
Imagining Urban Complexity
A Humanities Approach in Tropes, Media, and Genres
Routledge (Publisher)
1st Edition
Published on 30. July 2024
Book
Paperback/Softback
292 pages
978-1-032-73527-6 (ISBN)
Description
Imagining Urban Complexity introduces passionate and critical perspectives on the link between the humanities and urban studies. It emphasizes tropes, media, and genres as cultural techniques that shape complexity in urban environments by distributing affordances, modes of sensing, and modes of sense-making.
Focusing on urban political and cultural dynamics in 24 global cities, the book shows that urban environments are thematized in literature and art, but are also entities that are shaped, perceived, interpreted, and experienced through sense-making techniques that have long been central concerns of the humanities. These techniques, the book argues, activate a dialectic between urban imaginations and cancellations. Tropes, media, and genres are aesthetically and politically powerful: they propel imaginations and open up multiplicities of urban possibilities, they naturalize actualized orders, and they cancel alternatives. The book moves between close readings of city spaces and more systemic and infrastructural approaches to urban environments, providing tools and strategies that can be adapted and extended to understand urban complexity in different cultural and political contexts.
The book speaks to global audiences from a continental philosophical tradition. It is relevant to undergraduates, postgraduates, and academic researchers in the fields of critical urban studies, urban design, comparative literature, cultural studies, cultural analysis, ecocriticism, political theory, and ethics.
Focusing on urban political and cultural dynamics in 24 global cities, the book shows that urban environments are thematized in literature and art, but are also entities that are shaped, perceived, interpreted, and experienced through sense-making techniques that have long been central concerns of the humanities. These techniques, the book argues, activate a dialectic between urban imaginations and cancellations. Tropes, media, and genres are aesthetically and politically powerful: they propel imaginations and open up multiplicities of urban possibilities, they naturalize actualized orders, and they cancel alternatives. The book moves between close readings of city spaces and more systemic and infrastructural approaches to urban environments, providing tools and strategies that can be adapted and extended to understand urban complexity in different cultural and political contexts.
The book speaks to global audiences from a continental philosophical tradition. It is relevant to undergraduates, postgraduates, and academic researchers in the fields of critical urban studies, urban design, comparative literature, cultural studies, cultural analysis, ecocriticism, political theory, and ethics.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Academic, Postgraduate, and Undergraduate Advanced
Illustrations
61 s/w Abbildungen, 61 s/w Photographien bzw. Rasterbilder
61 Halftones, black and white; 61 Illustrations, black and white
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 17 mm
Weight
468 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-032-73527-6 (9781032735276)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Frans-Willem Korsten | Anthony T. Albright
Imagining Urban Complexity
A Humanities Approach in Tropes, Media, and Genres
E-Book
07/2024
1st Edition
Routledge
€53.99
Available for download

Frans-Willem Korsten | Anthony T. Albright
Imagining Urban Complexity
A Humanities Approach in Tropes, Media, and Genres
Book
07/2024
1st Edition
Routledge
€206.80
Shipment within 10-20 days

Frans-Willem Korsten | Anthony T. Albright
Imagining Urban Complexity
A Humanities Approach in Tropes, Media, and Genres
E-Book
07/2024
1st Edition
Routledge
€53.99
Available for download
Persons
Frans-Willem Korsten is professor of Literature, Culture, and Law at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society and professor of Literature and Society at the Erasmus School of Philosophy. He was responsible for the Dutch Research Council (NWO) internationalization program "Precarity and Post-Autonomia: The Global Heritage" and took part in the NWO/Research Foundation Flanders (FWO)-funded program "Imagineering Techniques in the Early Modern Period." He currently takes part in a program funded by the NWO entitled "Playing Politics: Media Platforms, Making Worlds." He published extensively on the Dutch Republican baroque, theatricality, and sovereignty (A Dutch Republican Baroque; 2017), and on the relation between literature, art, politics, justice, and law-Art as an Interface of Law and Justice: Affirmation, Disturbance, Disruption (2021) and Cultural Interactions: Conflict and Cooperation (2022).
Anthony T. Albright is a PhD candidate and lecturer at the Leiden University Center for the Arts in Society. He received a bachelor of arts (BA) with a concentration in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University and a master of arts (MA) in Media Studies from Leiden University.
Anthony T. Albright is a PhD candidate and lecturer at the Leiden University Center for the Arts in Society. He received a bachelor of arts (BA) with a concentration in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University and a master of arts (MA) in Media Studies from Leiden University.
Content
Preamble
Urban complexities: a humanities toolkit of tropes, media, genres
I
Tropes
1. What holds cities together?
Body Politic - Network - Belt: Hong Kong & Atlanta
2. Cities as paradigms of nature-culture
Jungle - Desert - Garden : Mexico City & Canberra
3. Urban distributions of access
Archive - Labyrinth - Zone: Istanbul & Moscow
4. Cities as centers of expectation and disillusion
Utopia - Dystopia - Non-Place: Paris & Brasilia
II
Media
5. Bringing urban selves and world into perspective
Theatre - Spectacle: Amsterdam & Naples
6. Connecting the private and the masses
Newspaper - Radio: Chicago & Cairo
7. Battlegrounds of representation and motors of desire
Television - Cinema: Beijing & Bangkok
8. Media relating dividuals and scapes
Digital - Social Media: Mumbai & Nairobi
III
Genres
9. Cities as forms of emplotment
Narrative - Documentary: Rio de Janeiro & Seattle
10. Urban life fragmented and improvized
Collage - Play: Lagos & Barcelona
11. Who does a city address and what do its rhythms express?
Lyric - Poetry: Isfahan & Jakarta
12. City secret, city trauma and the unrepresentable
Allegory - Comics: Jerusalem & Hiroshima
Postscript
The smart city: archipelagos of tests
Urban complexities: a humanities toolkit of tropes, media, genres
I
Tropes
1. What holds cities together?
Body Politic - Network - Belt: Hong Kong & Atlanta
2. Cities as paradigms of nature-culture
Jungle - Desert - Garden : Mexico City & Canberra
3. Urban distributions of access
Archive - Labyrinth - Zone: Istanbul & Moscow
4. Cities as centers of expectation and disillusion
Utopia - Dystopia - Non-Place: Paris & Brasilia
II
Media
5. Bringing urban selves and world into perspective
Theatre - Spectacle: Amsterdam & Naples
6. Connecting the private and the masses
Newspaper - Radio: Chicago & Cairo
7. Battlegrounds of representation and motors of desire
Television - Cinema: Beijing & Bangkok
8. Media relating dividuals and scapes
Digital - Social Media: Mumbai & Nairobi
III
Genres
9. Cities as forms of emplotment
Narrative - Documentary: Rio de Janeiro & Seattle
10. Urban life fragmented and improvized
Collage - Play: Lagos & Barcelona
11. Who does a city address and what do its rhythms express?
Lyric - Poetry: Isfahan & Jakarta
12. City secret, city trauma and the unrepresentable
Allegory - Comics: Jerusalem & Hiroshima
Postscript
The smart city: archipelagos of tests