ABSTRACT
When it comes to thinking about the city and information and communication networks, the first question is what is ‘urban’ about these networks at all? I want to suggest it is less the location of access points than the interactional spaces created. These often mobilize using an urban imaginary. I want to trace the different imaginations involved in accounts that outline virtual topographies where the city is central. I hope this will start to suggest the promiscuous and pluriform combinations of urban and electronic spaces (and metaphors). I begin by examining accounts that look to the dislocation of the city, its overextension and disappearance. Following this are accounts that see a suburban mode of experience – a telematic ‘Cyberville’ or ‘Cyburbia’. Opposing this, some point to electronic networks revitalizing communities. Then I wish to address arguments for the transformation of the public sphere. Through these contrasting stances I want to explore a view linking these discontinuous visions into a labyrinthine view of the city, of different media and associated spatialities folding into one another.
