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The Making of an Asian City
https://cis-india.org/research/grants/the-promise-of-invisibility-technology-and-the-city/finalpaper
<b>Nishant Shah attended the conference on 'Pluralism in Asia: Asserting Transnational Identities, Politics, and Perspectives' organised by the Asia Scholarship Foundation, in Bangkok, where he presented the final paper based on his work in Shanghai. The paper, titled 'The Making of an Asian City', consolidates the different case studies and stories collected in this blog, in order to make a larger analyses about questions of cultural production, political interventions and the invisible processes that are a part of the IT Cities. </b>
<p></p>
<p align="center" style="text-align: center;"> <strong>The
Promise of Invisibility: The Making of an Asian IT City</strong></p>
<p><strong>Abstract:</strong>
This paper understands that in emerging Asian contexts, the proliferation and adoption
of Internet technologies leads to two distinct changes in the material
(re)construction of the city:</p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst">1. <em>Built Form of the City:</em>
The physical and material aspects of the city are restructured, redesigned and
realigned to house the infrastructure of Internet Technology economies. </p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast">2. <em>Governance and Administration</em>:
The technologies of governance (and also, the governance of technologies) that reconfigure
the city for better control, regulation and containment of the subjects of the
state.</p>
<p>These
changes are articulated and understood, in contemporary scholarship and discourse,
through the tropes of Access and Transparency, which propose Technology as
neutral. These studies also locate technology as outside of the changing
socio-political transformations that the city undergoes in its attempt to
emerge as an IT City. The framework, by contextualising technology differently
– in larger narratives of continuity and disruption – opens up a dialogue
between cybercultures and social sciences to look at conditions of change It
also shows how the It demonstrates how such an approach to technology studies
enables new and nuanced forms of social sciences inquiry into processes like
Dislocation and Migration, which have never addressed the technology question
as central to the phenomena.</p>
<p><strong>Context</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The 21<sup>st</sup> Century has seen accelerated
urbanisation and spatial restructuration of cities in emerging information
societies around the world. These cities are created as global hubs that shall
not only house the Information and Communication Technology (ICT)
infrastructure, but also embody the aesthetics, politics, practices and
lifestyles that the global cultural revolutions are bringing in. The
technologies are significantly involved in the production of the dominant, the
hegemonic and the coercive, all under the rubric of economic growth and development,
and have affected domains of life, labour and language (Foucault,1998) in
different contexts. It is easy to trace the ways in which lifestyle, cultural
expression (Bagga, 2005), texture of social interaction and mobilisation, and
political and administrative reorganisation (Roy, 2005) have changed in
emerging contexts like India and China.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The efforts at creating
‘global countries’ (Kalam, 2004) that can harness the powers of ICT, have lead
to three distinct forms of changes. These changes can be seen in the built form
of the city, in structures of governance and administration, and in attitudes
and Imagination of technologies as they emerge in popular discourse and
cultural production. Each of these changes is articulated and explained through
the tropes of Transparency and Access. The paper has a specific interest in
looking at sites of dislocation and migration, to illustrate the arguments it
seeks to make. The paper relies on secondary and tertiary literature (often in
translation), unstructured interviews and participant observation to make an
argument about how the aesthetics, mechanics and political <a name="_ednref1" href="#_edn1"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[i]</span></span></a>
imaginaries of technology are a part of the physically changing and
transforming IT cities in Asia. In order to make the argument, however, a brief
context that explains the material signification of these three kinds of
changes, is necessary to be explicated.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong><em>Beyond the Blogosphere</em></strong></p>
<p class="MsoBodyTextIndent">There has been an equal amount of optimism and
scepticism when it comes to talking about the new public spheres that emerge
with the Internet. Clubbed under the short-hand ‘Blogosphere’, both the
evangelists and the critics of the blogosphere, have explored the Habermassian
notion of the engaging public that is crafted with the emergence of new
technologies of literacy, expression and participation. In many ways, the
governance structures that have been discussed earlier, also endorse the
positions taken by these interlocutors. However, much of the discourse,
understands the blogosphere as contained in the digital domains. While a
cause-and-effect model is often posited, the chief interest and focus remains
on the new public, new voices and new spaces within the virtualities of the
World Wide Web. This paper challenges such narrow definitions of the public
sphere, and in fact, goes back to Habermass to locate technologies and public
spaces within a certain historical context. In fact, this paper proposes that
the increasing need for the faith in the blogosphere and the clamour that
surrounds it is symptomatic of how the physical and built public spaces, in
most Asian IT cities, is slowly diminishing.</p>
<p class="MsoBodyTextIndent">In Shanghai, it is the loss of a political public
space of socialist capital and industry that marks the beginning of this
disappearance. 20 years ago, the announcer on every passenger train entering
Shanghai would introduce the city as “the largest industrial city in China.”
