Digital Geographies Books

Introduction

This is list of academic books that provide a kind of introduction into the wide range of themes and topics that can be brought together under the term Digital Geographies. It started as a request on the Digital Geographies Research Group mailing list for a library purchase recommendation, but soon grew beyond that goal. It is provided here free of charge and without any warranty. Always incomplete but hopefully constantly inspiring to dive into the stimulating world of digital geographies.

A version of this list is also available at https://github.com/mrzeszewski/DigitalGeographiesBooks

Have something to add?

This is intended to be a collaborative endeavour. This means that it is upon you to add books that are missing or new books that have just been published. You can help maintain this list through emailing Michal Rzeszewski at mrz@amu.edu.pl or Olivia Fletcher at O.A.Fletcher@liverpool.ac.uk.

Digital Geographies Bibliography

Books are sorted into basic themes. They are are all arbitrary, as with all such classification, but they should give you some pointers as to where to start and where to dig deeper. Essentials are first on the list by obvious reasons but all the other themes are presented in no particular order. Publications are presented by date in all themes but the first one.

Essentials

Things you can start with to have some basic understanding of the current views on what are digital geographies, why they are interesting, definitions and terms being used etc.

  1. Ash, J., Kitchin, R., & Leszczynski, A. (Eds.). (2018). Digital geographies. Sage.
  2. Osborne, T., & Jones, P. (Eds.). (2023). A Research Agenda for Digital Geographies. Edward Elgar Publishing.
  3. McLean, J. (2020). Changing digital geographies. Palgrave Macmillan.
  4. Bork-Hüffer, T., Füller, H., & Straube, T. (2021). Handbuch Digitale Geographien: Welt-Wissen-Werkzeuge (Vol. 5567). UTB.
  5. Crang, M., Crang, P., & May, J. (Eds.). (1999). Virtual geographies: bodies, space and relations. Psychology Press.
  6. Mitchell, W. J. (1996). City of bits: space, place, and the infobahn. MIT press.
  7. Negroponte, N. (1995). Being digital. Hodder & Stoughton.

Space/place

The space/place is a main theme within geography and it is no suprise that it also make a strong appearance within digital geography thought.

  1. Champion, E. M. (2021). Rethinking Virtual Places. Indiana University Press
  2. Halegoua, G. R. (2020). The Digital City. New York University Press.
  3. Rajendran, L. P., & Odeleye, N. D. (Red.). (2020). Mediated Identities in the Futures of Place: Emerging Practices and Spatial Cultures. Springer International Publishing.
  4. Champion, E. (Ed.). (2019). The phenomenology of real and virtual places. New York and London: Routledge
  5. Mattern, S. (2017). Code and clay, data and dirt: Five thousand years of urban media. U of Minnesota Press
  6. Kitchin, R., & Dodge, M. (2014). Code/space: Software and everyday life. Mit Press
  7. Gordon, E., & Silva, A. de S. e. (2011). Net locality: Why location matters in a networked world. Wiley-Blackwell.

Methods

Digital geography is rich with new methods, data sources and new takes on existing methodologies.

  1. Jones P & Osborne T [with Gadsby E, Keen N & Sullivan-Drage C] (in press) Virtual reality methods: a guide for researchers in the social sciences and humanities. Bristol University Press,
  2. Von Benzon, N., Holton, M., Wilkinson, C., & Wilkinson, S. (Eds.). (2021). Creative Methods for Human Geographers. Sage
  3. Rose, G. (2016) Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to Interpreting Visual Materials. Sage
  4. Rogers, R. (2013).Digital methods. The MIT Press.

Digital data

Digital revolution brought a deluge of spatial data and possibility of taking a closer look at data geographies.

  1. Kitchin, R. (2021). The Data Revolution: A critical analysis of big data, open data and data infrastructures. Sage (revsion of 2014 book)
  2. Kitchin, R. (2021). Data Lives: How Data Are Made and Shape Our World. Policy Press.
  3. Thatcher, J., Shears, A., & Eckert, J. (Eds.). (2018). Thinking Big data in geography: New regimes, new research. U of Nebraska Press.

Geographies of the digital

Digital technologies produce and transform geographies but they also have they own geographies.

  1. Adams, P. C., & Warf, B. (Eds.). (2021).Routledge Handbook of Media Geographies. Routledge.
  2. Graham, M., & Dutton, W. H. (Eds.). (2019). Society and the internet: How networks of information and communication are changing our lives. Oxford University Press.
  3. Nash, C. J., & Gorman-Murray, A. (Eds.). (2019). The geographies of digital sexuality. Palgrave Macmillan.
  4. Felgenhauer, T., & Gäbler, K. (Eds.). (2018). Geographies of Digital Culture. Routledge.
  5. Neff, G., & Nafus, D. (2016). Self-tracking. The MIT Press.
  6. Starosielski, N. (2015).The undersea network. Duke University Press.
  7. Murphy, J.T. and Carmody, P. (2015) Africa’s Information Revolution, RGS-Wiley
  8. Warf, B. (2012). Global geographies of the internet. Springer Science & Business Media.
  9. Crampton, J. W. (2003). The political mapping of cyberspace. University of Chicago Press.
  10. Dodge, M., & Kitchin, R. (2001). Mapping cyberspace. Routledge London.

