Summary
Contents
Subject index
Cities are more important as cultural entities than their mere function as dormitories and industrial sites. Yet, the understanding of what makes a city ‘alive’ and appealing in cultural terms is still hotly contested - why are some cities so much more interesting, popular and successful than others? In this engaging discussion in the text City Life, Adrian Franklin takes the reader on a tour of contemporary western cities exploring their historical development and arguing that it is the transformative, ritual and performative qualities of successful cities that makes a difference. Emphasizing the importance of experience, the book represents the fluid complexity of the city as a living space, an environment and a posthumanist space of transformation. It will be of interest to all those engaging with the difficulties of urban life in sociology, human geography, tourism and cultural studies departments.
Rites de Renaissance
Rites de Renaissance
City Life has tried to avoid the traps of the humanist ontology, that is, viewing cities as if they are merely humans among themselves and that humans are the only actors that do anything of significance. The reader who begins at the beginning and ends up here will already be disabused of this error, particularly after reading the section in the last chapter on city bushfires in Australia and the USA. The agency of trees, and by that I mean what trees actually do, has been systematically ignored in trying to understand the increasing threat (and cost) they pose to major cities. A posthumanist approach that investigates fires as an artefact of the relationship between trees and cities (a long-standing ...
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