When W. E. B. Du Bois, an African-American writer, visited Shanghai in 1959, he
was particularly invited to visit the balcony of Shanghai Mansion, which sits
at the mouth of the Suzhou River and was the tallest building of its time, to
catch a bird’s eye view of the new urban socialist landscape and the
innumerable factory chimneys that speared the sky (Zhang, 2002).<a name="_ednref2" href="#_edn2"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[ii]</span></span></a> Indeed,
an abundant number of factories, warehouses and dockyards cropped up in the
three decades after 1950, and, together with the existing industrial
constructions, made Shanghai a “new metropolis.” Some of them were clustered in
suburban areas, more were scattered in the city area. Some were even squeezed
into <em>Longtangs</em> (the narrow alleyways
of old Shanghai). The industrial constructions include not only factory
buildings but also workers’ residential buildings in factory-concentrated
areas. The workers’ residential buildings were targeted primarily at the senior
or skilled workers among the industrial population. Life in the residential
buildings became an extension of factory life since neighbours were most
probably co-workers in the same factory. It is precisely the great number of
old and new industrial constructions and the rhythmic life going on in them
that composed the socialist industrial space of Shanghai. Needless to say, it
was the fastest growing space in the forty years after 1949.</p>
<p class="MsoBodyTextIndent">However, nine out of ten such spaces have been wiped
out during the fifteen-year urban renewal project, which is perhaps embodied in
the restructuring of the Bund as a space of tourist attraction, and eventually
the building of the Pudong skyline that has now become the iconic face of the
city (Yatsko, 1996, pp 59).<a name="_ednref3" href="#_edn3"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[iii]</span></span></a>
Factories—let alone warehouses—within the Inner Ring Road have either closed
down or been removed. With the closing of the factories, the workers also have
no place to work anymore. Dr. Wang XiaoMing, in his essay on the changing
public space mentions how, once the factory he worked in “had its signboard
removed in 1997, the workers have no place to work anymore. The inhabitants of
Caoyang New Village have thrown away the signboard off the gate a long time ago
and could barely remember that the place was once called the “Workers New
Village.” Large factories located on the outskirts of the city are mostly shut
down and the places are as quiet as cemeteries” (forthcoming, 2010).</p>
<p class="MsoBodyTextIndent">As Americanised industrial parks sprout up in places
such as the Pudong District of Shanghai, and Kunshan and Suzhou to the north of
Shanghai, the socialist industrial space is shrinking rapidly both within and
without Shanghai. Another space that has significantly diminished is the public
political space. One of the most important requirements socialism places on
urban space is to be able to facilitate large-scale political rallies and
parades (Kewen 2006 and Liang 1959).<a name="_ednref4" href="#_edn4"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[iv]</span></span></a></p>
<p class="MsoBodyTextIndent">Therefore, apart from industrial constructions, the
most eye-catching constructions in Shanghai’s new urban constructions from the
1950s to the 1960s were squares and large meeting halls, which include the People’s
Square, the Sino-Russian Friendship Building, the Cultural Plaza, and so on.<a name="_ednref5" href="#_edn5"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[v]</span></span></a>
Moreover, government agencies of all levels and factories endeavoured to build
conference halls of various sizes for political meetings by transforming
theatre halls or building new ones. In the past, tens of thousands of people
have paraded down the People’s Square to pay tribute to the officials perched
high above on reviewing stands. People rallying in various meeting halls,
changing slogans to express joy, and echoing the instructions from the speakers
on stage, were frequent occurrences. During the Cultural Revolution, the Rebels
staged the final resistance here; in the late 1980s, fervent university
students had swarmed into People’s Square to turn it into a place of revelry (Feuchtwang,
2004).</p>
<p class="MsoBodyTextIndent">In the blink of an eye, these histories have faded
from the public memory and been completely erased from the city’s architectural
space. Sino-Russia Friendship Building is renamed Shanghai Exhibition Center,
which hosts a constant blur of Expos. After repeated segmentation, People’s
Square is now only a nominal square with a long and narrow driveway and most of
its space has been occupied by new buildings such as the majestic Shanghai
Grand Theatre, the Shanghai Museum, the sunken commercial street and a parking
lot. Cultural Plaza was first transformed into a large flower market which was
later torn down and pushed to a corner to make way for the new “Music Plaza.”
With mass meetings completely eradicated from the life of Shanghai’s residents,
the numerous assembly halls and meeting places of various sizes have naturally
been restructures for other purposes. People participate with zeal in large
assemblies such as concerts, performance competitions, and so on, which have nothing
to do with public politics. It is even possible to say that the audience’s
shrieks in the stadium symbolize the massive decrease of the public political
space in both architectural and spiritual sense (Tang, 2009, pp 327).</p>
<p class="MsoBodyTextIndent">Another cluster of spaces that have significantly
disappeared are the gossip centres concentrated in areas such as the mouth of
NongTang, Lao Hu Zhao <a name="_ednref6" href="#_edn6"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[vi]</span></span></a>,
variety store and lane. It is a cultural given that the Shanghainese like to
strike up a conversation with strangers and to engage in gossip; this is indeed
one of the city’s hallmarks. The Shanghainese can always spare time for gossip:
no matter how busy the atmosphere is, there are always some people who loiter
around with hands in pockets; even the working class who work from dawn to dusk
like to exchange a few words with their neighbours after work. It so happened
that the living space was very cramped for the Shanghainese after the 1950s.<a name="_ednref7" href="#_edn7"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[vii]</span></span></a> The
rich can idle away their time in places such as cinemas whereas the low-income
people can only manage to find a free space of leisure near their residences.
The first choice is the mouth of NongTang adjacent to the footpath, from which
all the comings and goings of residents and the traffics on the streets could
be perceived. There will always be a Lao Hu Zhao near the mouth of a big
NongTang, where you can sit for a whole afternoon and exchange hearsays with
neighbours coming for hot water over a cup of tea; or there is a family-run
variety store whose female boss is quite fond of trading rumours and gossip
with customers across the narrow counter. In times of local or national crises,
this is always the first place where the news is spread and gets distorted.</p>
<p class="MsoBodyTextIndent">Things have now changed. Lao Huo Zhaos are gone.
