Archinect: Deep Mapping the Media City

Shannon Mattern's book argues cities have been “mediated, and intelligent, for millenia.”

Deep Mapping the Media City (Shannon Mattern)Amid the seemingly endless barrage of new writings about the imminent arrival of the technologically mediated “smart city,” a slim volume published by the University of Minnesota Press suggests that so-called intelligent urbanism might not be so new after all. In Deep Mapping the Media City, author Shannon Mattern, an associate professor at the School of Media Studies at the New School, argues cities have been “mediated, and intelligent, for millenia.” Rather than arbitrary ruptures, our cities have developed over time, as new infrastructural developments build off – or plug into – the infrastructure of the past.

Keep reading. Scroll to the end for a lecture by Mattern at the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities. 

Published in: Archinect
By: Nicholas Korody