Cities have long been recognized as key sites for fostering new communication practices. However, as contemporary cities experience major changes, how do diverse inhabitants encounter each other? How do cities remember? What is the role of the built environment in fostering sites for public communication in a digital era? Communicative Cities and Urban Space offers a critical analysis of contemporary changes in the relation between urban space and communication.
This volume seeks to understand the situatedness of contemporary communication practices in diverse contexts of urban life, and to explore digitized urban space as a historically specific communicative environment. The essays in this book collectively propose that the concept of the ‘communicative city’ is a productive frame for rethinking the above questions in the context of 21st-century ‘media cities’. They challenge us to reconsider qualities such as openness, autonomy and diversity in contemporary urban communication practices, and to identify factors that might expand or constrict communicative possibilities.
Students and scholars of communication studies and urban studies would benefit from this book.
1 Introduction — Spaces of communication, Scott McQuire and Sun Wei. PART 1: RETHINKING MEDIATED URBAN SPACE AS COMMUNICATIVE SPACE. 2 Searching for the Communicative City: A Search Backwards and Forward. Gary Gumpert (Urban Communication Foundation) and Susan Drucker (Hofstra University, United States). 3 Architecture, media, and spaces of urban communication. Scott McQuire (University of Melbourne, Australia). 4 Multispace: A Non-media-centric Approach to Mediated Cities. Zlatan Krajina (University of Zagreb, Croatia). PART 2: PLACES, COMMUNICATION AND PLACEMAKING. . 5 Embodied publicness: urban life in the age of mobile networks. Sun Wei (Fudan University, China). 6 Digitising children’s public play spaces. Bjorn Nansen (University of Melbourne, Australia) and Tom Apperley (University of Tampere, Finland). 7 Decorating and Imagining the New City with Public Art? Study on the sculptures and installations on Modern Avenue in Suzhou Industrial Park. Chen Lin (Suzhou University, China) and Lu Jieqing (Xinhua Daily). 8 smART city - turbulent city? Artistic Engagements with Urban Ecologies in Delhi. Christiane Brosius (Heidelberg University, Germany). PART 3: URBAN SCREENS AND NEW FORMS OF PUBLIC PARTICIPATION. 9 Urban screens and spaces of civic communication. Stephanie Hannon (University of Melbourne, Australia). 10 Capturing ambient participation: Indian Independence Day at Federation Square. Nikos Papastergiadis (University of Melbourne, Australia), Danielle Wyatt (University of Melbourne, Australia) and Millicent Weber (Australian National University, Australia). 11 Ambient Participation, Place-making and Urban Screens. Audrey Yue (National University of Singapore, Singapore). PART 4: URBAN INFRASTRUCTURE AND THE COMMUNICATIVE CITY. 12 Trams as Urban Media: Public Transportation and the Construction of Shanghai's "Circulation Civilization" in the Early 20th Century. ZHANG Yuchen (Tongji University). 13 Spectacular Cities and Weak Cosmopolitanism: International Students and Melbourne. Alex Lambert (National University of Singapore, Singapore) and Jasmin Pfefferkorn (University of Melbourne, Australia) . 14 Digitalized seeing: the reconstruction of urban communication network by UAV aerial photography in the big data era. Zhou Haiyan (Fudan University, China). 15 Spatial practices and asymmetric alignment of temporalities: How "Shanghai Fabu" Wechat account transforms government communication in Shanghai. Pan Ji (Fudan University, China).
Biography
Scott McQuire is Professor of Media and Communications at the University of Melbourne where he pursues interdisciplinary research at the nexus of digital media, urbanism, art and social theory.
Sun Wei is Professor of Media and Communications at School of Journalism, Center for Information and Communication Studies, Fudan University.
