In the Air Tonight: The Struggles of Communicating About Urban Environmental Quality

This chapter discusses three aspects of urban environmental communication. First, I consider how pollution impacts the city; subsequently, I ponder the forms of pollution communicated, stressing, in particular, issues of controversy, lack of standardization, and efficacy; finally, I look at the question of the reception of the information—that is, the struggle related to governing pollution awareness. The chapter will assume air pollution as a paradigmatic case of urban environmental communication. My choice is motivated by the fact that air pollution communication can be considered the earliest, largest, most systematic, and most extensively studied attempt to communicate urban environmental quality. At the same time, I hold that many of the critical junctures concerning environment, cities, and media are applicable to other kinds of pollution.