Methods of engaging communities in urban planning decisions have remained relatively stagnant. Groups of people are assembled into community centers, school cafeterias, and libraries and are asked to provide input on the professional discourse of architects and planners. They are shown drawings, computer generated renderings, even 3D models and are then “listened to” as a […]

Categories: placeofmedia · games · hub2 · civic_engagement · mediated urbanism · cities · geography

Here’s the cover of my book.  It’s finally going to come out, even though it’s still months away.  The book looks at something I call possessive spectatorship in the American city, a way of looking that doubles as a kind of collecting.  I trace this idea from the late 19th century to the early 21st […]

Categories: placeofmedia · mediated urbanism · cities · place · geography

While new mobile technologies are often characterized as distractions from the world around us - just consider the outcry over train operators texting while driving - they are, in fact, technologies of attention.  They get us to pay attention to them.  Actually, that’s not true.  We don’t pay attention to our devices, we pay attention […]

Categories: placeofmedia · net-locality · mediated urbanism · mobility · cities · geography

An article of mine, entitled “The Metageography of the Internet: Mapping from Web 1.0 to 2.0″ was just published in Mediengeographie: Theorie - Analyse - Diskussion.  It’s an amazing collection, with articles from Bruno Latour, Paul Virilio, Lev Manovich, Saskia Sassen, and many more.  Of course, for all of you who don’t speak German, only […]

Categories: placeofmedia · network · maps · web 2.0 · geography

I just got back from the O’Reilly Where 2.0 conference in Burlingame, CA this morning. As someone who attends mostly academic conferences, it was both refreshing and disturbing to spend two days with this group. Refreshing because the group was composed mostly of developers, interested in figuring out how to transform the emerging […]

Categories: placeofmedia · net-locality · mediated urbanism · mobility · cities · web 2.0 · geography

For the last several months, I’ve primarily been working on revising my book manuscript. And I finally feel as though the introduction is reflective of the text. I’m posting the first few pages here to solicit thoughts or commentary.

On the corner of 34th Street and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, there are dozens of […]

Categories: placeofmedia · mediated urbanism · cities · geography

This recent article in Wired lays out the fascinating phenomenon of the information industry. It describes the massive new server farms cropping up in Oregon to house the petabytes of information for Google (and others) to keep up with the task of copying the rapidly expanding Internet. The article points out that […]

Categories: placeofmedia · network · cities · geography

Over the last few days, I’ve refined my thoughts on the concept of network locality. Up until this time, I’ve been thinking about how geographical space functions within the connectivity enabled by digital networks. But as I pursued this idea, I began to realize that starting from geography was not the most productive […]

Categories: placeofmedia · net-locality · mediated urbanism · mobility · place · geography

I’m editing a special issue of the journal Space and Culture on the “Geography of Virtual Worlds.” Here’s a draft of the introduction. It’s still in process, but it might give some sense of what I think will be a very interesting issue.
This evening I am home in front of the fireplace, chatting […]

Categories: placeofmedia · SecondLife · games · hub2 · article ideas · second life · geography