Summary: Cosmopolitan Melbourne | Scott McQuire strong>Public Screens and the Transnational Public Sphere <em>Scott McQuire (University of Melbourne)</em> Public space in 21st Century cities is increasingly shaped by interactions between media and architecture. The result is the formation of media-architecture complexes which are fast coalescing into ‘media cities’. The social implications of the new public spaces created at the intersection of media networks and material structures are highly ambivalent. New security and commercial agendas overlay older traditions of civic life. In a context where fear of strangers is frequently promoted as a strategy of political control, new media forms such as large public screens can play a critical role in promoting collective interactions in public space. However, facilitating cosmopolitan public culture demands strategic displacement of the flexible forms of power frequently deployed in the public spaces of contemporary cities. Drawing on research undertaken in Australia and the UK, this paper will argue that sites such as Melbourne’s Federation Square can take a strategic role in the contemporary formation of experimental ‘transnational’ public spheres.
