Imagined Cities

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Imaginary Cities

Author : Darran Anderson
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 573 pages
File Size : 46,6 Mb
Release : 2017-04-06
Category : Architecture
ISBN : 9780226470306

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Imaginary Cities by Darran Anderson Pdf

How can we understand the infinite variety of cities? Darran Anderson seems to exhaust all possibilities in this work of creative nonfiction. Drawing inspiration from Marco Polo and Italo Calvino, Anderson shows that we have much to learn about ourselves by looking not only at the cities we have built, but also at the cities we have imagined. Anderson draws on literature (Gustav Meyrink, Franz Kafka, Jaroslav Hasek, and James Joyce), but he also looks at architectural writings and works by the likes of Bruno Taut and Walter Gropius, Medieval travel memoirs from the Middle East, mid-twentieth-century comic books, Star Trek, mythical lands such as Cockaigne, and the works of Claude Debussy. Anderson sees the visionary architecture dreamed up by architects, artists, philosophers, writers, and citizens as wedded to the egalitarian sense that cities are for everyone. He proves that we must not be locked into the structures that exclude ordinary citizens--that cities evolve and that we can have input. As he says: "If a city can be imagined into being, it can be re-imagined as well.”

Invisible Cities

Author : Italo Calvino
Publisher : HarperCollins
Page : 179 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 2013-08-12
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9780544133204

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Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino Pdf

Italo Calvino's beloved, intricately crafted novel about an Emperor's travels—a brilliant journey across far-off places and distant memory. “Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.” In a garden sit the aged Kublai Khan and the young Marco Polo—Mongol emperor and Venetian traveler. Kublai Khan has sensed the end of his empire coming soon. Marco Polo diverts his host with stories of the cities he has seen in his travels around the empire: cities and memory, cities and desire, cities and designs, cities and the dead, cities and the sky, trading cities, hidden cities. As Marco Polo unspools his tales, the emperor detects these fantastic places are more than they appear.

Imagined Cities

Author : Robert Alter
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 199 pages
File Size : 54,6 Mb
Release : 2008-10-01
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780300127072

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Imagined Cities by Robert Alter Pdf

In Imagined Cities, Robert Alter traces the arc of literary development triggered by the runaway growth of urban centers from the early nineteenth century through the first two decades of the twentieth. As new technologies and arrangements of public and private space changed the ways people experienced time and space, the urban panorama became less coherent—a metropolis defying traditional representation and definition, a vast jumble of shifting fragments and glimpses—and writers were compelled to create new methods for conveying the experience of the city.In a series of subtle and convincing interpretations of novels by Flaubert, Dickens, Bely, Woolf, Joyce, and Kafka, Alter reveals the ways the city entered the literary imagination. He shows how writers of diverse imaginative temperaments developed innovative techniques to represent shifts in modern consciousness. Writers sought more than a journalistic representation of city living, he argues, and to convey meaningfully the reality of the metropolis, the city had to be re-created or reimagined. His book probes the literary response to changing realities of the period and contributes significantly to our understanding of the history of the Western imagination.

Future Cities

Author : Paul Dobraszczyk
Publisher : Reaktion Books
Page : 272 pages
File Size : 43,7 Mb
Release : 2019-02-11
Category : Architecture
ISBN : 9781789141047

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Future Cities by Paul Dobraszczyk Pdf

Though reaching ever further toward the skies, today’s cities are overshadowed by multiple threats: climate change, overpopulation, social division, and urban warfare all endanger our metropolitan way of life. The fundamental tool we use to make sense of these uncertain city futures is the imagination. Architects, artists, filmmakers, and fiction writers have long been inspired to imagine cities of the future, but their speculative visions tend to be seen very differently from scientific predictions: flights of fancy on the one hand versus practical reasoning on the other. In a digital age when the real and the fantastic coexist as near equals, it is especially important to know how these two forces are entangled, and how together they may help us best conceive of cities yet to come. Exploring a breathtaking range of imagined cities—submerged, floating, flying, vertical, underground, ruined, and salvaged—Future Cities teases out the links between speculation and reality, arguing that there is no clear separation between the two. In the Netherlands, prototype floating cities are already being built; Dubai’s recent skyscrapers resemble those of science-fiction cities of the past; while makeshift settlements built by the urban poor in the developing world are already like the dystopian cities of cyberpunk. Bringing together architecture, fiction, film, and visual art, Paul Dobraszczyk reconnects the imaginary city with the real, proposing a future for humanity that is firmly grounded in the present and in the diverse creative practices already at our fingertips.

