Shannon Mattern

<p>What metaphors, critical/creative tools, and pedagogical practices are needed to imagine ways of building and repairing our cities more collaboratively? In this lively episode, Shannon Mattern shares her expansive and deeply generative interests, projects, and long-term commitments—from computational media spaces, interconnection, and urban intelligence to thinking with trees, refusing technosolutionism, and writing as grafting and patching. New York City is an enduring source of inspiration over the years, both personally and professionally.</p> <p>A lifetime supporter and theorist of libraries and archives, Shannon calls attention to the critical role public libraries play as “epistemological universes,” as sites of long-term exchange, community building, intergenerational learning, and civic engagement amidst rapidly changing media, politics, and environments. Shannon also discusses teaching inter/multi/transdisciplinarity, engaging with multiple ontologies and regimes of care, and creating a graduate seminar on “redesigning the academy” in response to contemporary crises.</p> <p>Shannon Mattern is a theorist and professor of media, design, urban architecture, and anthropology at The New School for Social Research. Based in New York, she is the author of multiple books and essays. Her most recent book is <em>A City Is Not A Computer: Other Urban Intelligences</em> (Princeton, 2021). She is a contributing writer for <em>Places</em>, an online journal that focuses on architecture, urbanism, and landscape design.</p>