The Synoptic City: State, ‘Place’ and Power

Early 20th-century urban expansion developed alongside media technologies to aid communication across increasingly differentiated and divided social groupings. Early sociologists maintained that this technology was problematic in relation to the potential for social solidarity and broad citizen political participation. This article extends these early ideas in relation to the synoptic city: a component of neoliberal statecraft generating its own media infrastructure, imaginaries, and messaging pertaining to the ideal city and the right to the city. In this article, it is argued that synoptic power is conjoined with a culture of entrepreneurialism attempting to confer legitimacy on the latter in emotional, sensual and value-specific terms. Synoptic technologies attempt to cultivate common experiences ‘for the many’ but are in fact produced by ‘the few’, with the possible danger of generating highly scripted views of entrepreneurial space and ‘place’ through celebratory animation and strategic silencing