
Animated Urbanism
Description
A critical examination of the digital imagery and visualization tools that mediate urban life
Animated Urbanism explores the ways urban life is increasingly mediated by digital visualization tools, from elaborate marketing productions to specialized techniques of urban planning that rely on the collection of large datasets. By developing a critical vocabulary for these forms of digital imagery, Gillian Rose investigates the implications of using digital technology to manage the spatial and temporal organization of life in cities.
Pushing back against the so-called smartness mandate, which sees urban existence and its infrastructure as necessarily governed by big data, automation, and artificial intelligence, Animated Urbanism is a nuanced examination of the various types of media structuring urban life and their propensity to replicate highly gendered and racialized forms of human embodiment. From smartphone apps to special effects in movies to sophisticated "fly-through" videos of cities created by urban developers, Rose analyzes the corporate imaginaries that are being created, building on the influential theories of Donna Haraway, among others, concerning the interrelation of technology, power, and human life.
While recent digital analysis often focuses on the political economy of tech platforms or the efficacy of data in smart cities, Rose emphasizes the role of human subjectivity in the shifting configurations of these new urban landscapes. With an incisive, feminist approach to the imagery enabled by software and handheld devices, Animated Urbanism invites us to question how human life emerges from these complex entanglements of technology and visual culture.
Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly with images accompanied by short alt text and/or extended descriptions.
More details
Person
Gillian Rose is professor of human geography at the University of Oxford, author of Feminism and Geography: The Limits of Geographical Knowledge and Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to Researching with Visual Materials, and coauthor of The New Urban Aesthetic: Digital Experiences of Urban Change.
Content
Contents
Introduction: Animating Smart Urbanism
1. Animating the Urban Smartness Mandate
Part I. Ground Truth
2. City Digital Twins: The God-Trick Animates Urban Management
3. Google Street View: The Demotic God-Trick
Part II. Synthetic Emergence
4. Modeling Agent-Based, Emergent Urban Life
5. Playing with Synthetic Cities: Cities: Skylines
Part III. Sensational Feeling
6. Flying Free! Living Digitally in the City
Conclusion: The Animation of Smart Urban Life
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index