Scielo RSS http://scielo.pt/rss.php?pid=1646-595420150004&lang=en vol. 9 num. ESPECIAL lang. en http://scielo.pt/img/en/fbpelogp.gif http://scielo.pt http://scielo.pt/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1646-59542015000400001&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en This introductory review article develops an analytic-conceptual distinction between spectacular, ordinary and contested facets of the present-day digitized urban condition. We reject a scholarly techno-optimism versus techno-pessimism dichotomy and argue that this triadic conceptualization can pave the way for a better understanding of the multiple, often contradictory and unpredictable implications of the fast-proceeding digitalization on cities and people who inhabit them. First, we discuss the intensified spectacularization from the perspective of labeling of cities as technologically advanced “smart” spaces and endeavors to enhance the attractiveness and ICT-glamour of urban public spaces. Next, we highlight two acute “ordinary sides” of living in digitally-mediated cities: the contributions of code-based software and digital media infrastructures to the routinized practices of urban life, and the escalation of the perceived standards of what constitutes “the ordinary” in the face of rapid technological change. Thirdly, we shed light on attempts at re-igniting street-level political agency, and the creation of outside-the-mainstream public spheres, via the aid of digital technology. In the end of the article, we consider how variable spectacular, ordinary and contested facets of the media city are co-present in the following articles of this Special Issue. http://scielo.pt/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1646-59542015000400002&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en In March 2014, Swedish news agencies received an anonymous handwritten letter stating that ‘Banksy' - currently probably the world's most famous street artist - would hold his first “official unofficial exhibit in Sweden”. The validity of this press release was heavily debated throughout the week in Swedish media. Would this mythical street artist whose real name no one knows make an appearance in Stockholm? Could it be a PR stunt and if it were, would it be worth seeing anyway? On Sunday 23 March 8000 people gathered to find out. Using discourse analysis, this article explores #banksyinstockholm as an urban moment of artistic and spatial improvisation in relation to ideas on spatial subversion, paradoxical space, and aesthetic cosmopolitanism. The moment centers around three main subjectivities - the Hipster, the Doubters and ‘Banksy', which all become discursive creators/creations of the event through simultaneous presences on the Internet and on-site. The art space becomes a temporal strategy, which holds the potential of displacing and resisting the hegemonic makings of urban space. Furthermore, the exploration points to how a discursive construction of a mediated city event attaches and detaches subjects to and from specific places, performances and symbolisms and how notions of place, performance, dialogue and subjects are (re)negotiated in that process. http://scielo.pt/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1646-59542015000400003&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en This research article examines the intersection of two current topics: the ongoing flexibilisation of creative work on the one hand, and the emergence of urban temporary working landscapes on the other. Their interrelatedness is inspected through a case study of one particular creative hub, the former Volkskrant building in Amsterdam, and through analysing its transformation into a “creative' hotel. Based on intensive qualitative fieldwork in 2012 and 2013, we argue that the importance of such temporary hubs lies beyond the fact that these places provide professionals in the creative industries with desk space. By mobilising the concept of engagement, we draw parallels between the ways in which creative urban professionals shape the physical spaces they use, and the ways digital media users appropriate virtual spaces. We argue that an understanding of the changing practices of creative workers might benefit from a revisiting of the concepts “loose space' and “Thirdspace', as these notions help challenge the false dichotomy between “real' and “imagined' space. We believe that this continuous re-imagining and repurposing of space while working in it, together with the possibility of actual, physical modification as afforded by the particular countercultural heritage of Amsterdam, reveals the creative potentialities of these flexible work practices. http://scielo.pt/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1646-59542015000400004&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en The category mobile media architecture, mobile design between “media” and “architecture” consists of urban interfaces: digital screens used in urban public space, often in conjunction with location-based and/or mobile media technologies. These interfaces intervene temporarily, yet fundamentally, in the city's built environment. I consider the spatiotemporal logic of two installations that challenge more traditional ideas of spatial design and architecture as fixed, stable, and permanent: the selfie pillar as example of (temporary) urban advertising and narrowcasting, and the art project The Bridge, designed for a traveling screen. These very different examples of urban screens both construct temporary and mobile architectures for spatial extension and connectivity. In so doing they demonstrate an intersection of architectural and cartographic logic. This twin logic is inherent in the intersection of spatial design (architecture) and mobile and location-based technologies that offer tools for spatial orientation (cartography). Between infrastructure, interface and intervention, these forms of mobile media architecture exemplify our current visual regime of navigation. http://scielo.pt/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1646-59542015000400005&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en This article examines the dreams and wishes of young-adult city residents regarding future ICT development, comparing its findings with two visions of ICT development offered by large-scale urban agendas, namely ‘smart cities' and ‘ubiquitous computing.' The article explores how the visions of ordinary city inhabitants contest or resonate with grand visions of urban future, and investigates alternative agendas that might be built upon those visions. The research site, the city of Oulu in northern Finland, offers a concrete example of a ‘future city' in which many ideas relating to ‘smart' and ‘ubiquitous' urban space have been put into practice. The results indicate there is an urgent need to address questions pertaining to control, agency, and resistance in designing further technology for cities and to employ design practices that enable the creation and implementation of bottom-up visions. http://scielo.pt/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1646-59542015000400006&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en