Variety stores are quickly replaced by different kinds of convenience stores
(Huang, 2004, pp 49-50). Although many similar or even smaller family-run
variety stores are opened at the newly-formed district bordering the city, a
stable communication space cannot form in these stores since the male or female
boss is mostly “non-native population”<a name="_ednref8" href="#_edn8"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[viii]</span></span></a>, who
not only is unable to blend in with the local residents but also may move away
at any time. Although being one of the hallmarks of old Shanghai houses, the
nongtangs have been pulled down in large numbers. Those narrow, winding streets
have been either diverted, or straightened and widened. Shabby houses on both
sides of the streets have disappeared. Also gone are the hustle and bustle, the
interfusion of public and private space, and street gossips, which have been
replaced by heavy traffic with exhaust gas and noise. With the increasingly
neat arrangement of construction space within the city, the influx of transient
population, residents increasingly accustomed to shutting doors to the world and
to their neighbours, the overwhelming clamour in the media, and the young
people’s addiction to internet and game bars, the space where rumours and
gossips are spread via mouths and pointing fingers is naturally contracted
(Yeung, 1996, pp. 78-84).</p>
<p class="MsoBodyTextIndent">These old spaces of early Shanghainese modernity are
quickly replaced by three new built forms. The first are the various
above-ground, underground, and overhead expressways. Intersecting and
intertwining together, they make the whole city look as if it were trapped in a
python’s nest. The second thing that comes to the mind is commercial space.<a name="_ednref9" href="#_edn9"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[ix]</span></span></a>
Shopping malls<a name="_ednref10" href="#_edn10"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[x]</span></span></a>
line both the sides of the streets in downtown Shanghai, whereas hypermarkets
cluster at the periphery of the city (Diao, 2006)<a name="_ednref11" href="#_edn11"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xi]</span></span></a>. With
the speedy expansion of space (Li, 2006)<a name="_ednref12" href="#_edn12"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xii]</span></span></a>, the
style of constructions are increasingly uniform: nearly all of them name
themselves “squares”; shopping malls are
lined with chain stores on every level; chain supermarkets create mazes of
different sizes with dense goods shelves; in office buildings, glass doors and
plastic boards partition the office into many honeycomb-like cubicles, making
the people working in them increasingly look like worker bees; the hospitality
industry is overwhelmed with chain hotels of similar facilities and styles,
even customers often forget which hotel they stay in last time (Fulong, 1999).
The accelerated standardization process in Shanghai’s space highlights a
tendency to obtain the standard outlook of the imagined “international
metropolis” and an urgency to erase the distinct features inherited from the
past.</p>
<p class="MsoBodyTextIndent">Thirdly, the office space of governments and state
monopolies expands in a unique sense: although the floor area has increased
significantly<a name="_ednref13" href="#_edn13"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xiii]</span></span></a>,
it is the upgrading and the move towards luxury that marks the change. Since
the early 1990s, luxurious office buildings with halls paved with marble floor,
central air conditioning system, shiny wood floors, CEO office suite with
separate bathroom, were built first by banks, then revenue departments,
telecommunication agencies, newspapers offices, television stations, courts,
and police stations of different levels, and at last governments of municipal,
district and even lower levels.<a name="_ednref14" href="#_edn14"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xiv]</span></span></a> Not
only the connotation of “work” has been enriched, but also other business
spaces outside the office have expanded with restaurants, coffee bars, official
reception hotels, training centers and vacation centers located in the office
buildings or on the outskirts of town or other cities (Leaf, 1997, pp. 156-159).
</p>
<p class="MsoBodyTextIndent">The changes in the built form of the new IT City that
has emerged, are particularly important because they signal the ways in which
certain kinds of populations are made redundant in the city as it grows
physically more hostile to their life in it. The erasure of histories, of
public spaces, of spaces of political negotiation is symptomatic of the new
ideologies, policies and dreams that Shanghai-Pudong embody. Most of the
studies that look at these changes, concentrate only on the physical and
material aspects of it, and ignore the aesthetics, politics, and changes that
Internet technologies are bringing in, not only in the imagination of what
constitutes a city, but also in the material and lived practices of the people
in it (Appadurai, 1990). Government policies that ignore technologies, come to
dead-ends in their intervention, as they fail to recognise the new geographies
and terrains that the technology users navigate through. Interventions by the
Development Sector or the Civil Society Movements often fail to recognise the
structures of governance as informed by internet technologies, thus
perpetrating the very evils that they fight against. Dislocation and Migration,
which are complex issues, get reduced to only geography and physical places –
leading to a simplified structure of rehabilitation, largely propelled by the
vocabulary of the market and the state. Remunerations, economic rights and
livelihood are the only questions addressed. In the process Community rights,
structures of communication and networking, relationships within families and
societies, ineffable ties and bonds that keep the communities coherent – these
affective categories which are dislocated and forced to migrate because of the
presence of technologies, fail to register either in the scholarship or in the
practices in these areas. <strong><u></u></strong></p>
<p class="MsoBodyTextIndent">This is where the blogosphere needs to be located – as
not merely producing a new space of engagement, but helping in recovering the
lost spaces of public participation and community communication. The blogosphere
is not merely the invention of a technology marked digital native or the
discovery of groups seeking alternative narratives. It is recognition of the
fact that the regular mainstream public discourse, interacts with the social
transformations and politics of our time and depend on the sustenance of public
spheres for the socio-cultural categories like communities, neighbourhoods,
public space, etc. to survive. The blogosphere, in the quickly changing,
hyper-real landscape of Shanghai-Pudong’s geography is the new variety store,
the new location for the Lao Hu Zhao and the space that the labyrinthine
networks of nongtangs are mapped on.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong><em>e-Governance and its discontents</em></strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The change in the
physical reorganisation of the city is not only a pragmatic decision. This disappearance of the public
space of gossip, information dissemination and distortion, of informal
conversations and deliberations tied in closely to the three levels of
government in Shanghai – district government, street office and alley office –
being able to increasingly control the leisure life of the Shanghainese through
administrative planning and organisation (Zhang, 2004). There is a clear link
between the government’s imagination of its own territory, the notion of the
citizen who is to occupy these spaces, and the material practices that happen
in these technology marked spaces (Feuchtwang, 2004). While it is an
acknowledged fact that the Chinese government does not follow the structures
and paradigms that a North-Western Democratic Liberal ideology that has
produced the category of Nation-State in most contemporary discourse, there are
