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.

An architect's view of the new metropolitan consciousness and the suburban metropolis as the future frontier.

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.

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.

Hurricane Katrina was a stunning example of complete civic breakdown. Beginning on August 29, 2005, the world watched in horror as—despite all the warnings and studies—every system that might have protected New Orleans failed. Levees and canals buckled, pouring more than 100 billion gallons of floodwater into the city. Botched communications crippled rescue operations. Buses that might have evacuated thousands never came. Hospitals lost power, and patients lay suffering in darkness and stifling heat. At least 1,400 Louisianans died in Hurricane Katrina, more than half of them from New Orleans, and hundreds of thousands more were displaced, many still wondering if they will ever be able to return. How could all of this have happened in twenty-first-century America? And could it all happen again? To answer these questions, the Center for Public Integrity commissioned seven seasoned journalists to travel to New Orleans and investigate the storm’s aftermath. In City Adrift: New Orleans Before and After Katrina, they present their findings. The stellar roster of contributors includes Pulitzer Prize-winner John McQuaid, whose earlier work predicted the failure of the levees and the impending disaster; longtime Boston Globe newsman Curtis Wilkie, a French Quarter resident for nearly fifteen years; and Katy Reckdahl, an award-winning freelance journalist who gave birth to her son in a New Orleans hospital the day before Katrina hit. They and the rest of the investigative team interviewed homeowners and health officials, first responders and politicians, and evacuees and other ordinary citizens to explore the storm from numerous angles, including health care, social services, housing and insurance, and emergency preparedness. They also identify the political, social, geographical, and technological factors that compounded the tragedy. Comprehensive and balanced, City Adrift provides not only an assessment of what went wrong in the Big Easy during and following Hurricane Katrina, but also, more importantly, a road map of what must be done to ensure that such a devastating tragedy is never repeated.

A chilling postapocalyptic novel of hope, despair, art, and war from the Nebula and Philip K. Dick Award–winning author of The Falling Woman. A plague wiped out most of the population, but some have been spared. In San Francisco, those who were left—painters, writers, dreamers—began rebuilding the city in their image: a society based on art, community, and peace. But not everyone has the same pacifist ideals. When a mysterious young woman, Jax, appears in San Francisco, she brings disturbing news. There’s a power-hungry man, a general, moving across California, annexing cities and rebuilding his own version of America, willing to destroy anyone who stands in his way. His sights are set on the Golden Gate Bridge, and his army will soon descend, bringing guns, determination, and violence. If Jax and her allies are to survive, they’ll have to defend themselves with nothing more than their creativity—and the soul of a city that refuses to be dominated. Drawing comparisons to the mind-bending work of Gabriel García Márquez, this lush and thought-provoking dystopian novel is an examination of human spirit, for better or worse, and a magical journey into what it means to survive.

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