Atlas of Imagined Cities

Author : Matt Brown,Rhys B. Davies
Publisher : Batsford Books
Page : 617 pages
File Size : 44,6 Mb
Release : 2023-10-12
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781849948968

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Atlas of Imagined Cities by Matt Brown,Rhys B. Davies Pdf

From the Ghostbusters HQ in New York to Nemo's fish tank in Sydney, from the Phantom of the Opera's Parisian lair to scenes from Grand Theft Auto in LA, this is an amazing atlas of imaginary locations in real-life cities around the world. Locations from film, TV, books, computer games and comics are ingeniously plotted on a series of beautiful vintage-looking maps. Feauturing 14 of the world's greatest cities, the maps show exactly where your favourite characters lived, loved, worked and played, and where iconic scenes took place. The locations have been painstakingly tracked down, mapped, annotated and wittily divulged by the authors, and an extensive index helps you find them all. Within the pages of this book, you'll discover: • Where in London super-spies James Bond and George Smiley are neighbours. • The route of the exciting San Francisco car chase in Bullitt. • The Tokyo homes of all the magical girls from the classic Sailor Moon anime. And many more fascinating locations drawn from the world's imagination. Accompanying the maps are illuminating essays that explain how the authors came to their decisions, along with explorations of the key locations and fun timelines of imaginary events. Find out how to get to Sesame Street, where to join Starfleet and thousands of other places besides, in this indispensable guidebook to all those places you always wanted to visit – if only they were real.

Atlas of Imagined Places

Author : Matt Brown,Rhys B. Davies
Publisher : Batsford Books
Page : 507 pages
File Size : 43,7 Mb
Release : 2021-09-28
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781849947428

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Atlas of Imagined Places by Matt Brown,Rhys B. Davies Pdf

WINNER, Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards 2022: Illustrated Travel Book of the Year. HIGHLY COMMENDED, British Cartographic Society Awards 2022. From Stephen King's Salem's Lot to the superhero land of Wakanda, from Lilliput of Gulliver's Travels to Springfield in The Simpsons, this is a wondrous atlas of imagined places around the world. Locations from film, tv, literature, myths, comics and video games are plotted in a series of beautiful vintage-looking maps. The maps feature fictional buildings, towns, cities and countries plus mountains and rivers, oceans and seas. Ever wondered where the Bates Motel was based? Or Bedford Falls in It's a Wonderful Life? The authors have taken years to research the likely geography of thousands of popular culture locations that have become almost real to us. Sometimes these are easy to work out, but other times a bit of detective work is needed and the authors have been those detectives. By looking at the maps, you'll find that the revolution at Animal Farm happened next to Winnie the Pooh's home. Each location has an an extended index entry plus coordinates so you can find it on the maps. Illuminating essays accompanying the maps give a great insight into the stories behind the imaginary places, from Harry Potter's wizardry to Stone Age Bedrock in the Flintstones. A stunning map collection of invented geography and topography drawn from the world's imagination. Fascinating and beautiful, this is an essential book for any popular culture fan and map enthusiast.

"Invisible Cities" and the Urban Imagination

Author : Benjamin Linder
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 355 pages
File Size : 53,6 Mb
Release : 2022-11-08
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9783031130489

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"Invisible Cities" and the Urban Imagination by Benjamin Linder Pdf

In 1972, Italo Calvino published Invisible Cities, a literary book that masterfully combines philosophy and poetry, rigid structure and free play, theoretical insight and glittering prose. The text is an extended meditation on urban life, and it continues to resonate not only among literary scholars, but among social scientists, architects, and urban planners as well. To commemorate the 50th anniversary of Invisible Cities, this collection of essays serves as both an appreciation and a critical engagement. Drawing from a wide array of disciplinary perspectives and geographical contexts, this volume grapples with the theoretical, pedagogical, and political legacies of Calvino’s work. Each chapter approaches Invisible Cities not only as a novel but as a work of evocative ethnography, place-writing, and urban theory. Fifty years on, what can Calvino’s dreamlike text offer to scholars and practitioners interested in actually existing urban life?

