1 networks, interfaces and computer-generated images: learning from digital visualisations of urban redevelopment projects abstract Over the past five years, computer-generated images (CGIs) have become commonplace as a means to market urban redevelopments. To date, however, they have been given relatively little attention as a new form of visualising the urban. This paper argues that these CGIs deserve more attention, and attention of a particular kind. It argues that, instead of approaching them as images situated in urban space, their digitality invites us to understand them as interfaces circulating through a software-supported network space. The paper uses an Actor-NetworkTheory understanding of 'network' and argues that the action done on and with CGIs as they are created takes place at a series of interfaces. These interfacesbetween and among humans, software and hardware -are where work is done both to create the CGI and to create the conditions for their circulation. These claims are explored in relation to the CGIs made for a large urban redevelopment project in Doha, Qatar. The paper concludes by suggesting that geographers need to reconsider their understanding of digital images and be as attentive to the interfaces embedded in the image as to the CGI's visual content.

Computer generated images have become the common means for architects and developers to visualise and market future urban developments. This article examines within the context of the experience economy how these digital images aim to evoke and manipulate specific place atmospheres to emphasize the experiential qualities of new buildings and urban environments. In particular, we argue that CGIs are far from 'just' glossy representations but are a new form of visualising the urban that captures and markets particular embodied sensations. Drawing on a two year qualitative study of architects' practices that worked on the Msheireb project, a large scale redevelopment project in Doha (Qatar), we examine how digital visualisation technology enables the virtual engineering of sensory experiences using a wide range of graphic effects. We show how these CGIs are laboriously materialised in order to depict and present specific sensory, embodied regimes and affective experiences to appeal to clients and consumers. Such development has two key implications. Firstly, we demonstrate the importance of digital technologies in framing the 'expressive infrastructure' (Thrift 2012) of the experience economy. Secondly, we argue that although the Msheireb CGIs open up a field of negotiation between producers and the Qatari client, and work quite hard at being culturally specific, they ultimately draw "on a Westnocentric literary and sensory palette" (Tolia-Kelly 2006) that highlights the continuing influence of colonial sensibilities in supposedly postcolonial urban processes.

This paper reviews the rhetoric of arts-led regeneration in the UK and reflects on its evidence base. We show how the notion of arts-led regeneration as a tool to combat social exclusion in our inner cities developed momentum for policy makers under a New Labour government, culminating in its status as a quasi-social fact. We critique this quasi-social fact and underline its limited and problematic evidence base. We offer suggestions for constructing a new and more robust evidence base.

This paper explores how Computer Generated Images have enabled the visualisation and negotiation of a new urban imaginary, in the production of a large-scale urban development project in Doha, Qatar. CGIs were central not only to the marketing but also the design of Msheireb Downtown. Our study of their production and circulation across a transnational architectural and construction team reveals how their digital characteristics allowed for the development of a negotiated, hybrid urban imaginary, within the context of a re-imaging and re-positioning of cities in a shifting global order. We suggest that CGIs enabled the coproduction of a postcolonial urban aesthetic, disrupting the historical orientalist gaze on the Gulf region, in three ways. Firstly, they circulate through a global network of actors negotiating diverse forms of knowledge from different contexts; secondly, they are composed from a mix of inter-referenced cultural sources and indicators visualising hybrid identities; and thirdly, they evoke a particular urban atmosphere which is both place-and culture-specific, and cosmopolitan. The study emphasises the importance of research into the technical and 2 aesthetic production processes which generate new urban spaces in the context of global market-led growth; and, by considering the circulation of CGIs between sites, contributes to the development of 'a more properly postcolonial studies' (Robinson 2011: 17).