Sociotechnical Scale| Mediating Urban Futures: Reading Scales at Urban Planning Exhibition Centers

Abstract

Drawing from observations at two urban planning exhibition centers in China, this article uses the concept of scale to explore how visions of urban futures are communicated to the public and mediated as a technical project to be accomplished through technological progress. It makes a case for how scale is enacted as both a narrative of scaling up to a desirable urban future and as an operational logic of urban governance that privileges quantifying ways of seeing and knowing the city.