Introduction

The fields of urban history and visual culture both thrive on expansive horizons. Streets and rivers, neighbourhoods and stadia, festivals and parks populate the work of urban historians, who examine these and other subjects from local, metropolitan, regional, national and transnational perspectives. Viewing these urban themes with and through visual culture increases the potential areas of analysis exponentially. Not only do photography, film, television and advertising produce countless images of urban spaces, visual culture encourages scholars to take seriously the ways of seeing and practices of looking that shape how people understand and engage with the metropolis. Visual technologies, both old and new, make places meaningful in ways that have broad cultural, political and economic consequences. As digital tools continue to make more urban spaces visible to more people, scholars have a crucial role to play in researching, organizing, contextualizing and analysing these myriad urban sights.