Planners becoming visualizers in the mediatized world: An Actor Network Analysis of Cairo’s Street billboards.

Abstract

<p>In many mega cities, billboards dominate the country’s urban landscape and visual culture. Billboards here are not only a final product but are embedded in a network that employs agency in creating the presented visuality, both the physical and imaginary space. In Cairo, real estate advertisements dominate Cairo’s billboards affecting and representing its urban-visual experience.</p><p>In fact, it is widely agreed that visualizations play a vital role in designing and planning cities; however, to what extent they impact planning practice, and the planners who create them is still under-researched. In this article, I investigate Cairo as a case study to understand how the visualizations produced by planners restructure the planning profession.</p><p>This research uses an assemblage ontology and Actor-Network-Theory (ANT). I start from analyzing the real estate images (3-D renderings) communicated in Cairo’s billboards and then go backward to the planning offices and planners who create those images and interview them. A dataset of 209 billboards is selected for this investigation.</p><p>The research shows how urban planners become visualizers using media and focusing on producing visualizations (instead of having specific planning values). Hence, the different media assemblages that are used/employed by different actors/actor groups – and that through the specific assemblages of media, one can reflect on (1) planning practice – how planning is done, (2) the kind of city planners see/plan and (3) the kind of public sphere they co-produce/are part of. </p>