Steel and Ink

“Steel and Ink: The Printed City,” traces how, for over half a millennium, the printed page has informed the way we’ve imagined, designed, constructed, inhabited, administered, and navigated our cities. My exploration ranges from architectural treatises, maps, and pattern books to newspapers, contemporary niche periodicals, and new urban spaces for public reading.

Waves and Wires

“Waves and Wires: Cities of Electric Sound,” describes how, since the mid-19th century, our urban atmospheres have been charged with electric and electromagnetic telecommunications: telegraph and telephone wires and radio waves. I explain how these technologies have shaped, and continue to shape, urban form, and make themselves heard in the urban environment.

Conclusion

“Coding Urban Pasts and Futures,” uses the recent reconstruction of Palmyra’s destroyed Arch of Triumph as a case study to explore many themes that resonate throughout the book: the entangling of materialities, temporalities, and geographies; the cultural politics of media archaeology and archaeology-proper; and the potential implications of these past-oriented fields of exploration for our urban-media futures.

Speaking Stones

“Speaking Stones: Voicing the City,” considers how the city itself functions as a sounding board, resonance chamber, and transmission medium for vocality: public address, interpersonal communication, and vocal expressions of affect. We consider ancient urban acoustics and the ongoing evolution of spatio-sonic politics related to such issues as the Muslim call to prayer and political protest.

Of Mud, Media, and the Metropolis

“Of Mud, Media, and the Metropolis…,” examines the entwined histories of brick-making, mark-making, and city-building. I examine how urban surfaces have served as substrates for writing, from ancient epigraphy to contemporary graffiti; how written documents have been critical to our cities’ operations; and how our scripts’ formal properties are often reflected in urban form.