The increasing public interest in the urban past has recently gained expression in a new genre of photography which consists of an old photograph superimposed over a new one in such a way as to capture exactly the same physical setting at a later point in time. The trend is called rephotography and it finds its roots in geographical surveys designed to show changes in an environment. With easy access to image editing software rephotography enjoys great popularity on a wide array of Internet sites. It has the capacity to invest the most mundane locations with a ghostly aura as we recognize corresponding objects in the new photo as evidence of the event shown in the old photo. My goal in this article is twofold. First, I will put forward the notion of indexicality as a performance, rather than merely an ontological quality, to account for these images' appeal as traces of the past, despite their obvious use of digital manipulation. Second, through two case studies of war-torn cities, Jo Teeuwisse's rephotography of Cherbourg and Peter Macdiarmid's project on Arras, I will examine techniques of superimposition and the affective engagements with the urban past that they generate. Finally, I will explore rephotography's close kinship with the StreetMuseum, an augmented reality application, which matches historic photographs of London with present-day locations providing an embodied experience of the temporal layers of the city. http://scielo.pt/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1646-59542015000400007&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en Through an analysis of one of North America's earliest Carnegie libraries, located in Vancouver, the aim of this article is to question increasingly antiquated discourses of the urban public library as a static cultural institution in order to ascertain how contemporary urban libraries are both representative and generative media institutions that are increasingly central to marginalized urban communities. Marginalized communities, such as those living in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, are often overlooked as contributing to the cultural fabric of a city. The Carnegie Library is a site in which precarious, often pre-defined publics, whose members already suffer from established forms of discrimination and exclusion, come together to form a new iteration of the scene (Straw, 2004). I will argue that marginalization, when integrated into a semi-public space and institution such as the Carnegie Community Centre, creates a generative scene that holds the potential of fostering nascent forms of both cultural and political association and education amongst marginalized groups themselves. As a result, the contemporary urban public library emerges as a responsive medium of communication in its own right that is shaped by its siting across distinct urban environments. http://scielo.pt/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1646-59542015000400008&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en It is a paradox that in spite of growth of major cities due to migration and enormously increasing spatial-economic pressure, a large number of vacant and neglected properties can be found in German metropolitan areas. Urban movements are increasingly protesting against this development and call for an opening and a non-commercial use of these properties. This article broaches the issue and the meaning of digitized urban movements in regaining control of urban development processes by focusing on the opening and the usage of vacancies. More precisely, it deals with collective critical online mapping of vacancies. Urban movements use new media technologies like crowdsourcing platforms to promote counter-publicity and alternative views. Building on a case study of the German online mapping platform Leerstandsmelder.de and the urban collective Schnittstelle5 of the city of Mainz, I assess to what extent urban movements may take advantage of the new digital possibilities to tackle the challenge of vacancies. The article examines how urban movements use geoweb and geo-referenced crowdsourcing services, and considers how such strategies may change both the acquisition and the usage of urban space. http://scielo.pt/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1646-59542015000400009&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en How to study the youth in the media city, where the physical and the digital lives of young people often intertwine and overlap? What kinds of spatial entitlements and forms of control young people experience in a media city? How to grasp those issues in fieldwork, in a condition in which, ‘the street', is constructed as a conceptual and empirical locus for ethnographic research. This article attempts to reflect upon these questions by providing some theoretical and empirical reflections based on media and street ethnographic fieldwork among youth in two contemporary media cities of Helsinki and London. The article draws its inspiration from the scholarly crossroads of sociology, youth studies, urban studies and media studies, and applies the concept of relationality to that framework. We examine aspects of relationality (among and between people, spaces and the media), which researchers confront when studying young people's lives in the media city ethnographically. In order to understand the complex meanings that the street acquires when approached from the perspective of the youth in the media city, the issues related to the boundaries, (in)visibility and control connected with the idea of relationality are discussed in more detail. Our reflections are based on the project titled Youth Street Politics in the Media Age.1 http://scielo.pt/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1646-59542015000400010&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en How to study the youth in the media city, where the physical and the digital lives of young people often intertwine and overlap? What kinds of spatial entitlements and forms of control young people experience in a media city? How to grasp those issues in fieldwork, in a condition in which, ‘the street', is constructed as a conceptual and empirical locus for ethnographic research. This article attempts to reflect upon these questions by providing some theoretical and empirical reflections based on media and street ethnographic fieldwork among youth in two contemporary media cities of Helsinki and London. The article draws its inspiration from the scholarly crossroads of sociology, youth studies, urban studies and media studies, and applies the concept of relationality to that framework. We examine aspects of relationality (among and between people, spaces and the media), which researchers confront when studying young people's lives in the media city ethnographically. In order to understand the complex meanings that the street acquires when approached from the perspective of the youth in the media city, the issues related to the boundaries, (in)visibility and control connected with the idea of relationality are discussed in more detail. Our reflections are based on the project titled Youth Street Politics in the Media Age.1