From the verticals of New York, Hong Kong and Australia's Gold Coast to the sprawls of London, Paris and Jakarta, this cross-disciplinary volume of new writing examines constructions, representations, imaginations and theorizations of urban space and cityscapes in modern and contemporary culture. Linked by a shared concern for issues of spatiality, the essay topics are organized around three interrelated themes - image, text, and form - and range from the examination of cyberpunk skylines, postcolonial urbanism, and the cinema of urban disaster, to the analysis of iconic city landmarks such as the Twin Towers, the London Eye, and the Jewish Museum Berlin.
Working at the intersections of visual, material, and literary culture, Urban Space and Cityscapes seeks in particular:
- to provide new critical and theoretical perspectives on the city at a time when the condition and future of urbanism are major subjects of international and public concern.
- to examine the aesthetic, narrative, and representational strategies used to interpret the dynamic space of cities.
- to explore the relationship between urban space and a variety of pressing cultural concerns, including issues of identity, memory, technology, class, gender, nation, and ethnicity.
With original essays from the fields of architecture, cultural theory, film, geography, literature, and visual art, Urban Space and Cityscapes offers fresh insight into the increasingly complex relationship between urban space, cultural production, and everyday life.
