A Tribute to Isabelle McNeill and Her Video Essay Drones in the Banlieue
Alan O'Leary and Isabelle McNeillAlan O’Leary pays tribute to Isabelle McNeill (1979–2025) and introduces her video essay Drones in the Banlieue.
In This Issue
Colourful Play in Hong Kong’s Rainbow Estate
Paul O’Connor, Julian Mcallister Groves, Yingxin Du and Tina Sze Nga HoFrom playable to instagrammable: Paul O’Connor, Julian Mcallister Groves, Yingxin Du and Tina Sze Nga Ho trace the ‘colorful’ history of the Choi Hung Public housing estate, and what that might mean for its future.
Beyond Nice: Mediating Urban life Through Play and Counter-play
Conor MoloneyAre we playing … or are we being played? In this conceptual contribution, Conor Moloney maps the tensions between public and counterpublic, culture and counterculture, play and counterplay in relation to urban experience.
Too Rich City: A Sinofuturist Playground
Hsin HsiehThe artwork Too Rich City transforms China’s housing crisis into a virtual playground, where NFT properties and augmented reality offer young people alternative forms of urban belonging. Hsin Hsieh both embraces and critiques this artwork.
Gamespace Odyssey: Notes on the Procedural Transformation of Athens
Connor CookGames and cities are shaped by protocols and procedures. Drawing on the concept of ‘Gamespace,’ Connor Cook discusses how gamic principles are applied to urban planning and how these might be playfully resisted in turn.
Defamiliarizing the City: Play, Affect, and the Activation of Imaginaries
Radmila Radojevic, Simeona Petkova and Núria Arbonés AranPlay activates our imagination, but it can also fall short in fostering real change. Radmila Radojevic, Simeona Petkova and Núria Arbonés Aran reflect on this tension in relation to rapidly changing neighborhoods.
Babyccinos and Reel Making: Who is Really Playing?
Laura VermeerenA children’s menu, a play kitchen, a coloring book: Is that what makes a space #kidsproof? Laura Vermeeren explores how Instagram’s aestheticized content increasingly shapes what family leisure in the city should look like.
Seeing Like a Skater: Skateboarding as Poetic Technology
Alia ElKattanReflecting on her experiences of skateboarding in Cairo, New York and other cities as a form of ‘rolling ethnography’, Alia ElKattan positions ‘seeing like a skater’ as a new way to approach urban landscapes.
Urban Investors’ Play with Time: Stakes of the Game and Waiting as Playful Strategy
Anthony Albright and Frans-Willem KorstenAnthony Albright and Frans Willem Korsten discuss the playful appropriation of a vacant building by a squatters’ group as part of an effort to recapture urban environments from the profit-oriented ‘game’ of waiting by investors.
Playable Cities: An Introduction
Carolyn Birdsall, Linda Kopitz and Alex GekkerThe city is a playground. But is it really? This introduction to the Playable Cities dossier discusses how cities are built, how cities are navigated, and how cities are resisted with and through play.
Come Out and Play: A Historical Exploration of Street Play and Urbanization in the Etiler Neighborhood in Istanbul
Bedriye Aylin KartalFocusing on Istanbul’s Etiler neighborhood, Aylin Kartal follows different waves of urban transformation from the 1950s onwards, connecting street play, urban planning and collective memory.
Framing London: Vernacular Photography and the Playable City in Student Life
Photini Vrikki and Giota AlevizouSeeing and knowing a city are not necessarily the same: based on an interactive workshop with international students in London, Photini Vrikki and Giota Alevizou position photographic practices as a critical part of urban play.
The Mediapolis Q&A: Ipek Çelik Rappas’s Filming in European Cities
Erica Stein and Ipek A. Celik RappasErica Stein speaks to İpek Çelik Rappas about her book Filming in European Cities.
