Mediapolis
Popular Culture and the City.

Games like America's Army, World of Warcraft and Grand Theft Auto and the music of Snoop 'Doggy' Dogg, Dizzee Rascal and Juan Atkins are fuelling the engines of globalization. As a result, popular culture is taking an ever firmer grip on our living environment and on our lives. In Mediapolis the authors sound out an urban environment pulsing to the rhythm of the popular media. They introduce a pop philosophy whose concepts include the Urban Container, 'scenius', sonic communities and nodal urbanity. Here technological, political, cultural, economic and even military developments meet head-on. Mediapolis makes clear what urban pop culture is and how it has influenced our notion of city. The words of the Italian Futurist Antonio Sant'Elia are as true today as in 1914: 'Every generation must build its own city'.

Part I / Virtual Urbanism
The first part of Mediapolis concentrates on how virtual reality bulges out into the physical reality. The battle of heavily armed soldiers against foreign troops, drug criminals or armed terrorists is not just a popular topic for gamers. Also the US Army is involved in multiplayer and joystick technologies. With these technologies the US Army is creating environments in which the difference between a virtual and real reality is rapidly diminishing. War videogames train their players how to function in a military ‘city-scape’ in which the boundaries of interior spaces are temporary and flexible. These games announce the arrival of a regime of ‘rules and punishments’ that works on the basis of point systems and high-scores.  In relation to this development the arrival of a new collective space is shown, the Urban Container. The Urban Container appears on the moment that architecture and human sciences are closing a ‘new alliance’ to shape our life. It combines separate physical shells into an entity in which a variety of functions like shopping, living, working, education and healthcare is located. Virtual Urbanism ends with the question if resistance can still take place in the physical streets.

Keywords: The military entertainment complex; ‘this is not a videogame’; the intrusion of the virtual; America’s Army; Full Spectrum Warrior; consequences of a controlled society; state of exception; rules of engagement; new penalties; urban warfare; Urban Container; company town - compound - E-city; Le Corbusier; Hikikomori; Reclaim the Streets; Under Ash; The Stone Throwers; protocols; video surveillance.

Part II / Sonic Urbanism
The second part of Mediapolis puts down sonic thinking as a way of approaching the city. As a result in the appreciation of the city sound will be more important than vision. This part elaborates on the idea of the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk that humans are builders of spheres. The intermedial spheres of the Urban youth culture lead to a form of urbanity in which the city is no longer reducible to a physical environment. Without losing its credibility, the city emerges between the sunglasses, cars, lingerie, jewellery and clothes of the stars, who are dressed in their finest ghetto chic. In that process the sampling technique plays an important role in the construction of spaces with architectonic qualities without any building being involved. Putting down sound as a central approach allows us to observe the emergence of a social and intermedial space that is relatively independent of physical space. Is the city hence moving into a phase where urbanity no longer needs any geographical specificity or compelling architecture? To fully understand the urbanization process, we have no choice but to view these spatialities in a unified context.

Keywords: Snoop ‘Doggy’ Dogg; Simmons’ Empire; Archigram; Urban; cut & paste; Afrofuturism; sound society; Jes Grew; Grime; sampladelica; Detroit; a spaceless & timebound city; the problem of authenticity; ‘this sound is illegal’; sonic DNA; seeing sound; Tech-noh Cit-ehh;

Part III / Nodal Urbanism
The third part of Mediapolis tells about different aspects of a mediated form of urbanity that we call nodal urbanism. It first proposes a democratisation of the design process. By analysing developments in videogames and to compare them to the practice of architecture it will be concluded that creativity will get another point of gravity. This is illustrated by Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing computer games and Mods (modified games). The developers of these games do not behave any longer as unapproachable designers but as starters of initiatives that mobilise the knowledge of future gamers for the design of virtual environments. Based on these developments we introduce the notion of the ‘scenius’. Scenius merges the words ‘scene’ and ‘genius’. It combines the open dynamics of the scene with the denial of the individual genius. In the physical space we describe a nodal urbanism that consists of four processes that influence each other continuously: virtuality, interactivity, connectivity and multimediality. We no longer ‘lean back’; the current city requires us to ‘lean forward’ over our keyboards, remote controls, mobile phones and Ipods.

Keywords: MMORPG’s; Mods; Doom; scenius; ‘it’s a Wiki’d World’; SimCity; multitude; Star War Galaxies, space of flows; the problem of metaphors; John Barlow; CyberCity; safe zones; post paranoia; William Burroughs.