still two specific forms of technology inflected governance structures which
China seems to share with other contexts which might be geo-politically different.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The e-Governance models,
which find resonances in most emerging contexts in the Global South, seem to
develop two simultaneous and often ironically related approaches towards
citizenship and administration, especially in the context of China. With its
already forked governance policies, which treat HongKong – its colonial success
story – differently from the rest of Mainland China (and the added complication
of Taiwan) the governance structures are marked by technology in significant
ways. These structures are suffused with irony, because of the tropes of
transparency and invisibility that they use to articulate their rationale and
processes.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The first is the
approach of Rural Development through ICT networks, positing an access based
model of participatory citizenship (Tarlo, 2003) and continuing the Development
rhetoric of uplift and reform of the deprived citizen. This particular kind of
governance structure re-imagines the beneficiary of state/government processes
as existing in a condition of invisibility, and outside of the folds of
technology. The particular emphasis on e-government, while it is located in the
urban settings, is actually intended for reaching the citizen in the remote
parts of the country, who does not have any engagement or direct interaction
with processes of governance. Despite China’s three tiered government
structure, the imagination of e-governance hold a strong currency because it
makes visible, the people, practices and communities which otherwise exist in
the subliminal and grey areas which were hitherto not in the focus of the
government. Fuelling the rhetoric of e-government is the premium on information
dissemination and transparent administration in order to enhance the domains of
life and labour in the rural parts of the country.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">This approach draws its
strength from the Development agenda of reform and uplift as it markedly
emphasises the distance between the ‘haves and the have-nots’. However, the
valourisation of transparency goes hand-in-glove with the production of the
invisible (but cognisable) citizen who needs to be reproduced within the
paradigms of technology. The peasant, who has been at the back-bone of China’s
socialist political ideology, under this new articulation of transparency,
becomes invisible – robbed of the historicity, the cultural iconoclasms and the
empowerment that such policies earlier provided. Instead, the peasant becomes a
worker who needs to be rehabilitated into the changing geographies of Pudong,
the new IT city that requires a worker equipped with new skills and lifestyles.
This approach draws its strength from the Developmental agenda of reform and
uplift as it markedly emphasises the distance between the ‘haves and the
have-nots’ (Jaswal, 2005) and offers ICT enabled development as the panacea for
the problems of unemployment, illiteracy, chronic poverty, etc. This approach is made manifest in the
establishment of Telecentre kiosks, rural BPOs, e-literacy schools and mobile
vans, setting up of mobile and internet technology centres, digitisation of the
state’s resources, digital access centres to important data-sets, initiation of
projects like ‘One Home One Computer’, the e-literacy campaigns, and the
building of special economic zones (SEZ) and IT Corridors under the aegis of
e-governance (Hawks, 2009).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The second approach is
invested in the massive restructuration of the urban spaces to create
infrastructure that attracts foreign investment and ICT enabled multinational
corporations. This approach uses the language of creating a S.M.A.R.T. (Smart,
Moral, Accountable, Responsive, Transparent) State, modelling the new spaces
and politics around the new models of capital modernity (Appadurai, 1996) like
Singapore, Shanghai, Tokyo and Taipei. This model is nuanced by a vocabulary of
‘global citizenship and globalised economy’ (Abbas, 1997), glorifying the new
economic opportunities, flows of foreign capital, enhancement of lifestyle, and
the promise of hypervisibility in the globalisation networks. The building up
of network-neighbourhoods (Doheny-Farina, 1996), spaces of incessant commercial
consumption, post modern digitalised aesthetics of living and housing,
(Mitchell, 1996) infrastructure for ICT augmented lifestyles, spaces for
sculpting hyperspatial bodies, and recreational zones that offer apolitical
aesthetics of living (Chua, 2000), are all a part of this restructuration.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Contemporary analyses
that deploy both these approaches are often contained within the language and
the universes created by these approaches. Studies on e-governance concentrate
on the processes of infrastructure development, the economic parameters of
efficient administration, questions of rights and transparency and impact
analyses of the public private partnership which is at the basis of most e-governance
projects in India. Urban restructuration has found critique from disciplines
that focus largely upon the promissory implementation of State policies, on the
imbalance in the urban eco-systems, the new patterns of migration in the city,
the cultural and class mobility that the new economies offer, and the emergence
of the new middle class that becomes the figurehead of the IT revolution
(Huang, 2005). Most studies look upon technology as incidental or instrumental;
a tool towards an end. The relationship between ICTs and the State, and the
kind of technosocial evolution they produce are generally zones of silence in
most discourse. Both these discourses produce a certain hyper-visual citizen
subject who is either the champion of the new Information societies or the
victim of the digital divide that has ensued.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">ICTs are often posited
as neutral and transparent because they allow us to look at these two kinds of
citizenships on the opposite end of the digital spectrum. It can be argued that
the divides of ICTs are transparent and hence it offers clearly defined spaces
of intervention and uplift. The development sector around the world has
accepted this as a given and hence, along with the Governments, they have also
been urging a blanket development of infrastructure of access to technology for
a particular section of the society, in an attempt to ‘cure’ certain long
standing problems. As in the case of India, China is also fuelled by this
transparency rhetoric, which allows for the production of the power-user versus
the un-networked and has pinned its hopes on the transformative powers of
Internet Technologies. With more than two decades of ICT development in the
country, and especially in spaces like Shanghai-Pudong, behind them, China
seems to be facing a moment of crisis. On the one hand is its promotion and
adoption of internet and digital technologies, which encourages younger users
entering in “schools, colleges, universities and workforces to transform the
economic conditions” (Heng, 2006). On the other hand is the imagination of
these IT forces as transgressive, uncontrollable and in need of constant
supervision in order to retain existing government-citizenship relationships
and power structures. In the middle of this crisis, is another factor that the
obvious suspects and users of technology, who are more under the radar, are not
the people who are deploying technologies for political negotiation and using
technology platforms for political mobilisation. Despite the efforts at
green-washing its technologies and the production of the infamous Great
Fire-wall of China, there has been a sustained use of internet technologies for
resistance and subversion.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The spaces for
subversion rises from the fact that with the making of the IT city, there has
been a complex phenomenon of dislocation and migration, as several communities
were made redundant in the logic of the IT City and were removed from the city.