When Cities Aren’t Playable: Placing Children’s Play in Urban Environments
Alison StenningContrasting the visibility of playful art installations with a decline in funding for public infrastructures, Alison Stenning discusses how playability of ordinary urban environments is often ignored, devalued and undermined in urban planning.
Playful Resistance: The Politics of Sensor Counter-Practices in Urban Technospheres
Christoph Borbach and Max KanderskeBringing together artistic interventions and urban acts of resistance under the umbrella of ‘sensor games,’ Christoph Borbach and Max Kanderske explore playful practices that strategically engage with and expose surveillance infrastructures.
Playing Domains: Codes, Cities, and Cultures in the Viral World of Machine Learning
Sam HindWhat happens when cities become datasets for AI competitions? Sam Hind shows how machine learning’s scoreboards distance practitioners from the real-world impacts of their work.
Previous Issue
Lights at Night: Contemporary Artistic Photographs from Lagos, Nigeria
Eva WiegertEva Wiegert draws on contemporary photographic series by African artists to examine how artists harness the city’s nocturnal light to reimagine urban space. These photographs not only capture the energy of nocturnal Lagos but also challenge stereotypes and invite viewers to see its people and places from new perspectives.
Lightscapes/Nightscapes – An Introduction
Patricia Pia Bornus and Bianka-Isabell ScharmannPatricia Pia Bornus and Bianka-Isabell Scharmann introduce the dossier on Lightscapes and Nightscapes with some reflections on cities, light, and night.
In the Glow of the City: Lighting Urban Space as an Expressive Tool in the Cinema of Bernardo Bertolucci
Sofia Panza and Carlo UgolottiSofia Panza and Carlo Ugolotti examine the expressive and psychological uses of light in the city films of Bernardo Bertolucci.
Nocturnal Architectures of Allure: On Celebration and Illumination in Early 20th Century Turkey
Elif KaymazWhat happens when the night becomes a stage for nationalism? Tracing the nocturnalization of national day celebrations, Elif Kaymaz argues that choreographed lightscapes reshaped urban space to cultivate emotions of unity, pride, and festive allure, offering citizens of early Republican Turkey not just a spectacle to watch but a space to inhabit.
Like Moths to a Flame
Laura LaabsLaura Laabs follows the smooth path of a drone, the central vehicle in a tech demo for raytracing technologies. Using the moth as a figure for our relationship to light, Laabs asks what is at stake in such mediations of reflection and shine.
The George Floyd Hologram: Between Memorial, Media, and Market
Clara PodlesniggDrawing on the George Floyd Hologram Memorial Project, Clara Podlesnigg examines how luminous projections transformed sites of white supremacy into spaces of counter-narrative and spectacle. While the hologram elevated Floyd’s image into a racial icon, it also exposed the problematic convergence of commemoration, commodification, and the erasure of Black life in public space.
Celluloid Nights: Film-Technological Modernity and Weimar Republic Berlin
Simon SchillerSimon Schiller examines the techniques used to capture night on film in Weimar-era Berlin and discusses the intersections of cinema, electricity, and light in urban modernity.
Building Shadows: Rethinking Darkness in the Urban Night
Chantal MengReflecting on her photographic work, Chantal Meng shows how the experience of artificial light reshapes our very concept of darkness, thereby necessitating a reconsideration of shadows.
Using Art as Inspiration: Bringing Mars to Nuns Island in Galway
Patrick CollinsDrawing on UrbanLab Galway’s collaboration with the Galway International Arts Festival, Patrick Collins explores how large-scale artistic intervention can reframe a forgotten industrial site and invite public engagement with urban space, memory, and speculative futures.
The Montage of Authenticity: Voyage and Voyeurism in Sergei Eisenstein’s ¡Que Viva Mexico!
Emmanuel Ramos-BarajasReconstructing Sergei Eisenstein’s travels in rural Mexico for the unfinished project, ¡Que Viva Mexico!, Emmanuel Ramos-Barajas argues that the filmmaker’s theories of montage were shaped by ideas about tourism, authenticity, and ethnography.