Cities have long been recognised 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 digitised 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.
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.