Many people from these communities re-entered the city as the new IT workforce
after going through a ‘rehabilitation’ and ‘skill building’ to not only be a
part of the IT labour groups but also to support the IT industry in the
construction of the physical infrastructure. Moreover, there has been a steady
flow of anonymous ‘outsiders’ who have found homes in the older nontangs and
factories, and are in the subliminal zones of regulation. As the city is
re-formed to make these people invisible (Abbas, 1997), their leisure space and
time shrink and they find themselves increasingly forming the new prosumers of internet
in Shanghai. However, in the transparency discourse that unfolds, these
populations remain invisible and find spaces of resistance and political
negotiation that their invisible status provides them. The promise of
Invisibility that treats them as Wetware (the biological combination of a
network consisting of Software and Hardware), allows for hope in the otherwise
diminishing spaces of political articulation in a growing authoritarian regime
in China.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong><em>Invisibility, Transparency and the
Internet</em></strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The paper ends by
re-formulating the relationship between the making of an IT City and the way in
which transparency as a rhetoric and technology-as-instrumental method fail to
account for the different kinds of changes that accompany the restructuring of these
cities. On the one hand, there is shrinkage of physical space and built form,
as new forms of technology infrastructure, global lifestyle and late
capitalistic economies expand to fill up the spaces which were earlier
available for political mobilisation, organisation and inhabitation. On the
other, there is a diminishing political landscape, where, with the integration
of the government with the market, there is a tendency to establish larger
regulation and censorship in order to retain the status quo relationship
between the government and the citizen, in the face of massive governance
transition. Both these conditions are produced by the rise and spread of
Information Technologies.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">In the process, there
are also only two kinds of citizenships that are addressed by the e-governance
structures which work on a double edge: Firstly, they make the direct access
(defined either by abundance or lack of access) citizenships hyper-visual,
robbing them of nuances and looking upon them as implicated only in the discursive
practices of Internet technologies. Second, they render invisible, the other
supporting structures in order to highlight and focus on the economic
development and growth propelled by the rise of the IT industries. In other
words, they make the citizens who are central to the discourse, invisible, by
treating them as embodiments of the new economic markets and aspirations,
removing them from their traditional contexts, histories and spaces. Moreover,
they make invisible/transparent, populations who are not marked by the aura of
the Internet technologies, in order to bring into focus, the extraordinary
changes – both in the physical built form as well as in the realms of
governance – that have been initiated and accomplished with the making of the IT
City Shanghai-Pudong.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong> </strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>References:</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Abbas, Ackbar. 1997. <em>Hong Kong: Culture and
the Politics of Disappearance</em>. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University press.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Appadurai, Arjun. 1990. "The Coming
Community." In <em>Global Culture</em>, edited by Michael Featherstone. London:
Sage.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Feuchtwang, Stephen. 2004. <em>Making Place: State Projects, Globalisation
and Local Responses in China</em>. New York: Routledge Cavendish</p>
<p>Hawks, F.L. 2009. <em>A
Short History of Shanghai: Being an account of the growth and development of
the international settlement</em>.
Beijing: China Intercontinental Press.</p>
<p>Hiibbard, Peter. 2008. The Bund Shanghai : China Faces
the West. Odyssey Books and Guides.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Huang, Tsung-yi Michelle. 2004. <em>Walking Between Slums and Skyscrapers :
Illusions of open space in HK, Tokyo and Shanghai</em>. Hong Kong: Hong Kong
University Press.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Leaf, Michael. 1998. ‘Urban planning and urban
reality under Chinese economic reforms’, <em>Journal of Planning Education and
Research.</em> 18(2): 145–153.</p>
<p>Li,
Heng. 2006. “Behind the Spectacle of Commercial Real Estate,” <em>Xinmin Weekly</em>, 3rd issue (2006)</p>
<p>Mirsky, Jonathan. 2008. <em>The Britannica Guide to Modern China : A comprehensive introduction to
the world’s new economic giant</em>. London: Constable and Robinson Ltd.</p>
<p>Diao
Wenjun, “Analysis of the Present situation and Development Trend of
Hypermarkets in Shanghai,” <em>Shanghai
Articles</em>, 3rd issue (2006)</p>
<p> (STSN)
Shanghai Times Square
Newsletter. 2008. Issue No. 4. Shanghai.</p>
<p>Shu, Kewen. 2006. “the dynastic History of
Tiananmen Square”, <em>Life Week</em>, Issue 11. 27<sup>th</sup> March.</p>
<p>Sicheng, Liang. 1959. “Tiananmen Square”, <em>Architectural
Journal</em> Issue 9-10. pp. 12.</p>
<p>SSY
(<em>Shanghai Statistical Yearbook) 1986</em>,
Shanghai Statistics Bureau, (September, 1986), p18, p412.</p>
<p>SSY(a)
(shanghai Statistical Yearbook) 2005. Shanghai Statistics Bureau. China
Statistics Press. August 2005.</p>
<p>Stanat, Michael. 2005. <em>China’s Generation Y: Understanding the Future Leaders of the World’s
Next Superpower</em>. NY: Homa and Sekey Books.</p>
<p>Tang, Shih-che. 2009. ‘The club and the carrot of
