New Urban Aesthetic

"From smartphone apps to smart cities, digital technologies are reconfiguring urban space and altering our everyday experiences in the city. The New Urban Aesthetic brings an important new angle to our understanding of digital technology in the urban domain - examining how our experiences are altered through interaction with digital devices and screens, and exploring how the visual, sensory, temporal and spatial aesthetics of everyday urban life are changing as a result of the digital. Introducing the concept of the urban aesthetic, as a term which focuses on the bodily experiencing of urban space, the book presents three major new case studies - Milton Keynes, UK; Doha, Qatar; and Barcelona, Spain - which each observe how specific digital technologies are changing the urban aesthetic . We see how bodies are modified through a changing 'smart' environment; how CGI-led urban design is reconfiguring the streets; and explore the impact of social media in both civic participation and in gentrification. Introducing a new vocabulary to understand the ways in which the digital mediates the making and experience of urban space, The New Urban Aesthetic is essential reading for anyone interested in the power of digital culture and technology to transform urban spaces and communities around the world."--