This research conceptualises the networked city as a machinic screen. The affective forces of technology upon the city-as-screen is framed by a Deleuzian methodology, where affect theory is central. Research focuses on the Thatcherite imaginary connected to East London and then to discussion of other contemporary cities. This research claims that the increased technological networking of the ‘smart’ city to light-emitting diodes (L.E.D.s) creates increased screen-like luminescence that plays a key role in sense-making experience, but importantly, also in the imaging of the city within a neo-liberal imaginary. Steven Shaviro’s concept of ‘post-cinematic affect’ is applied to the reading of the city as an affect-laden spectacle. Research is conducted into the visuality of the city within modernity, using the symbol of the skyscraper as a thread to connect the Empire State Building, One Canada Square, and the Burj Khalifa. There is an exploration of the relationship between the imaginaries of the city and the modulation of the subject within it. Hocquenghem’s queer affect theory is used to examine queer representations of the city and as a method for remediating the spectacle of the city. This process involves mapping the affects encountered in East London to examine the dazzlement of the networked city. This affective mapping is used to develop a creative practice that aims to resignify the neo-liberal spectacle through a queer narrative. This form of ‘détournement’ of the city is also explored in examples of cinema and art where it operates as a form of resistant agency.