A Learnt City: The Mediated, Affective, and Experiential Layers of London
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Author(s) / editor(s):
Giota Alevizou
,
Photini Vrikki
Year: 2025
Language(s): English
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A Learnt City: The Mediated, Affective, and Experiential Layers of London
by Giota Alevizou
1,* [ORCID] and Photini Vrikki
2 [ORCID]
1
Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London, London WC2R 2LS, UK
2
Department of Information Studies, University College London, London WC1E 7BT, UK
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Societies 2025, 15(9), 253; https://doi.org/10.3390/soc15090253
Submission received: 30 June 2025 / Revised: 27 August 2025 / Accepted: 3 September 2025 / Published: 11 September 2025
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Abstract
This article reconceptualises London as a learnt city, a dynamic learning ecosystem co-produced through digital mediation, affective experience, and embodied practice. Focusing on international university students in London, a transient, hyper-digital city, we employ a participatory reflective-mapping methodology to examine how urban learning unfolds across mediated, affective, and experiential layers of city life. The mediated city describes students’ imaginaries shaped by digital media and mapping apps. The affective city captures emotional registers, such as nostalgia, autonomy, and (dis)orientation, that emerge during urban adaptation. The experiential city foregrounds embodied engagements: movement, infrastructure use, routine navigation, and elective belonging. These three dimensions interweave to form an “urban collage,” revealing how students continuously remake both their identities and the city itself through integrated online and offline practices. The article advances critical urban and communication studies by contesting technocratic and neoliberal framings of urban learning. It positions learning as inherently spatial, affective, and relational—a sense-making process enacted in everyday urban experiences. By framing the city as a contested site of knowledge production and identity formation, this article contributes to debates in digital urbanism and critical digital pedagogy. The learnt city concept offers a novel lens for understanding how global cities—characterised by frictions of belonging and mobility—are lived, known, and shaped by those negotiating their multiple mediated, affective, and material dimensions.
https://doi.org/10.3390/soc15090253
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