The City of Imagination

Author : Valerio Morabito
Publisher : Oro Editions
Page : 208 pages
File Size : 48,5 Mb
Release : 2020-09
Category : Architecture
ISBN : 1951541170

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The City of Imagination by Valerio Morabito Pdf

It is in the wilderness of cities rather than in nature that the imagination of these landscape drawings comes to life. Without any heroic emphasis, these drawings result from the observation of traces, evident or discreet, in the urban landscape, and the process to collect and memorize traces is the way to consider memory as a primary medium for creativity. This selected collection of over 150 drawings, thought and imagined over many years, delineates a personal city experience, without any intention of building a new city theory. No single drawing in this book is a representation of cities in-situ; all of them are interpretations, translations, and combinations of traces collected and selected while teaching, working, meeting cultures, and eating food in many different cities around the world. These drawings are a different form of communication than the beautiful renderings produced in endless numbers.

The Image of the City

Author : Kevin Lynch
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 212 pages
File Size : 52,5 Mb
Release : 1964-06-15
Category : Architecture
ISBN : 0262620014

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The Image of the City by Kevin Lynch Pdf

The classic work on the evaluation of city form. What does the city's form actually mean to the people who live there? What can the city planner do to make the city's image more vivid and memorable to the city dweller? To answer these questions, Mr. Lynch, supported by studies of Los Angeles, Boston, and Jersey City, formulates a new criterion—imageability—and shows its potential value as a guide for the building and rebuilding of cities. The wide scope of this study leads to an original and vital method for the evaluation of city form. The architect, the planner, and certainly the city dweller will all want to read this book.

Virtual Cities

Author : Konstantinos Dimopoulos
Publisher : Unbound Publishing
Page : 257 pages
File Size : 49,9 Mb
Release : 2020-11-12
Category : Games & Activities
ISBN : 9781783528509

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Virtual Cities by Konstantinos Dimopoulos Pdf

Virtual cities are places of often-fractured geographies, impossible physics, outrageous assumptions and almost untamed imaginations given digital structure. This book, the first atlas of its kind, aims to explore, map, study and celebrate them. To imagine what they would be like in reality. To paint a lasting picture of their domes, arches and walls. From metropolitan sci-fi open worlds and medieval fantasy towns to contemporary cities and glimpses of gothic horror, author and urban planner Konstantinos Dimopoulos and visual artist Maria Kallikaki have brought to life over forty game cities. Together, they document the deep and exhilarating history of iconic gaming landscapes through richly illustrated commentary and analysis. Virtual Cities transports us into these imaginary worlds, through cities that span over four decades of digital history across literary and gaming genres. Travel to fantasy cities like World of Warcraft’s Orgrimmar and Grim Fandango’s Rubacava; envision what could be in the familiar cities of Assassin’s Creed’s London and Gabriel Knight’s New Orleans; and steal a glimpse of cities of the future, in Final Fantasy VII’s Midgar and Half-Life 2’s City 17. Within, there are many more worlds to discover – each formed in the deepest corners of the imagination, their immense beauty and complexity astounding for artists, game designers, world builders and, above all, anyone who plays and cares about video games.

Unseen City

Author : Nathanael Johnson
Publisher : Rodale
Page : 258 pages
File Size : 40,8 Mb
Release : 2016-04-05
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9781623363857

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Unseen City by Nathanael Johnson Pdf

