Mediapolis Journal

UPCOMING EVENT: Join the SCMS Urbanism/Geography/Architecture SIG this Friday, October 23, for a workshop on interviewing industry professionals, fieldwork and ethnographic approaches to media production research. Learn more and register here: luma.com/ajq2bnr4?tk=...

OUT NOW: “The Mediapolis Q&A: Stadium City” by Mike Van Esler and Helen Morgan Parmett. Van Esler speaks with Parmett about her book 𝘚𝘵𝘢𝘥𝘪𝘶𝘮 𝘊𝘪𝘵𝘺 and its focus on sports, media infrastructure and urban life in the United States. Read here: www.mediapolisjournal.com/2026/09/the-...

OUT NOW: “The Mediapolis Q&A: Cinematic Starchitecture” by Merrill Schleier and Paul Newland. Schleier and Newland extend the conversation from their edited collection, bringing in contributors to reflect on architecture, cinema and celebrity. Read here: www.mediapolisjournal.com/2026/09/the-...

OUT NOW: “Orbital Urbanism” by Fran Meissner. Meissner explores how satellite sensing and AI increasingly shape urban planning, and how what can be sensed from orbit influences what can be acted on below. Read here: www.mediapolisjournal.com/2026/09/orbi...

OUT NOW: “Diffused History: Generative AI and the Crisis of Architectural Memory” by Joel McKim. McKim examines how generative image models produce a “generic pastness” and how practitioners are using these tools to imagine something different. Read here: www.mediapolisjournal.com/2026/09/diff...

OUT NOW: “Coding Urban Intelligences” by Eric Gordon, Loretta Lees, Carolyn L. White and Chang Xiao. The authors imagine an AI-enabled digital twin of Boston’s Fenway neighborhood built from community conversation rather than sensor feeds. Read here: www.mediapolisjournal.com/2026/09/codi...

OUT NOW: “Synthetic Nights: Machine and Human Learning in 24-Hour Cities” by Jess Reia. Reia explores how the opacities and refusals of nocturnal life reveal the limits of machine learning, and argues for expanding what counts as data after dark. Read: www.mediapolisjournal.com/2026/09/synt...

OUT NOW: “Fictions of Frontier AI in Cities” by Miguel Valdez. Valdez turns attention from superhuman AI imaginaries to the narrowly intelligent robots already navigating city streets, and asks what it takes to make meaning with them. Read here: www.mediapolisjournal.com/2026/09/fict...

READ: “Real-Time Is Too Late: NEOM’s Digital Air and the Pre-Emptive Synthetic City” by Mehdi Ghassemi and David Murakami Wood. The authors examine how NEOM’s “digital air” was imagined and settled in advance, and what remains now. Read here: www.mediapolisjournal.com/2026/09/real...

OUT NOW: “Civic Urban AI” by Luke Hespanhol, Michiel de Lange and Nanna Verhoeff. The authors identify a “triple actionability gap” in urban AI and propose Civic Urban AI as a pedagogical counter-narrative. Read here: www.mediapolisjournal.com/2026/09/civi...

READ NOW: “What If AI Systems Self-Operate Our Cities?” by Leandry Jieutsa. Drawing on interviews with Quebec city managers, Jieutsa examines a shift toward “self-operating governance,” where officials supervise algorithmic infrastructures. www.mediapolisjournal.com/2026/09/self...

OUT NOW: "The Synthetic City", edited by @scott-rodgers.bsky.social, @aneleh-redenetta.bsky.social, marcospdias.bsky.social, @diogo-ph22.bsky.social and saratrentham.bsky.social, examines the implications of AI for urban living. Read the full dossier here: www.mediapolisjournal.com/dossiers/dos...

#CFP: Themed Dossier “Urban Deathscapes: Media, Spaces of Death, and the Contemporary City” guest edited by Susana Viegas (@filmdeath.bsky.social) – submissions for contributions (300 words) are open until 10 September! www.mediapolisjournal.com/about-us/edi...

