ABSTRACT
This part introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters. The part suggests that “creative experimentation” in combining new tech with old spaces will be needed to support conviviality in the mediated city. It provides accessible yet generous theoretical synthesis for reading “space-as-text” and “space-in-text”. The part describes cinema at the origins of the modern city, which rests on the link among “the city”, “the person” and “the machine”. It traces outdoor advertising in the 19th century as part of the development of “American consumer capitalism”, which matched manufacturing with transport, distribution and marketing. The part explores how intellectual turns and sites in consumption studies harnessed issues like urban planning, policy and informality. The chapter shows how urban consumption in post-socialist cities narrates an “alternative”, non-binary, “modernity” to the conventional framework of “Western capitalism”.
