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McQuire, Scott. Geomedia: Networked Cities and the Future of Public Space. Malden, MA: Polity, 2016. 213 p. ISBN 978-0-7456-6075-1
In Geomedia: Networked Cities and the Future of Public Space, McQuire explores how the growth and near ubiquity of spatially linked technologies are (and have the potential to) transform the way public spaces are used and understood. More narrowly, as he puts it near the end of the book, he seeks to establish "that the intersection between geomedia and urban public space today offers a strategic site for [the] political task of reimagining communication, being-with-others, and practices of inhabitation" (p. 165). The core of this work is composed of three chapters that each illustrate the intersection between geomedia and urban public space in a specific context, which are bookended by more sweeping theoretical chapters that draw together the examples into a broader narrative.
The first illustration focuses on the project of digitally mapping the city, not from a traditional lookingdown cartographic perspective, but from a more intimate and human looking-around perspective exemplified by Google's Street View. To the extent that Google aims to map the entire world from a street-level perspective, McQuire uses this...