Digital cities theme section editorial essay: approach digital cities from the communication perspective

Digital technologies are radically re-configuring cities over the world. As new forms of non-human intelligence, sensor networks and data/computing technologies emerge and update themselves, so are cities. The temporality and spatiality by which cities operate have changed profoundly. For the collective future of dwellers on the planet of cities, media scholars have responsibilities to add the communication perspective to current discussions about digital cities, in the academia or for the public.

Why the communication perspective is significant for digital cities? In his masterpiece, James Carey stated that “modern communications have drastically altered the ordinary terms of experience and consciousness, the ordinary structures of interest and feeling, the normal sense of being alive, of having a social relation.” In the digital era, these elements still constitute what a city is and how people relate to a city as their habitus. It is complex communications between heterogeneous things, humans and symbolic/historical stockpiles that make cities. Different modes of assembling the three, like technocratic, administrative or economic plans, may enact different potentials of digital technologies and create distinct forms of urbanity. Some of the plans result in alienation, exploitation and boredom as the most notorious symptoms of modernity. It is imperative that we add a communicative perspective to the spectrum, before any one plan becomes the default. As emerging technologies are still evolving, the communication perspective can present an antidote to efficiency or control-driven urban planning.

What is the communication perspective for urban studies? First, we underscore individual’s altered terms of experience and feelings from inhabiting digital cities. Changed notion of temporality and spatiality, opportunities for individuals to relate to public spaces, or re-shuffled sensory landscape for cities are some of the issues. The experiential aspect of communication creates new species of city-dwellers. New urban culture, aesthetics and politics ensue. Second, new urban processes that generate new modes of sharing and collaboration are examined. Digital technologies re-connect the historical with the contemporary, the afar with the near, the mediated with the immediate, and the natural with the artificial. These re-connections are transformative. They metamorphose processes of social interaction, urban governance, public culture, transportation and business transactions. Upgraded codes of urban civility surface as people learn how to co-exist and collaborate with human or non-human newcomers brought abruptly into their life by digital connections. Last but not least, we emphasize the generative nature of communication. To explicate, the communication perspective advocates for playful encounters between heterogeneous elements that generate space and places, aesthetic experience and networks of collaboration and support. Communication presupposes distance and differences. Distinguished from the administrative or economic viewpoints for urban planning, the communication perspective values sustained co-existence of heterogeneity, as well as symmetric and creative processes of relating them. A communicative city is a generative and fun place that help residents fight the monotony of everyday life.

With these thoughts in mind, this themed section on Digital Cities and Re-mediation of Global Civilization endeavors to call for the communication perspective in studies of digital cities. Scott McQuire’s essay argued that the smart city framework is inadequate, and suggested that we approach the design and operation of city’s digital infrastructure from a communication standpoint. Beyond engineering signal-to-noise ratios or modelling efficient transmission, McQuire called for a fundamentally social process that is constitutive of the individual and collective identities of humans as symbol-manipulating, story-telling, technological beings. Mikucki’s article treats media as human-machine and machine-machine communication to examine how Berlin and Warsaw’s city authorities implement the smart city solutions. The author claimed that networks, platforms and media infrastructure have been used to describe new processes of communication between city authorities, citizens and machines. Rosati et al.’s essay explores how the Disney fiasco and new Internet landscapes—built on the post-Bellum terrain Virginia’s Civil War—inform the current situation of server farming with data centers, which resulted in the U.S. north Virginia becoming the Internet capital of the world. The authors criticized digital landlords for controlling the conditions of democracy in the region, and called for the responsibility to grow capabilities for a freer and communicative life.

This special section leaves many issues untouched. Yet, the message we wish to convey is clear. Echoing the journal’s title, we hope to study cities from the media and communication vantage point. The operation of digital media systems not only creates new modes of urbanity, but also re-connects cities globally. New problematics and new methodologies are necessary to understand or explain what is happening. This special section hopes to stimulate and start dialogues about endeavors in that direction.