Book Review: Shannon Mattern's "Deep Mapping the Media City"

2015-06-13T10:56:00-04:00

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.

Mattern takes a broad look at contemporary urban discourses, and compellingly advocates for an “urban media archaeology,” a “materialist, multisensory approach to exploring the deep material history” of our cities. She makes clear that her invocation of archaeology shouldn’t be read as part of the proliferation of the Foucauldian genealogical methodology en vogue in academia...

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Book Review: Shannon Mattern's "Deep Mapping the Media City"