For Episode 9 of the "Mediapolis Now" voices series, @scott-rodgers.bsky.social speaks with Chris Lukinbeal about his recent book, "Cinematic Cartography: Scale, Analysis, Topography" (@routledgebooks.bsky.social, 2025). www.mediapolisjournal.com/2026/06/voic...

The term 'Rust Belt' has become one of the more salient concepts in American political and cultural life – and yet remains difficult to define. In this reading & resource list, @michaelddwyer.bsky.social offers some key texts as a starting point: www.mediapolisjournal.com/2026/06/rust...

Just published: In this new Mediapolis Q&A, Cortland Rankin speaks to Michael Dwyer about his book "Tinsel and Rust: How Hollywood Manufactured the Rust Belt" (oxunipress.bsky.social, 2025). www.mediapolisjournal.com/2026/06/the-...

In her reflective contribution to our "Mediapolis at Ten and Beyond", @malini.bsky.social contrasts the 2020 list-making moment with the absence of topical lists about Palestine during a current “time of neutrality.” www.mediapolisjournal.com/2026/06/revi...

Ten years on: @kredell.bsky.social juxtaposes the founding vision of #Mediapolis – to occupy a space between blog & peer-reviewed journal – with the current media environment (between social media and podcasts) reshaping notions of “middle-state publishing. www.mediapolisjournal.com/2026/06/15098/

"The interdisciplinary courses that we teach are inherently challenging", writes Noelle Griffis in her contribution to the newest #Mediapolis issue, which discussed the pedagogical use and possibilities of the journal in teaching. Read here: www.mediapolisjournal.com/2026/06/medi...

Just published in our newest #Mediapolis dossier: Erica Stein traces out how multiple conceptions of scholarly “conversation” shaped the founding of the journal and remain central to the journal’s identity today. www.mediapolisjournal.com/2026/06/publ...

Both a milestone and a transitional moment: The newest issue of MEDIAPOLIS: A JOURNAL OF CITIES AND CULTURE – Vol. 11 No. 1 "Mediapolis at 10 Years and Beyond" – is now online in #OpenAccess here: www.mediapolisjournal.com

My latest writing in @mediapolis.bsky.social at 10, which revisits an essay I wrote in 2020 on the circulation of the anti-racist reading and films following the lynching of George Floyd: www.mediapolisjournal.com/2026/06/revi...

What happens when cities become datasets for AI competitions? Sam Hind shows how machine learning’s scoreboards distance practitioners from the real-world impacts of their work.

Games and cities are shaped by protocols and procedures. Drawing on the concept of ‘Gamespace,’ Connor Cook discusses how gamic principles are applied to urban planning and how these might be playfully resisted in turn.

Bringing together artistic interventions and urban acts of resistance under the umbrella of ‘sensor games,’ Christoph Borbach and Max Kanderske explore playful practices that strategically engage with and expose surveillance infrastructures.

The artwork Too Rich City transforms China’s housing crisis into a virtual playground, where NFT properties and augmented reality offer young people alternative forms of urban belonging. Hsin Hsieh both embraces and critiques this artwork.

Play activates our imagination, but it can also fall short in fostering real change. Radmila Radojevic, Simeona Petkova and Núria Arbonés Aran reflect on this tension in relation to rapidly changing neighborhoods.

Are we playing … or are we being played? In this conceptual contribution, Conor Moloney maps the tensions between public and counterpublic, culture and counterculture, play and counterplay in relation to urban experience.

Seeing and knowing a city are not necessarily the same: based on an interactive workshop with international students in London, Photini Vrikki and Giota Alevizou position photographic practices as a critical part of urban play.

From playable to instagrammable: Paul O’Connor, Julian Mcallister Groves, Yingxin Du and Tina Sze Nga Ho trace the ‘colorful’ history of the Choi Hung Public housing estate, and what that might mean for its future.

A children’s menu, a play kitchen, a coloring book: Is that what makes a space #kidsproof? Laura Vermeeren explores how Instagram’s aestheticized content increasingly shapes what family leisure in the city should look like.

