The Spaces of the Modern City: Imaginaries, Politics, and Everyday Life

(Paperback)

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By United Nations estimates, 60 percent of the world's population will be urban by 2030. With the increasing speed of urbanization, especially in the developing world, scholars are now rethinking standard concepts and histories of modern cities. The Spaces of the Modern City historicizes the contemporary discussion of urbanism, highlighting the local and global breadth of the city landscape. This interdisciplinary collection examines how the city develops in the interactions of space and imagination. The essays focus on issues such as street design in Vienna, the motion picture industry in Los Angeles, architecture in Marseilles and Algiers, and the kaleidoscopic paradox of post-apartheid Johannesburg. They explore the nature of spatial politics, examining the disparate worlds of eighteenth-century Baghdad, nineteenth-century Morelia, Cold War-era West Berlin, and postwar Los Angeles. They also show the meaning of everyday spaces to urban life, illuminating issues such as crime in metropolitan London, youth culture in Dakar, "memory projects" in Tokyo, and Bombay cinema.Informed by a range of theoretical writings, this collection offers a fresh and truly global perspective on the nature of the modern city. The contributors are Sheila Crane, Belinda Davis, Mamadou Diouf, Philip J. Ethington, David Frisby, Christina M. Jimenez, Dina Rizk Khoury, Ranjani Mazumdar, Frank Mort, Martin Murray, Jordan Sand, and Sarah Schrank.

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"This ambitious collection of essays is the result of a series of seminars at Princeton University aimed at developing fresh thinking about the city as a dynamic physical space that 'shapes, and is shaped by, power, economy, culture and society.' A fascinating introductory essay by Gyan Prakash outlines recent urban theorising and counters the idea that, in an age of globalisation, specific cityscapes are losing their significance: our urban experiences still depend on 'local lifeworlds', rich with memories and imagination."--The Guardian

Author Bio

Gyan Prakash is the Dayton-Stockton Professor of History at Princeton University. Kevin M. Kruse is associate professor of history at Princeton University.