China’s globalization.’ <em>Inter-Asia
Cultural Studies.</em> Volume 10, Number 2. Delhi: Routledge Journals.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Wu, Fulong. 1999. ‘The global and local
dimensions of place-making: remaking Shanghai as a world city’. <em>Urban
Studies</em>, 37(8): 1359–1377.</p>
<p>Xixian, Xu and Xu JianRong. 2004.<em> A Changing Shanghai.</em> Shangai: Shanghai People’s Fine Arts
Publishing House.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Yeung, Yue-man. 1996. <em>Shanghai: Transformation and Modernization Under China's Open Policy.</em>
Shanghai: <span class="addmd">Chinese University Press.<strong></strong></span></p>
<p>Zhang,
Jishun. , “The Linong of Shanghai: the political mobilization of grass-roots
and the trend of national social integration (1950-1955),” <em>Chinese Social Sciences Today</em>, 2nd issue, 2004</p>
<p>Zhang,
Xudong. 2002. “The Construct of Shanghai: Criticism of Urban Idols,
Non-mainstream Writing and the Diminishment of Modern Myths” <em>Literary Review</em>, the 5th edition</p>
<div><br clear="all" />
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<div id="edn1">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><a name="_edn1" href="#_ednref1"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[i]</span></span></a> The project wants to emphasize that it is
not attempting a historiography of the building of the IT City of
Shanghai-Pudong. Instead, by drawing selectively, different ways in which the
technology imaginaries (technopolises, intellectual labour, globally homogenous
geographies and time-lines, bodies marked by technology in their material
practices, etc ) of the Internet, find structure and form in the emerging IT
cities in Asia.</p>
</div>
<div id="edn2">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><a name="_edn2" href="#_ednref2"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[ii]</span></span></a> Zhang Chunqiao, Secretary
of the Culture and Education Department of the Shanghai Municipal
Committee who accompanied DuBois to
Shanghai Mansion, specially mentioned DuBois’ visit in an article entitled “To
Climb the New Summit of Victory.”.</p>
</div>
<div id="edn3">
<p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoEndnoteText"><a name="_edn3" href="#_ednref3"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[iii]</span></span></a> In 1994, one Shanghai
government officer stated, “the government plans to remove or close down two
thirds of the factories located within [the range of] 106 square kilometers
from the city centre, namely, within the Inner Ring Road.”.<em> </em>Due to different reasons (one of
the main reasons is the increase of transferee cost because unsolved problems,
such as the proper placement of a large number of former workers, have been
bundled with the factory buildings and factory land), some factories still
remain in their original places, although most of them have already stopped
manufacturing and the workers dismissed. The industrial life/space has
disappeared with the disappearance of the factories. Ruins of this life/space
become some sort of commodity only because the land under the ruins still has
some value.</p>
</div>
<div id="edn4">
<p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoEndnoteText"><a name="_edn4" href="#_ednref4"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[iv]</span></span></a> On the day (1 October
1949) of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, Mao Zedong suggested
rebuilding Tiananmen Square and making it a “grand and magnificent square.” See
(Kewen, 2006). Liang Sicheng, who always insisted on preserving the old Beijing
and opposed massive makeover, finally realized that the makeover was never
about architecture but about politics: “As for the scale of Tiananmen Square …
apart from considering the scale of man as a biological being and the scale of
construction appropriate to the man’s physiology, we should also take into
account the scale for the great collective requested by the political men in
the new society.” Liang, 1959, pp 12).</p>
</div>
<div id="edn5">
<p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoEndnoteText"><a name="_edn5" href="#_ednref5"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[v]</span></span></a> The People’s Square,
transformed in 1953 from the original racecourse (which was nationalized in
1951 by the Municipal Military Control Commission), surrounded by woods, and
paved with tiled and cemented floor, is the largest public space in Shanghai
and can accommodate over one million people. The Sino-Russian Friendship
Building, which was built in 1955 and was covering an area of 80,000 square
meters, was the city’s largest building after the liberation of Shanghai and
still ranks top in terms of its indoor space in today’s Shanghai. The Cultural
Plaza, transformed in 1952 from the Greyhound Racecourse, had 12,500 seats and
was the largest indoor hall in Shanghai.</p>
</div>
<div id="edn6">
<p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoEndnoteText"><a name="_edn6" href="#_ednref6"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[vi]</span></span></a> It is a unique store that
sells boiled water in Shanghai.</p>
</div>
<div id="edn7">
<p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoEndnoteText"><a name="_edn7" href="#_ednref7"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[vii]</span></span></a> Shanghai’s housing
shortage started in the early 20th century instead of the 1950s. The living
space within Shanghai city is 16,100,000 square meters in total but 3.9 square
meters per capita. During the 32 years from 1952 to 1985, 21,720,000 square
meters of housing were built within the city and the registered population
increased from 5,300,000 to 6,980,000. The housing shortage was still serious
since by 1985, the living space had only reached 5.4 square meters per capita.
