Overview

When living and working in cities, we need to make sense of them in order to get by. We must delve below their surface to understand what makes them tick and how we can best engage with them. This book argues that three tropes can help us: namely, metaphors, icons and perspectives. Metaphorically, we can see the city as a community, a battleground, a marketplace, a machine or an organism. Some cities are iconic; they present us with characteristics that are more generally true of cities and city life, such as Venice, Mumbai, New York, Tokyo, Paris and Los Angeles. Cities can also be viewed from different perspectives: those of artists, analysts, rulers and citizens. This book explores these ways of understanding cities, drawing on rich accounts of cities across the world and through time.

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9781527515840

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Every conceivable source is grist to Solesbury's mill. From film noir as from soap opera, from Canaletto as from Cartier-Bresson, from science fiction and showbusiness and street-marketing and travel-writing and memoir and academe he trawls his extraordinary mass of evidence about the meaning and the influence of cities. Each of his chosen examples gets its careful historical analysis, and each is illustrated with relevant glimpses and allusions. Jan MorrisAuthor of A Writer's World: Travels 1950-2000 The book has considerable depth. Solesbury's background means that he is well aware of the urban studies and urban policy fields, but he also has a broad cultural knowledge as well, which enriches the book. Readers may well be inspired to follow up some of the poetry and texts that he cites, as well as enjoying a different way to think about and experience cities. Professor Patsy HealeyUniversity of Newcastle, UK

Author Information

William Solesbury has been a lifelong enthusiast for cities. At university, he read Geography and then Town Planning. Subsequently, he worked as a town planner in London and Munich, before moving into academia. He has been a Visiting Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, at Nuffield College, Oxford and at Kings College London.

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