It all started with Nathanael Johnson's decision to teach his daughter, Josephine, the names of every tree they passed as they walked up the hill to daycare in San Francisco, CA. it was a ridiculous project, not just because she couldn't even say the word "tree" yet, but also because he couldn't name a single one of them. When confronted with the futility of his mission, his instinctive response was to expand it, Don Quixote-style, until its audacity obscured its stupidity. And so the project expanded to include an expertise in city-dwelling birds (the raptors, the shockingly shrewd crows, the gulls, the misunderstood pigeons), rodents (raccoons, rats, squirrels), and tiny crawling things (the superpowers of snails, the vast intercontinental warfare of ants). There's an unseen world all around us. There are wonders that we walk past every day without noticing. Johnson has written a book that will widen the pinhole through which we see the world. What does the world look like through the eyes of a peregrine falcon, or a raccoon, or an ant? What does a sidewalk Gingko balboa "see?" What would you learn each morning if you understood how to speak pigeon? If we look closely enough, Johnson believes that the walk to the subway can be just as entrancing as a walk through the forest. Follow along as the author and his family search for the beauty and meaning of nature in an urban jungle.

The Invisible City

Author : Kyle Gillette
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 204 pages
File Size : 49,8 Mb
Release : 2020-04-23
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9780429649288

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The Invisible City by Kyle Gillette Pdf

The Invisible City explores urban spaces from the perspective of a traveller, writer, and creator of theatre to illuminate how cities offer travellers and residents theatrical visions while also remaining mostly invisible, beyond the limits of attention. The book explores the city as both stage and content in three parts. Firstly, it follows in pattern Italo Calvino's novel Invisible Cities, wherein Marco Polo describes cities to the Mongol emperor Kublai Khan, to produce a constellation of vignettes recalling individual cities through travel writing and engagement with artworks. Secondly, Gillette traces the Teatro Potlach group and its ongoing immersive, site-specific performance project Invisible Cities, which has staged performances in dozens of cities across Europe and the Americas. The final part of the book offers useful exercises for artists and travellers interested in researching their own invisible cities. Written for practitioners, travellers, students, and thinkers interested in the city as site and source of performance, The Invisible City mixes travelogue with criticism and cleverly combines philosophical meditations with theatrical pedagogy.

American Cities in Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction

Author : Robert Yeates
Publisher : UCL Press
Page : 212 pages
File Size : 40,5 Mb
Release : 2021-11-15
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781800080980

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American Cities in Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction by Robert Yeates Pdf

Visions of the American city in post-apocalyptic ruin permeate literary and popular fiction, across print, visual, audio and digital media. American Cities in Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction explores the prevalence of these representations in American culture, drawing from a wide range of primary and critical works from the early-twentieth century to today. Beginning with science fiction in literary magazines, before taking in radio dramas, film, video games and expansive transmedia franchises, Robert Yeates argues that post-apocalyptic representations of the American city are uniquely suited for explorations of contemporary urban issues. Examining how the post-apocalyptic American city has been repeatedly adapted and repurposed to new and developing media over the last century, this book reveals that the content and form of such texts work together to create vivid and immersive fictional spaces in ways that would otherwise not be possible. Chapters present media-specific analyses of these texts, situating them within their historical contexts and the broader history of representations of urban ruins in American fiction. Original in its scope and cross-media approach, American Cities in Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction both illuminates little-studied texts and provides provocative new readings of familiar works such as Blade Runner and The Walking Dead, placing them within the larger historical context of imaginings of the American city in ruins.

Imagined Communities

Author : Benedict Anderson
Publisher : Verso Books
Page : 338 pages
File Size : 42,8 Mb
Release : 2006-11-17
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781781683590

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Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson Pdf

What are the imagined communities that compel men to kill or to die for an idea of a nation? This notion of nationhood had its origins in the founding of the Americas, but was then adopted and transformed by populist movements in nineteenth-century Europe. It became the rallying cry for anti-Imperialism as well as the abiding explanation for colonialism. In this scintillating, groundbreaking work of intellectual history Anderson explores how ideas are formed and reformulated at every level, from high politics to popular culture, and the way that they can make people do extraordinary things. In the twenty-first century, these debates on the nature of the nation state are even more urgent. As new nations rise, vying for influence, and old empires decline, we must understand who we are as a community in the face of history, and change.

Infinite City

Author : Rebecca Solnit
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 172 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 2010-11-29
Category : History
ISBN : 9780520262492

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Infinite City by Rebecca Solnit Pdf

What makes a place? Rebecca Solnit reinvents the traditional atlas, searching for layers of meaning & connections of experience across San Francisco.