Writing - Media & Mediation

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Pervasive Media & Restoration of Mediation

Digital screens have become a pervasive presence in our lives. We carry them in our pockets, are guided through cities by those installed to help us navigate transportation services, and often begin and end our day receiving news and entertainment. During the work day, they have become one of the primary points of engagement. This is true not only in professional and service oriented occupations, but manufacturing, logistics, construction, and maintenance. In the context of those engaged in the design, construction, and maintenance of the built environment, the screen has become the primary surface via which design occurs, contractors are increasingly constructing buildings with a paperless job-site, augmented reality on mobile tablets is being used to validate accuracy of construction, and tablets have become pervasive in operating and maintaining buildings once they are complete. At the same time, screens are integrated into the finished product to support the end users. On one hand, there are no significant challenges for the designer to address as this occurs. Architects have no trouble integrating screens, building management systems, and new generations of IoT products. Product designers have thrived in the context of a consumer culture that has enhanced the demand for their work. BIM, 5D design and planning, and other digital technologies have been embraced by many of the most cutting edge architects as tools that can help them to streamline the design process and deliver more accurate drawings and finished building products that ultimately save their clients time and money. In doing so, these designers see an easy symbiotic relationship between their work and the growing range of apps and technologies serving the built environment, energy, water, waste, and mobility sectors. They see little conflict in venture-backed tech companies creating products that will deeply influence the urban form, how we live, and how we relate to our built environment.

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Mediated Urbanism

The purpose of this essay is to explore a series of strategies for urban redevelopment under the term “Mediated Urbanism.” The audience is both specific and broad. In a narrow sense, the audience is those who are concerned with the future of the American City and who are committed to taking concrete steps towards its improvement. These people are both those with the training to do so as well as those who control sufficient capital to directly invest in the work required to transform the city and create enhanced ecological sustainability, new initiatives driving economic growth, and a strong local culture organized around art, common space, and shared interest in maintaining a productive city. Those who want to invest in the future of the city and those with the capital to do so, however, are dispersed across a wide range of disciplines and geographies. Very often, the boundaries that result lead to obstacles to collaboration. As a result, new approaches that, in particular, require collaboration across boundaries often have a limited chance of occurring. Mediated Urbanism is a means of addressing this broad group and pulling them together around a shared ambition through the straightforward notion of collaborating on using “media” to transform the urban environment.

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