Approaches to the mediated city

Digital mediation of urban spatial practice affects the way cities are planned, perceived and ‘performed’, as manifested in computer-supported urban planning and simulations, and also in the reconfiguration of patterns of urban behaviour and experience through day-to-day use of the Internet and cellular phone systems by urban citizens. I conceptually unify this broad range of digitally-mediated practices under the term “the mediated city”, and propose that the ways in which urban actors are appropriating these technologies has the potential to transform not just the practices that take place within the city but the very processes of the genesis of built urban space.<br><br>I articulate a theoretical framework that encapsulates the various modes of actually existing digitally-mediated urban spatial practice in the three realms of mediated urban life, mediated urban design and mediated urban planning and establish a genealogy of ideas and actions linking the theory and practice of this emerging milieu to interface theory and practice and urban theory and practice. I apply grounded theory methodology to gain an understanding of current mediated urban spatial practice, based upon which I construct and illustrate a conceptual model of the mediated city.<br><br>In order to exemplify the understanding of the themes, qualities and mechanisms of the mediated city that I have assembled through this research, I bring my general conceptual model of the mediated city to bear on the structured imagining of possible futures for urban China. I propose a hypothetical program of “moves” taken by various urban actors within this context, to exemplify the types of urban practices I am trying to articulate, to aid in the refinement of said articulation, and to serve as ‘probes’ to draw comment and critique.<br>