(SSY, 1986). What needs to be clarified is that the statics of 1949 does not
include the shabby slum houses commonly referred to as “gun di long.” </p>
</div>
<div id="edn8">
<p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoEndnoteText"><a name="_edn8" href="#_ednref8"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[viii]</span></span></a> This is an increasingly popular
new word in Shanghai over the last 20 years, which refers to the people who
come from other provinces, especially the rural areas, and live in Shanghai but
do not have permanent residence in Shanghai. According to the Shanghai
Statistics Bureau’s report on March 2006, the immigrating labor population in
Shanghai was 3,750,000. 2,840,000 of this population is in the manufacturing,
construction, retail, and catering industry and engaged in low-income manual
work. The immigrating population should be over 4 million if the large number
of people (such as those in the household service business) and their children
be taken into calculation. </p>
</div>
<div id="edn9">
<p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoEndnoteText"><a name="_edn9" href="#_ednref9"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[ix]</span></span></a> In Shanghai, the floor
area of shops has increased seven-fold from 4,030,000 square meters in 1990 to
2,857,000 square meters in 2004 and that of hotels has increased three-fold
from 6,580,000 square meters in 1990 to 2,204,000 square meters in 2004. The
increase of commercial space is even greater if that of commercial office
buildings is calculated as well. (SSY(a), 2005, pp. 198)</p>
</div>
<div id="edn10">
<p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoEndnoteText"><a name="_edn10" href="#_ednref10"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[x]</span></span></a> Take the area around
Zhongshan Park for example, although it was one of the earliest developed
leisure areas in Shanghai, there was only one small department store in the
mid-1980s and the retail business developed slowly. However, within these ten
years, with the completion of Zhongshan Park Station along the subway line 2
and light rail line 3, five multi-story shopping malls have been built, all
within a radius of 500 meters. The newest among them is a 58-storey building
with four levels of basement and nine levels of shopping mall.</p>
</div>
<div id="edn11">
<p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoEndnoteText"><a name="_edn11" href="#_ednref11"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xi]</span></span></a> By the end of 2005,
hypermarkets measuring over 5000 square meters within Shanghai have reached 97
and 28 more have chosen their locations and would be opened soon. Because of a
large number of hypermarkets and the intense competition brought about, a
considerable number of them mainly profit from land appreciation rather than
from retail. </p>
</div>
<div id="edn12">
<p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoEndnoteText"><a name="_edn12" href="#_ednref12"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xii]</span></span></a> By the end of 2005, the
commercial real estate in Shanghai has reached a total of 2,900,000 square
meters with 2.6 square meters per capita, far exceeding Hong Kong’s 1.2 square
meters per capita.</p>
</div>
<div id="edn13">
<p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoEndnoteText"><a name="_edn13" href="#_ednref13"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xiii]</span></span></a> Barely 6 million square
meters in 1990, the floor area of office buildings in Shanghai reached a total
of 4,012,000 square meters in 2004. See <em>Shanghai
Statistical Yearbook 2005</em>. Edited by Shanghai Statistics Bureau, published
by China Statistics Press in August 2005, p 198. The statistical material on
the increase of floor area of commercial office building cannot be found for
the present. Even if the material were obtained, it would not be enough since a
large area of commercial office building has been rented by many state-owned
monopoly agencies. However, the expansion of government office space is great
even if it take up only one tenth of the space of office buildings. </p>
</div>
<div id="edn14">
<p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoEndnoteText"><a name="_edn14" href="#_ednref14"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xiv]</span></span></a> Such phenomenon exists
not only in Shanghai but all over the country, especially in cities and towns
of low economic level. The towering and luxurious government, bank, taxation,
and police buildings create an ironic contrast with the low and shabby
constructions close by. </p>
</div>
</div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/research/grants/the-promise-of-invisibility-technology-and-the-city/finalpaper'>https://cis-india.org/research/grants/the-promise-of-invisibility-technology-and-the-city/finalpaper</a>
</p>
No publishernishantShanghaiCyberculturesArchitectureCensorshipCommunities2012-08-10T08:33:48ZBlog EntryIT, The City and Public Space
https://cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/internet-society-and-space-in-indian-cities/Introduction
<b>In the Introduction to the project, Pratyush Shankar at CEPT, Ahmedabad, lays out the theoretical and practice based frameworks that inform contemporary space-technology discourses in the fields of Architecture and Urban Design. The proposal articulates the concerns, the anxieties and the lack of space-technology debates in the country despite the overwhelming ways in which emergence of internet technologies has resulted in material and imagined practices of people in urbanised India. The project draws variously from disciplines of architecture, design, cultural studies and urban geography to start a dialogue about the new kinds of public spaces that inform the making of the IT City in India. You can also access his comic strip visual introduction to the project at http://www.isvsjournal.org/pratyush/internet/Dashboard.html</b>
<p></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Introducion:</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">There has been, in the fields of design and architecture, a close link between the shape and imagination of the city spaces and the dominant technologies of the time. The study of space (Architecture, Public places and City form) can lead to very interesting insights into the expression of the society with respect to the dominant technologies. Manuels Castells argues that space is not a mere photo-copy (reflection) of the society but it is an important expression. Fredric Jameson, in his identification of the condition of post-modernity demonstrates how the transition into new technologies is perhaps first and most visibly reflected in the architecture, as physical spaces get materially reconstructed, not only to house the needs and peripheries of the emerging technologies but also to embody their aesthetics in their design and built form.Earlier technologies have led to new understandings of the notions of
the public and commons. Jurgen Habermas argues, how the emergence of print
cultures and technologies led to a structural transformation of the public
sphere by creating new and novel forms of participation and political
engagement for the print readers. Within cinema studies in India, Ashish
Rajadhyaksha and Madhav Prasad have looked at the ‘cinematic city’ - how
material conditions of the city transform to house the cinema technologies, and
how the imagination of certain cities is affected by the cinematic
representations of these spaces. Mike Davis’ formulations of an ‘Ecology of
Fear’ and Sean Cubbit’s idea of ‘The Cinema Effect’ also show the integral
relationship that technologies have with the imagination and materiality of
urban spaces.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><em>Research Area: </em></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The rise of the Internet in India in last decade poses interesting
questions concerning ways of studying city spaces and its architecture. The
Internet evokes and represents space in more than one way. Communities that
represent the present urban social processes often mediate this visual and
textual reference to space on the Internet but it is also an unwitting
expression of way people choose to imagine their city, its places and its built
form. It is important and pertinent for example to understand how Internet
communities choose to abstract their own city through various direct or
indirect discourses. The following will be the key questions</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">·
It will be interesting to observe how the idea of
a city gets represented on the Internet through both intended and casual
references. For example is the City seen as a finite clarified artifact (as
many political leadership would like us to believe) or is it seen as complex set
of relationships or systems of places.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">·
How does the city get represented through the
Internet with reference to its regional physical context (both geographical and
cultural landscape)? Such an enquiry can help us in knowing how representation
of city through the Internet acknowledges, neglects or fails to read its
relationship with the local fundamental conditions<a name="_ednref1" href="#_edn1"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[i]</span></span></a> (of topography, water and
culture)</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The actual morphological context of the city will then become an
important precursor for such an enquiry. The structure and flows in the city
have often been compared to the Internet itself in popular discourses. This
assumption can be further analyzed through spatial study of the city as a node
in large region and as many several nodes within the city itself. The idea of
Spaces of Flow in metropolis cities and places as nodes serving the flow has
been very well articulated by Manuel Castells at a generic level. The issue of
place<a name="_ednref2" href="#_edn2"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[ii]</span></span></a> and its representation
(through internet) can be another area that can offer us very interesting
insights into the relationship between the Cartesian and imagined space. The
evolution of a new graphic language on the Internet needs closer examination
from both its use of spatial symbolism as well as its impact on urban space.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">However the contextual issue of an Indian idea of space will becomes
the important narration as a background to such studies. This inquiry needs
examination from a more contextual point of view: from both geographical
(nature of cities) and building typology perspectives (spatial and programmatic
types)</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoCommentText">The
following questions will be investigated further</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoCommentText">a.
