ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides perspectives and global cases in an attempt to mobilize familiar, and detect neglected, connections between cities and media. It seeks to demonstrate the benefits of studying urban and media/communication matters together to gain a fuller understanding of the changing nature of urban space, technology, identity and community. The book demonstrates that a variety of traditional media issues like convergence, vocation and ethics remain pertinent in new “media city” complexes that are usually presented as both advantageous to media production standards and hosting neighborhoods, but often end up serving neither well. It examines formative trajectories and tropes in urban media and communication: the uneasy shift from industrial to data-driven urbanity; the formation of mediated urban subjectivity and experience; the rise of screen media intimately tied to the history of modern urbanism, such as cinema and television, practices like journalism.
