McLuhan's Mid-Century Urbanism Now: Creating Sensory Environments with Machinic and Computational Technologies

As computational media has receded from the forefront of urban imaginaries, there has been a swing to promoting ethical and cultural values and eco-consciousness, as if these are divided claims. Putting the two together, this essay argues for acknowledging the role of media in urban environments so that it can be adjusted to enhance life and embellish relational networks. Mid-century, Marshall McLuhan saw media as having overtaken nature, anticipating what many contemporary scholars refer to as the Anthropocene. For him, the death of nature meant it was time to address questions of how best to monitor and deliver media, especially in urban landscape structures that need to be designed to stimulate sentience and enable new forms of citizen involvement. He warned against accelerant technologies built to serve government and corporate interests and advised seeking adaptations to suit local environments and human needs. His relational and ecological view assumed that innovation had intersectional environmental impacts: changing any one thing meant changing everything. McLuhan's theory and strategies push back against paternalistic stewardship in calling for urban structures to be arranged to stimulate sentience and designed for citizen involvement.