In the pleasant myopia for relaxation which characterized of my recent holidays, and which led to the accumulation of many emails from many listservs, I almost missed news of what sounds like a fantastic conference. At least if you’re like me and are really, really interested in the intersections of cities and media.

Communication and the City: Voices, Spaces, Media will be held at the University of Leeds’ Institute of Communications Studies on 14 and 15 June 2013. The conference is co-organized with the Urban Communication Foundation, and is in association with and the ECREA Media and the City Temporary Working Group.

The organizers are inviting submissions that “address one or any combination of these three broad questions”:

1) What are the ‘voices’ that animate contemporary cities? How do different identities, groups, cultures, and constituencies interact, intersect and/or compete in mediated and non-mediated urban contexts?

2) What are the communicative dimensions of urban ‘spaces’ in their own right? How does space mediate specific ideologies and subjectivities, and how is urban space constructed and communicated as place?

3) What is the role of the ‘media’ in relation to both the symbolic and material existence of cities? How do both traditional and new media contribute to representing and experiencing, but also financing and structuring the urban environment?