ABSTRACT
This chapter explores ideas of agency and performance in the built environment, with a focus on urban public space. Working from the historical context of television and broadcast media, concepts of actor and audience, as well as frameworks for how people can participate in the public realm when it is experienced through digital technologies are examined. The fate of the public realm or the urban commons has been a subject of broader debate in urban theory over a number of decades. The public realm is about creating the conditions for people to participate in 'being social'. In urban public space the degree to which media affects agency is due to the fact that the remote nature of the communication blurs who is in control. In public space it is important to remember the difference between such jolts and an 'intervention or interruption, and an unwanted interference'.