Smart cities, digital cities

Various interconnectione between technology, society and space within urban contexts

  1. Rose, G. (Ed.). (2022). Seeing The City Digitaly: Processing urban space and time. Amsterdam University Press.
  2. Luque-Ayala, A., & Marvin, S. (2020). Urban operating systems: Producing the computational city. MIT Press.
  3. Mattern, S. (2020). A city is not a computer. In The Routledge Companion to Smart Cities. Routledge.
  4. Coletta, C., Evans, L., Heaphy, L., & Kitchin, R. (Eds.). (2018).Creating smart cities. Routledge.
  5. Kitchin, R., & Perng, S. Y. (2016).Code and the City. Routledge.
  6. Aurigi, A. (2016). Making the Digital City: The Early Shaping of Urban Internet Space. Routledge.
  7. Shaw, J., & Graham, M. (2016). Our Digital Rights to the City. Meatspace Press.
  8. Mattern, S. (2015). Deep mapping the media city. U of Minnesota Press.
  9. Foth, M., Brynskov, M., & Ojala, T. (Red.). (2015). Citizen’s Right to the Digital City. Springer Singapore
  10. Townsend, A. M. (2013). Smart cities: Big data, civic hackers, and the quest for a new utopia. WW Norton & Company.
  11. Ishida, T. (2000). Digital cities: Technologies, experiences and future perspectives (T. 1). Springer.

Digital technology

Technology and the way its shapes, creates and influence everyday spatialities

  1. Jones, P. I. (2020). Bodies, technologies and methods. Routledge.
  2. Jackson, D. (2019). Data Cities: How satellites are transforming architecture and design. London: Lund Humphries.
  3. Evans, L. (2018). The re-emergence of virtual reality. Routledge.
  4. Ash, J. (2017). Phase media: Space, time and the politics of smart objects. Bloomsbury Publishing USA
  5. Kleine, D (2013) Technologies of Choice? ICTs, development and the capabilities approach, MIT Press
  6. Unwin, P. T. H., & Unwin, T. (Eds.). (2009). ICT4D: Information and communication technology for development. Cambridge University Press.
  7. Brunn, S. D., Cutter, S. L., & Harrington Jr, J. W. (Eds.). (2004).Geography and technology. Springer Science & Business Media.

Spatial media

Location data and location based services sparked new explicitly spatial type of media

  1. Kitchin, R., Lauriault, T. P., & Wilson, M. W. (Eds.). (2017). Understanding spatial media. Sage.
  2. McQuire, S. (2017). Geomedia: Networked cities and the future of public space. John Wiley & Sons.
  3. Evans, L., & Saker, M. (2017). Location-Based Social Media. Springer International Publishing.
  4. Evans, L. (2015). Locative Social Media. Palgrave Mcmilan.
  5. Scharl, A., & Tochtermann, K. (Eds.). (2009). The geospatial web: how geobrowsers, social software and the Web 2.0 are shaping the network society. Springer Science & Business Media.
  6. McQuire, S. (2008). The media city: Media, architecture and urban space. Sage.
  7. Turner, A. (2006). Introduction to neogeography. O’Reilly Media, Inc.

Games and gaming

Spaces of gaming and spaces in games are rich ground for geographical inquiry

  1. Saker, M., & Evans, L. (2021). Intergenerational locative play augmenting family. Emerald Publishing.
  2. Deshbandhu, A. (2020). Gaming culture (s) in India: Digital play in everyday life. Routledge India.
  3. Ash, J. (2015).The interface envelope: Gaming, technology, power. Bloomsbury Publishing USA
  4. Castronova, E. (2007). Exodus to the Virtual World: How Online Fun Is Changing Reality. Palgrave Macmillan.

Digital Earth

  1. Guo, H., Goodchild, M. F., & Annoni, A. (2020).Manual of Digital Earth (p. 852). Springer Nature.
  2. Jackson, D., & Simpson, R. (Eds.). (2013).D_City: Digital Earth| Virtual Nations| Data Cities: Connecting Global Futures for Environmental Planning. DCity.

Digital Economy

  1. Woodcock, J., & Graham, M. (2019). The gig economy. A critical introduction. Cambridge: Polity.
  2. Graham, M. (2018) (Ed.), Digital Economies at Global Margins Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
  3. Pasquale, F. (2015). The black box society: The secret algorithms that control money and information. Harvard University Press.

Endless other possibilities