a journal of cities and culture
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.
What happens when a place achieves celebrity status on social media? Amy Y. Zhang, Asa Roast and Carwyn Morris introduce the term “wanghong urbanism” to theorize the construction of urban-digital spectacle and discuss the implications of the phenomenon for cities in China and beyond.
Roberto Falanga and Mafalda Corrêa Nunes examine how local community groups in Lisbon’s Marvila have asserted their right to shape the regeneration process of the area within the wider goals of city rebranding.
More than any other place, Martim Moniz square embodies the conflicted nature of Lisbon’s urban imaginaries. Andrea Pavoni reflects on the struggles over its use and argues for the importance of a “blurry” vision of the city.
Marco Allegra writes about the role of coletividades—non-commercial spaces—and local groups in the transformation of Lisbon’s Arroios, and questions some of the standard narratives of the neighbourhood’s gentrification.
Where is Lisbon’s East Side and who defines it? Simone Tulumello discusses the ongoing uncertainty surrounding the identity of the area and emphasises the conflictual nature of capitalist urbanism.
In their introduction to the second part of the roundtable, Lavínia Pereira and João Felipe P. Brito discuss the overlapping nature of urban imaginaries and pose questions for the contributors about strategies of “reverse imagineering” in East Lisbon.
Malini Guha explores the work of the Alutiiq artist Tanya Lukin Linklater and reflects on her preoccupation with different kinds of structure across installations, performance, poetry, and video art.
Cortland Rankin discusses his new book, Decline and Reimagination in Cinematic New York, with Robert Joseph.
Andrea Pavoni takes a psychogeographical tour of Lisbon’s eastern riverfront, a fragmented landscape which is permanently “under construction” and ruined at the same time.
Roberto Falanga and Mafalda Corrêa Nunes report on Lisbon’s participation in a major European Commission project and analyse the multi-layered and often conflicting urban imaginaries that characterize the redevelopment of the Marvila district.
Lisbon’s Arroios was dubbed “the world’s coolest neighborhood” by Time Out. Marco Allegra considers the power of naming and asks what’s at stake in such rankings of “coolness.”
In their roundtable introduction, Lavínia Pereira and João Felipe P. Brito survey the ongoing transformation of East Lisbon and discuss “conflicting imaginaries” as a framework for understanding the intersection of the local and the global in the “Mouraria–Marvila axis.”
