Communicative Cities

Abstract

The quality of communication within cities makes a significant difference to the overall quality of human life. The question `what makes a city communicative?' has several interpretations: (1) how does a city communicate and (2) how does it facilitate communication? This article proposes a communication paradigm from which to examine the urban landscape. It explores the efforts of the Urban Communication Foundation to develop criteria for a communicative city. The article provides a framework of elements of a communicative city, elements that disqualify a city from being communicative, and proposes a set of fixed and semi-fixed features that operationalize and facilitate communicative cities.