The political geographies of Liberty City. A critical analysis of a virtual space

Liberty City is a virtual city, created for use with several versions of Grand Theft Auto, a best-selling series of video games concerning the world of crime. Millions of people all over the world have spent large amounts of time exploring this virtual space, making the city an important cultural artefact and a meaningful landmark in the urban imaginary on a global scale. The aim of this paper is to analyse Liberty City in terms of the imagined urban political geographies nested in the aesthetics of this space in the videogame GTA IV. In order to develop this analysis, a theorization of urban politics will be presented, where politics is identified as consisting of representation, government and contestation. The paper will introduce methodological notes concerning the analysis, carried out mainly on the basis of a personal exploration of Liberty City. The paper then outlines the neoliberal political unconscious embedded in the urban dimension of Liberty City and proposes final theoretical reflections on the possible relations between the urban, the political and the aesthetics of video game practices.