How do the current Internet technology, processes
and language reflect in Architecture and urban spaces of cities?</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoCommentText">b.
Will the form of the City and its Architecture understood
any differently now<a name="_ednref3" href="#_edn3"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[iii]</span></span></a>?</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The relationship between the building skin and spatial typology of
some recent architectural and urban design project can form an interesting
narrative to understand these issues. Here the issue of urban and architectural
lighting, signage and graphics can be examined more closely and hence a study
of the building skins and typology. The other largely ignored area of study
concerns the role of the Government of India with the Internet. When was the
last time we visited the railway reservation center to get a ticket or stood in
a queue for hours to be the first on the window? Many Indians still do, but for
many an Internet based on-line tickets reservation site largely substitutes
that experience of the place (railway reservation center), people and the early
morning tea on the gate. This needs closer examination from point of view of
understanding the transformation and gentrification of some of the most
democratic public service spaces in India such as the Railway stations, Municipal
offices and banks. Apart from the material practices of the people, it is
interesting to see how the integration of technologies within various urban
governance practices affect the way in which cities morph, develop and change.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><em>Methodology: </em></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoCommentText">The
aim is to engage with the spatial context of Indian cities while teasing out
issues of the cultural phenomenon associated with the Internet. The following
will be the key methods used in research</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoCommentText">·
To identify and narrate the social structures and
processes that engage both with the intangible (meanings, symbols,
communication etc.) and the tangible (morphology, structure, geography) in
select Indian cities. This elaboration will form an important theoretical
premise specific to further understanding space in Indian Cities. </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoCommentText">·
To document stories of individuals and groups of
the city that demonstrates the typical changes that are taking place in various
social and economic processes as related to the Internet. The aim will be to
address both the tangible and intangible aspects while narrating the stories</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoCommentText">·
To map the spatial implication (structure and
nature of spaces) of the above mentioned changes on the city</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoCommentText">·
To derive a broader narrative while weaving
through different stories, that attempts to address the issue of Internet,
society and space in Indian Cities</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The research can be largely narrated through documentation of such
representative situations but will require a clear articulation of the
theoretical premises at the onset.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">A review literature chapter which specifically marks the different
contours of city-technology relationship – from IT cities which are planned to
house technologies, to SEZ’s which emerge as new forms of technologised cities,
to the gradual transformation and restructuration of city spaces and publics
would also be undertaken. Moreover it will combine the contextual based study
of cities, their public place and Architecture along with studies of the
discourses on the Internet. The project will look at different actors who play
an active, but often invisible role in the transformation of these spaces.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><em>Dissemination and Outputs:</em></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The project shall bring forth a monograph (approximately 50,000 words)
that looks at a relationship between internet technologies and the city with a
historical perspective, in order to explore the notions of public, built form,
city spaces etc. within the Indian context.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">A journal paper that engages with the contemporary discourses in
Architecture and produces a new theoretical formulation of the city-technology
relationship.</p>
<p>
Part of the research
method could possibly include an elective course or workshop at CEPT University
to tap on variety of narrations through different students to strengthen both
the premise and contextual focus of the study.
<br /></p>
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<p>
</p>
<div id="edn1">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><a name="_edn1" href="#_ednref1"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[i]</span></span></a>
This is to say that city form and its perception is very much a result of the
both the local geographical and cultural context</p>
</div>
<div id="edn2">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><a name="_edn2" href="#_ednref2"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[ii]</span></span></a>
“Place” can be defined through both space and character of an area and where
the human experience is important. We experience places and hence understand it
as they hold different processes and meanings.</p>
</div>
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><a name="_edn3" href="#_ednref3"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[iii]</span></span></a> So
does the presence of Internet in our lives impact the way we begin to
understand the Architecture of our city?</p>
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"> </p>
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><strong>Bibliography</strong></p>
<p class="MsoEndnoteText">Venturi, Robert. <em>Learning from Las-Vegas : the forgotten symbolism of architectural
form. </em>MIT Press, 1976</p>
<p>Castell, Manuel. <em>The Rise of the Networked
Society. </em>Oxford:<em> </em>Blackwell Publishers, 2000</p>
<p>Adorno Theoder. <em>The Culture Industrty (Routledge Classics). </em>Routledge, 2001</p>
<p>Benjamin Walter. <em>The Arcade Project.</em> Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002</p>
<p>Jameson Fredric. <em>Postmodernism or The Cultural Logic of Late Capatalism.</em> Verso, 1999</p>
<p><span class="visualHighlight"></span> Davis Mike. <em>Ecology
of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster</em>. Random House, 1998</p>
<p>Ashish Rajadhayaksha. <em>Indian Cinema in the Time of Celluloid: From Bollywood to the Emergency
(South Asian Cinemas). </em></p>
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/internet-society-and-space-in-indian-cities/Introduction'>https://cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/internet-society-and-space-in-indian-cities/Introduction</a>
</p>
No publishernishantCyberspaceCityCyberculturesArchitectureCommunities2011-08-02T06:07:02ZBlog Entry