Multimedia Explorations in Urban Policy and Planning

Leonie Sandercock is the author of ten books, the most recent of which include Towards Cosmopolis: Planning for Multicultural Cities (1998) and Cosmopolis 2: Mongrel Cities of the 21^st Century (2003). The latter book won the Paul Davidoff Award for best book awarded by the American Collegiate Schools of Planning. She also received the Dale Prize for Community Planning (2005), and the BMW Award for Intercultural Learning (2007), for her paper on 'Cosmopolitan Urbanism'. She co-authored with Giovanni Attili the book and DVD package Where Strangers become Neighbours: Integrating Immigrants in Vancouver, Canada (Springer, 2009).

Giovanni Attili is an Urban Planning PHD, Research Fellow at the University of Rome (La Sapienza) and Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of British Columbia (UBC, Vancouver). He is recipient of the G.Ferraro Award for the best Urban Planning PhD Thesis in Italy in 2005. He is co-editor of the book "Storie di Citta" (Edizioni Interculturali, 2007), author of the book "La citta dei migranti" (Jaca Book, 2008) and co-author of the book and DVD package Where Strangers become Neighbours: Integrating Immigrants in Vancouver, Canada (Springer, 2009).

The book is a collection of essays exploring the potential of multimedia to enrich and transform the planning field. By multimedia the authors refer to a broad range of new information and communication technologies (from film and video to digital ethnography and the internet), which are opening up new possibilities in planning practices, processes, pedagogy and research. The authors document the ways in which these ICTs can expand the language of planning and the creativity of planners; can evoke the lived experience (the spirit, memories, desires) of our 21^st century mongrel cities by engaging with stories and storytelling; and can democratise planning practices.

The text is epistemologically radical, in presenting an argument for the importance of "multiple languages" (ways of knowing) in the planning field, and making the connection between this epistemology and the almost infinite potential of Multimedia to provide varied tools to accomplish this transformation, displacing the supremacy of the rational, linear and hierarchical with more open, playful and imaginative approaches. Each of the authors brings practical experience with different forms of Multimedia use and reflects on the different potentialities offered by Multimedia for critical intervention in urban and regional issues, and the power dynamics embedded in such interventions.