How human meanings, practices and interactions produce and are produced by urban space is the focus of this timely and exciting addition to the study of urban communication. This book explores key intersections of discourse, materiality, technology, mobility, identity and inequality in acts of communication across urban and urbanizing contexts.

City leaders now confront a global competition for economic investment, and urban elites are casting about for strategies that promise to secure a share of this future of global economic growth. However, many of these strategies are largely symbolic in nature. City leaders, for example, compete for the Olympics so they can broadcast spectacular urban vistas to global television audiences. Officials pour public funds into tourist amenities to cultivate an image of vitality and renewal. But how are the local politics of urban redevelopment intertwined with the global politics of circulating vital urban images? Urban Communication brings together scholars from communication, cultural studies, and urban sociology to explore the symbolic dimensions of contemporary city-building, drawing on case studies from around the world.

Learn how to make data-driven research accessible to decision makers, policymakers, and the general public Many researchers, scholars, and analysts fail to develop communication strategies that work in today’s crowded landscape of content, research, and data. To be successful, modern researchersneed to share their insights with the wider audience that lies beyond academia. Elevate the Debate helps researchers of all types more effectively communicate their work in any number of areas, from traditional news outlets to the new media platforms of the digital age. After reading this book, you will be inspired and equipped to use traditional and digital media environments to your advantage. This real-world guide helps you present your data-driven research with greater clarity, coherence, and impact. An array of practical strategies and proven techniques enables you to make your research accessible to diverse audiences, form engaging narratives, and design and implement meaningful outreach plans. Each chapter examines a specific communications strategy, such as data visualization, presentation skills, social media, blog writing, and reporter interactions. Written by expert members of the Urban Institute’s Communication department, and edited by Jonathan Schwabish, a Senior Fellow at Urban, Elevate the Debate guides you on how to use the media environment to your advantage and make a difference through policy insights and policy solutions. This valuable book teaches you how to: Develop and apply data-driven and story-focused communication Use the “Pyramid Philosophy” of rooting accessible, engaging communications products in sophisticated research. Solve problems with your research by defining goals and recommending conclusions-based actions Identify the researchers, organizations, funders, influencers, and policymakers who are most important to your goals and precisely target their information needs Employ communication styles and strategies to get your work in the hands of people who can use it and act upon it. Elevate the Debate: A Multi-layered Approach to Communicating Your Research is a must-have resource for academic researches, policy researchers, and all analysts of data-driven research.

Examines how ICTs contribute to the development of city marketing strategies to enhance local socio-economic development. Covers topics such as city branding, export promotion, and industry marketing.

This book explores an emerging mode of urban life - a continuum of places, technologies and performances that meld disparate enclaves into a seemingly coherent whole. The author examines the growth of this phenomenon by looking at its origins in Parisian arcades and world's fairs to its manifestations in airports and shopping malls.

In a declaration of the ascendance of the American media industry, nineteenth-century press barons in New York City helped to invent the skyscraper, a quintessentially American icon of progress and aspiration. Early newspaper buildings in the country's media capital were designed to communicate both commercial and civic ideals, provide public space and prescribe discourse, and speak to class and mass in equal measure. This book illustrates how the media have continued to use the city as a space in which to inscribe and assert their power. With a unique focus on corporate headquarters as embodiments of the values of the press and as signposts for understanding media culture, Media Capital demonstrates the mutually supporting relationship between the media and urban space. Aurora Wallace considers how architecture contributed to the power of the press, the nature of the reading public, the commercialization of media, and corporate branding in the media industry. Tracing the rise and concentration of the media industry in New York City from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, Wallace analyzes physical and discursive space, as well as labor, technology, and aesthetics, to understand the entwined development of the mass media and late capitalism.

A sweeping history of Los Angeles told through the lens of the many marginalized groups—from hobos to taggers—that have used the city’s walls as a channel for communication Graffiti written in storm drain tunnels, on neighborhood walls, and under bridges tells an underground and, until now, untold history of Los Angeles. Drawing on extensive research within the city’s urban landscape, Susan A. Phillips traces the hidden language of marginalized groups over the past century—from the early twentieth-century markings of hobos, soldiers, and Japanese internees to the later inscriptions of surfers, cholos, and punks. Whether describing daredevil kids, bored workers, or clandestine lovers, Phillips profiles the experiences of people who remain underrepresented in conventional histories, revealing the powerful role of graffiti as a venue for cultural expression. Graffiti aficionados might be surprised to learn that the earliest documented graffiti bubble letters appear not in 1970s New York but in 1920s Los Angeles. Or that the negative letterforms first carved at the turn of the century are still spray painted on walls today. With discussions of characters like Leon Ray Livingston (a.k.a. “A-No. 1”), credited with consolidating the entire system of hobo communication in the 1910s, and Kathy Zuckerman, better known as the surf icon “Gidget,” this lavishly illustrated book tells stories of small moments that collectively build into broad statements about power, memory, landscape, and history itself.