Bringing together leading scholars from around the world and across
scholarly disciplines, this collection of 32 original chapters provides
a comprehensive exploration of the relationships between cities and
media.
The volume showcases diverse methods for studying media and the city and
posits "media urbanism" as an approach to the co-construction and
interactions among media texts and technologies, media users, media
industries, media histories, and urban space. Chapters serve as a guide
to humanities-based ways of studying urban imaginaries, infrastructures
and architectures, development and redevelopment, and strategies and
tactics as well as a provocation toward new lines of inquiry that
further explore the dense interconnectedness of media and cities.
Structured thematically, the chapters are organized into four distinct
sections, introduced with editorial commentary that places the chapters
into conversation with each other and frames them in relation to an
overarching question, problem, or method. Part I: Imaginaries and
cityscapes focuses on screen representations and mediated experiences of
urban space produced and consumed by various actors; Part II:
Architectures and infrastructures highlights the different ways in which
built environments and socio-technical substrates that sustain
differential mobilities, urban rhythms, and systems of circulation and
exchange are intertwined with various forms of media and mediation; Part
III: Development and redevelopment examines efforts by urban planners
and designers, municipal governments, and community organizers to
utilize media forms to imagine and shape the construction of the space
and meaning of the city; finally, Part IV: Strategies and tactics uses
categories for practices of control and resistance to investigate media
and struggles for power within urban environments from surveillance and
place-branding to activist media and the right to the city.
The Routledge Companion to Media and the City provides a definitive
reference for both scholars and students of urban cultures and media
within the humanities.
