City Scenes: Toronto Cinema Spaces

Film venues and screening spaces are among my favorite fixtures of the urban mediascape. For me, the crown jewels of Parisian cultural superiority are not the sidewalk cafe tables but rather the abundant cinemas (and also the multi-story bookshops that seem to be all around). Toronto also has a strong film culture and a number … Continue reading City Scenes: Toronto Cinema Spaces

2021 Jane Jacobs Urban Communication Book Award

Nominations are currently being accepted for the 2021 Jane Jacobs Urban Communication Book Award. More information is available at the Urban Communication Foundation website, and you can read the full call below: The annual Jane Jacobs Urban Communication Book Award recognizes an outstanding book, published in English, which exhibits excellence in addressing issues of urban … Continue reading 2021 Jane Jacobs Urban Communication Book Award

The Fair City part 3: Aesthetic Order & Criminal Justice

The following considers how varying aesthetic valuations of urban order and disorder have influenced U.S. urban policy. The history I trace here focuses on one salient case: the “broken windows” perspective of urban disorder and its implementation through policing practices by the New York City Police Department. Broken windows theory began as an academic discourse … Continue reading The Fair City part 3: Aesthetic Order & Criminal Justice

The Fair City part 2: Aesthetics of Urban Order and Disorder

Urban agglomerations have taken many forms and been understood in a variety of ways, but density and difference have long been understood as definitive aspects of cities. From the earliest urban settlements and historical cities, the urban condition has been contrasted with rural settlements as sites of man-made chaos opposed to natural harmony. In his … Continue reading The Fair City part 2: Aesthetics of Urban Order and Disorder

The Toronto School: Then, Now, Next conference

Five years ago I wrote a paper about an ongoing revival of interest in Marshall McLuhan and a recovery of his media theory following decades of mainstream academic misunderstanding and  dismissal of his work. The paper was well-received and eventually published in the Media Ecology Association journal. In the time since I went on to … Continue reading The Toronto School: Then, Now, Next conference