Focusing on Istanbul’s Etiler neighborhood, Aylin Kartal follows different waves of urban transformation from the 1950s onwards, connecting street play, urban planning and collective memory.

Reflecting on her experiences of skateboarding in Cairo, New York and other cities as a form of ‘rolling ethnography’, Alia ElKattan positions ‘seeing like a skater’ as a new way to approach urban landscapes.

Contrasting the visibility of playful art installations with a decline in funding for public infrastructures, @alisonstenning.bsky.social discusses how playability of ordinary urban environments is often ignored, devalued and undermined in urban planning.

For @mediapolis.bsky.social, I wrote a short article provoked in part by the jarring visions of play represented by art like this on the one hand and the Play Commission's All To Play For report and the everyday spaces of play that I engage with in my research on the other.

Anthony Albright and Frans Willem Korsten discuss the playful appropriation of a vacant building by a squatters’ group as part of an effort to recapture urban environments from the profit-oriented ‘game’ of waiting by investors.

In our latest Q&A, Erica Stein speaks to İpek Çelik Rappas about her new book Filming in European Cities. www.mediapolisjournal.com/2025/11/film...

The city is a playground. But is it really? In the intro to the Playable Cities dossier, @carobirdsall.bsky.social, @lindakopitz.bsky.social and Alex Gekker discuss how cities are built, how cities are navigated, and how cities are resisted with and through play.

Proud to present the Dossier „Lightscapes/Nightscapes“ I edited together with my friend and colleague Patricia Pia Bornus for @mediapolis.bsky.social - Full Issue here: www.mediapolisjournal.com/2025/07/ligh... Lightscapes/Nightscapes – An Introduction – Mediapolis

Call for Papers: The Synthetic City We’re putting together a special issue dossier for @mediapolis.bsky.social on 'urban AI' and seek short essays, provocations, creative-critical reflections on synthetic urbanism. 📅 Abstracts due: Nov 30 🔗 Details: mediacitytwg.wordpress.com/2025/10/16/c...

In the latest podcast, @baykurt.bsky.social discusses with @scott-rodgers.bsky.social her longstanding interests in Google as an increasingly influential agent in urban affairs, and her efforts to rethink ‘test-bed urbanism’ through the local. www.mediapolisjournal.com/2025/04/voic...

What happens when a Brutalist building becomes a screen? Drawing on the Concrete Cinema project in Coventry, Michael Pigott explores the affordances and potentials of outdoor moving image projection for the analysis and critique of architecture. www.mediapolisjournal.com/2025/04/conc...

How do residents respond to public art in gentrifying areas? Pauline Panetta investigates attitudes to activist projection art in Copenhagen’s Nørrebro neighborhood and its Lundtoftegade housing complex. www.mediapolisjournal.com/2025/04/acti...

Duncan Whitley and Mel Jordan discuss the film Phoenix City 2021 and the potential for site-based artworks to challenge placemaking narratives and the politics of the UK City of Culture. www.mediapolisjournal.com/2025/04/phoe...

The dossier continues ... Giorgia Rizzioli explores how posthumanist theory helps us to understand the potential for projection activism as a feminist spatial practice. www.mediapolisjournal.com/2025/04/proj...

From May 1968 to Black Lives Matter, visual and textual strategies have been central to protest movements. Giuseppe Previtali reflects on projection activism as a tool for bringing new political configurations into being. More to come in this dossier soon! www.mediapolisjournal.com/2025/04/take...

Giorgia Rizzioli introduces the Projection Activism dossier with some reflections on urban projection as a means to assert the right to the city. www.mediapolisjournal.com/2025/04/urba...

Stanley Corkin discusses his latest book, Boston Mass-Mediated: Urban Space and Culture in the Digital Age, with Bruce Isaacs. www.mediapolisjournal.com/2025/04/cork...

there is still some time to submit an essay for the UGA SIG Graduate Student Award @scmsurbanism.bsky.social @scmstudies.bsky.social @mediapolis.bsky.social if you have students working on urbanism/geography/architecture topics, please do encourage to submit!