MediaCity 4: reflecting on pluralities and globalities of MediaCities
International Conference, Workshops and Exhibition University at Buffalo, The State University of New York
3-5 May 2013 Call for Paper Abstracts DEADLINE: 12 November 2012
"What new lines of inquiry and emergent relations between urbanity and digital media are found in non-Western cities, in post-Capitalist cities, in cities hosting civic turbulence or crossing international boundaries? What urban-medial relations are taking shape differently in urban milieux that may have been heretofore overlooked? These cities are deserving of more attention than ever before, as sites of population growth, of new cultural and social formations, of new entanglements between urban life and contemporary media, communications and information technologies, and more. MediaCities promises to expand our understanding of both media and the city today, and to articulate new sites of practice and working methods for an expanding field. ...
Areas of interest may fall broadly into several themes, with the assumption that others will appear in the process of proposals and discussion leading up to the event, always expanding our lexicon and mental maps of MediaCities globally. These themes are: Other Urbans, Uncommons, Zero Growth Cities, Media Geographies and Bordervilles."
(Jordan Geiger)
Fig.1 Reuters/Sheng Li (2011), "ethnic Dong minority woman uses her mobile phone to take a picture of herself after a Kam Grand Choir gathering in Tongguan village of Liping county, Guizhou province". [http://pixtale.net/2011/10/21st-century-china/#img33]
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Jennifer Pahlka: Coding a better government (?)
"Can government be run like the Internet, permissionless and open? Coder and activist Jennifer Pahlka believes it can -- and that apps, built quickly and cheaply, are a powerful new way to connect citizens to their governments -- and their neighbors.
Jennifer Pahlka is the founder of Code for America, which matches software geniuses with US cities to reboot local services."
(Filmed February 2012, posted March 2012, TED2012)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Open Urban: Know Your City - Map, Inform, Discuss
"OpenUrban is the first open source user-generated web map and forum focusing on current and proposed urban development. It is a web platform for civic collaboration, a venue for debate, and an outlet and archive for information on urban development. We embrace crowd sourcing technology as a means to inform and empower. By combining written media with spatial information OpenUrban creates a powerful tool for people to understand how their cities are changing and supports their active participation in that change."
(OpenUrban, 2012)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
The amateur video which sparked the 1992 Los Angeles Civil Unrest
"in March 1991, television screens across the world broadcast [George Holliday's] videotaped footage of LAPD officers raining down 56 baton blows on an African American named Rodney King. ... on April 29, 1992, a jury in Simi Valley, one of the whitest exurbs of Los Angeles, acquitted three of the four officers involved in beating Rodney King. The response in South Los Angeles was loud and immediate: That night, thousands of residents, black and Latino, took to the streets, starting a four-day riot that destroyed more than 1,000 buildings, injured 2,500 people, killed 58, and resulted in $1 billion in damage and 16,000 arrests."
(Josh Sides, 19/04/2012, Design Observer)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
New Zealanders need to start more actively dealing with urban issues
"'It is essential that New Zealanders start dealing much more actively with urban issues,' asserts Professor Harvey Perkins, recently appointed Director of Transforming Cities: Innovations for Sustainable Futures (formerly, Transforming Auckland) and Professor of Planning.
'We need to embrace the ideas of ‘urban sustainability and liveability’,' notions he explores in his most recent publication, Place, Identity and Everyday Life in a Globalizing World, co-authored with Professor David Thorns. This work followed a series of jointly published articles with colleagues at Lincoln University and The University of Auckland critically examining the ways in which sustainability thinking has been interpreted and incorporated in urban planning in New Zealand."
(Jenny Dixon, 16 February 2012)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
