The Routledge Companion to Media and the City

Bringing together leading scholars from around the world and across scholarly disciplines, this collection of 32 original chapters provides a comprehensive exploration of the relationships between cities and media.

The volume showcases diverse methods for studying media and the city and posits ＂media urbanism＂ as an approach to the co-construction and interactions among media texts and technologies, media users, media industries, media histories, and urban space. Chapters serve as a guide to humanities-based ways of studying urban imaginaries, infrastructures and architectures, development and redevelopment, and strategies and tactics as well as a provocation toward new lines of inquiry that further explore the dense interconnectedness of media and cities. Structured thematically, the chapters are organized into four distinct sections, introduced with editorial commentary that places the chapters into conversation with each other and frames them in relation to an overarching question, problem, or method. Part I: Imaginaries and cityscapes focuses on screen representations and mediated experiences of urban space produced and consumed by various actors; Part II: Architectures and infrastructures highlights the different ways in which built environments and socio-technical substrates that sustain differential mobilities, urban rhythms, and systems of circulation and exchange are intertwined with various forms of media and mediation; Part III: Development and redevelopment examines efforts by urban planners and designers, municipal governments, and community organizers to utilize media forms to imagine and shape the construction of the space and meaning of the city; finally, Part IV: Strategies and tactics uses categories for practices of control and resistance to investigate media and struggles for power within urban environments from surveillance and place-branding to activist media and the right to the city.

The Routledge Companion to Media and the City provides a definitive reference for both scholars and students of urban cultures and media within the humanities.

Erica Stein is Assistant Professor of Film at Vassar College. Her research focuses on the spatial politics of alternative cinemas. She is the author of Seeing Symphonically: Avant-Garde Film, Urban Planning, and the Utopian Image of New York (2021) and the co-founder of Mediapolis: A Journal of Cities and Culture.

Germaine R. Halegoua is John D. Evans Development Professor and associate professor of Communication and Media at the University of Michigan. Her research focuses on the relationships between people, place, and digital media. She is the author of The Digital City (2020), Smart Cities (2020), and co-editor of Locating Emerging Media (2016).

Brendan Kredell is Associate Professor of Film Studies and Production at Oakland University. His research and writing focus on the intersection of media and urban studies. With Marijke de Valck and Skadi Loist, he co-edited the book Film Festivals: History, Theory, Method, Practice (2016) and is the co-founder of Mediapolis: A Journal of Cities and Culture.