 4: MediaCities, the International Conference, Workshops and Exhibition mounted at the University at Buffalo May 3-5, 2013. Edited by Jordan Geiger, Mark Shepard and Omar Khan.

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.

Edited by thought leaders in the fields of urban informatics and urban interaction design, this book brings together case studies and examples from around the world to discuss the role that urban interfaces, citizen action, and city making play in the quest to create and maintain not only secure and resilient, but productive, sustainable and viable urban environments. The book debates the impact of these trends on theory, policy and practice. The individual chapters are based on blind peer reviewed contributions by leading researchers working at the intersection of the social / cultural, technical / digital, and physical / spatial domains of urbanism scholarship. The book will appeal not only to researchers and students, but also to a vast number of practitioners in the private and public sector interested in accessible content that clearly and rigorously analyses the potential offered by urban interfaces, mobile technology, and location-based services in the context of engaging people with open, smart and participatory urban environments.

The percentage of people living in cities and the adoption rates of communication technologies continue to grow across the planet. Our age has come to be defined as one of urbanism and communication; but how are those two intertwined? How do they shape each other? Where and in which ways do they diverge, support or fold into each other? As new tensions emerge and old ones find new solutions, social sciences are forced into a dialogue with media studies and urban studies in order to make sense of the new reality. New theoretical and methodological paradigms are urgently needed, and can be produced only through a fertile and eclectic dialogue. This volume presents some of the latest research in this exciting, cross-disciplinary field. Issues of conflict, mobility, crime, art, memory, ethnicity, identity, and city marketing and branding come under rigorous scrutiny in their mutual and constitutive relationship with urban space and communicative technologies and practices. The volume is divided into three broad sections. The first section deals with the role of media in the social production of urban space – that is, with how media interact with other forces in giving shape to the materiality of the city. The second section deals with how urban space acts as a context for a variety of media-related practices – especially in relation to the popularization of mobile geo-localization technologies which have given us mass phenomena such as Foursquare. The third and final section deals with how urban space is mediatised and communicated through ICTs – or in other terms, how urban space is represented by specific media through specific discursive strategies.