After Images Of The City

Criticism on the textual and iconographic construction of the city is extensive, yet the problem of historical change in representations of "the urban" has received little attention. Believing traditional accounts are limited by their reflection of a specific historical moment, Joan Ramon Resina and Dieter Ingenschay focus, by contrast, on transition. In essays written for this volume, scholars of literary and visual studies, the history of architecture, cultural theory, and urban geography explore the ways perceptual or conceptual paradigms of the city supersede or replace others, while at the same time retaining the "after-image" of what went before. The writers touch on a wide variety of issues related to contemporary urban cultures as they journey through cities including New York, Barcelona, Madrid, Paris, Tijuana, Berlin, and London. Drawing on the work of Roland Barthes, Walter Benjamin, Camilo José Cela, Honoré de Balzac, and Alfred Stieglitz, their approach is broadly cultural rather than technical. After-Images of the City takes into account the intrinsic instability of the image and reveals that representations of the modern metropolis cannot be fixed in time and history.

The classic work on the evaluation of city form. What does the city's form actually mean to the people who live there? What can the city planner do to make the city's image more vivid and memorable to the city dweller? To answer these questions, Mr. Lynch, supported by studies of Los Angeles, Boston, and Jersey City, formulates a new criterion—imageability—and shows its potential value as a guide for the building and rebuilding of cities. The wide scope of this study leads to an original and vital method for the evaluation of city form. The architect, the planner, and certainly the city dweller will all want to read this book.

Los Angeles lives largest in the world's imagination. It can be a projection, a solution, a temporary fix, a long-term goal. For Lynell George--and millions of others--it's simply home. After/Image: Los Angeles Outside the Frame by Lynell George is the result of this award-winning journalist's years of contemplating and writing about the arts, culture, and social issues of Los Angeles, always with an emphasis on place and the identity of the people who live in--or leave--L.A. As a staff writer for the Los Angeles Timesand LA Weekly,Lynell George explored place after place that makes the city tick, met person after person, and encountered the cumulative heart of the city. After/Imageis her collection of essays, evocative photographs, profiles, and reportage focused on Los Angeles beneath-the-surface--both the past and the here-and-now. In its pages, Lynell George explores a set of questions about her native city: After decades of wholesale rethinking, what distinguishing features of the city remain deeply rooted? What rituals, details, passed-on lifestyles persist outside the edges of the frame--beyond the projected idea of Los Angeles? What are the lasting memories, the essential "afterimages" upon which we reflect? What do its people carry around in their own imagination and their hearts? How does the rest of the country look at L.A.--and why? Lynell George's contemplations about Los Angeles are deeply in sync with the Angel City Press mantra: no one book can capture the scope of the city--a place with many stories to tell. And yet, with After/Image: Los Angeles Outside the Frame,Lynell George proves every mantra can be re-examined.

The Routledge Companion to Urban Media and Communication traces central debates within the burgeoning interdisciplinary research on mediated cities and urban communication. The volume brings together diverse perspectives and global case studies to map key areas of research within media, cultural and urban studies, where a joint focus on communications and cities has made important innovations in how we understand urban space, technology, identity and community. Exploring the rise and growing complexity of urban media and communication as the next key theme for both urban and media studies, the book gathers and reviews fast-developing knowledge on specific emergent phenomena such as: reading the city as symbol and text; understanding urban infrastructures as media (and vice-versa); the rise of global cities; urban and suburban media cultures: newspapers, cinema, radio, television and the mobile phone; changing spaces and practices of urban consumption; the mediation of the neighbourhood, community and diaspora; the centrality of culture to urban regeneration; communicative responses to urban crises such as racism, poverty and pollution; the role of street art in the negotiation of ‘the right to the city’; city competition and urban branding; outdoor advertising; moving image architecture; ‘smart’/cyber urbanism; the emergence of Media City production spaces and clusters. Charting key debates and neglected connections between cities and media, this book challenges what we know about contemporary urban living and introduces innovative frameworks for understanding cities, media and their futures. As such, it will be an essential resource for students and scholars of media and communication studies, urban communication, urban sociology, urban planning and design, architecture, visual cultures, urban geography, art history, politics, cultural studies, anthropology and cultural policy studies, as well as those working with governmental agencies, cultural foundations and institutes, and policy think tanks.

This book considers the presence of media illiteracy in a world in which we are supposedly consumed by media, live a media life, in a media ecosystem, surrounded by mediated communication. Unpacking this paradoxical situation, the author proposes that before venturing into media literacy, we must first understand the workings of how mystification occurs. Departing from the idea that aesthetics work on an agreed set of principles between art and society, the author applies this ideology of aesthetics to news-based narration. Using empirical cases from India, the author proposes demystification as a possible methodology to approach media illiteracy and recommends completely transformed media literacy programs that deliver to communities, drawing from the construct of critical pedagogy. The book offers the possibilities for a collectivistic, non-Western, postcolonialist model of learning by using the very collective and hierarchical identities of societies that must be critiqued. This vital and innovative book will be an important resource for scholars and students in the areas of media literacy and critical media literacy, media education, journalism, mass communication, aesthetics and media technology.

"This is a rich and learned volume that has a story to tell to those seeking to understand contemporary Southern California."—David Johnson, managing editor of the Pacific Historical Review "Engagingly written and well researched, California Vieja is an intriguing, persuasive examination of the politics of memory and the built environment in southern California."—Vicki Ruiz, author of From Out of the Shadows: Mexican Women in Twentieth-Century America

Although contemporary art may sometimes shock us, more alarming are recent attempts to regulate its display. Drawing upon extensive interviews, a broad sampling of media accounts, legal documents and his own observations of important events, sociologist Steven Dubin surveys the recent trend in censorship of the visual arts, photography and film, as well as artistic upstarts such as video and performance art. He examines the dual meaning of arresting images--both the nature of art work which disarms its viewers and the social reaction to it. Arresting Images examines the battles which erupt when artists address such controversial issues as racial polarization, AIDS, gay-bashing and sexual inequality in their work.

William Taylor explores the use of local and regional shrines, and devotion to images of Christ and Mary, including Our Lady of Guadalupe, to get to the heart of the politics and practices of faith in Mexico before the Reforma.