a journal of cities and culture
Linda Kopitz traces how the vision for Amsterdam’s sustainable future has been digitally mapped by “green” databases in ways that construct ideas of maintenance as care, and care as maintenance. Yet such mediations of urban nature risk fragmenting sustainable practices in the present.
Samuel Holleran discusses urban cemeteries as a kind of “deathcare infrastructure” and considers the questions of capacity, maintenance, and care that surround their presence in Australian cities.
Pei-Sze Chow reads the science-fiction film Tiong Bahru Social Club in the context of Singapore’s Smart Nation policies, arguing that its satirical vision of care-by-algorithm offers insights into how individuals might reclaim agency and “hack” the algocratic state.
In their introduction to the Caring Cities dossier, Linda Kopitz and Pei-Sze Chow consider how care intersects with the urban, and how care might be “designed,” through the lenses of technology, politics, and the senses.
Maria O’Brien draws on Henri Lefebvre’s spatial theories to argue for the continued importance of the state in the media production process, via the example of Irish audiovisual taxation policies.
Yulia Gilich is this year’s graduate student essay winner for the Society for Cinema and Media Studies Urbanism, Geography, Architecture Scholarly Interest Group. They examine how Israeli and Western media primarily depict Gaza as a site of destruction and violence, which naturalizes this perception of the Gaza Strip and absolves Israel and its allies from responsibility for the suffering caused there.
Can the phenomenon of wanghong urbanism be harnessed for positive change? Reflecting on some of her projects, the architect Anna Liu discusses the challenge of creating landmarks for a digital world and the potential for design to catalyse environmental awareness.
Emphasising the sensory experience of the digitally mediated city, Monica Degen and Gillian Rose propose critical tactics for understanding the everyday power relations of the “new urban aesthetic.”
Kola Heyward-Rotimi investigates the speculative aesthetics of “corporate Afrofuturism” as a mode of neoliberal world-building. For smart city projects such as Nigeria’s Eko Atlantic, international architecture firms render digital projections of the continent’s urban future.
In the latest episode of our Events podcast series, Lisa Schulze, Karin Larsson, Mortiz Schweiger and Derya Özkan discuss their recent research on media, cities and space with Erasmus Mundus journalism students.
Exploring China’s latest megacity, Xiongan New Area, Antonie Angerer shows how social media and urban-digital spectacle have become incorporated into the urban planning process.
The former French Concession in Shanghai has become a key destination for tourists and social media influencers. Chensi Shen investigates the area’s cultural symbolism and its new status as an urban-digital landscape.
Kath Bassett examines how locative media platforms such as TripAdvisor have shaped the development of Harry Potter tourism in Edinburgh.
Urban aesthetics have become social media aesthetics, argues Petter Törnberg. Drawing on research from São Paolo, Törnberg shows how the logics of social media have become integral to the new urban attention economy.
In their introduction to the dossier on urban-digital spectacle, Amy Y. Zhang, Asa Roast, and Carwyn Morris reflect on the complex roles that digital technology and social media play in the production and consumption of urban space.
