Urban risk and crisis communication in post-human cities: A media ecology approach

Abstract

Planning and policy leaders often rely on technical expertise and technological advancement to manage urban crises, privileging smart city developments that iron out the complex and contradictory textures of urban experience. Smart cities, as post-human cities, often abstract risk and crisis phenomena from the everyday contexts of communication in which they emerge and inform the historically situated identities of urban stakeholders. Smart city environments are, therefore, biased against the complexities and contradictions of urban media ecologies that create mosaics of experience and more dynamic responses to risk and crisis phenomena. It is found herein that the mosaic identities of urban stakeholders emerge in networks of communication and commerce that contrast the efficiencies of smart city systems and cultivate dialogically complex relations among publics dwelling in urban contexts.