Cities Reimagining the Urban

by Amin, Ash; Thrift, Nigel

• ISBN13: 9780745624136
• ISBN10: 0745624138
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-04-22
• Publisher: Polity

Summary

This book develops a fresh and challenging perspective on the city. Drawing on a wide and diverse range of material and texts, it argues that too much contemporary urban theory is based on nostalgia for a humane, face-to-face and bounded city. Amin and Thrift maintain that the traditional divide between the city and the rest of the world has been perforated through urban encroachment, the thickening of the links between the two, and urbanization as a way of life. They outline an innovative sociology of the city that scatters urban life along a series of sites and circulations, reinstating previously suppressed areas of contemporary urban life: from the presence of non-human activity to the centrality of distant connections. The implications of this viewpoint are traced through a series of chapters on power, economy and democracy. This concise and accessible book will be of interest to students and scholars in sociology, geography, urban studies, cultural studies and politics. .

Author Biography

Ash Amin is Professor of Geography at the University of Durham.


Nigel Thrift is Professor of Geographical Sciences at the University of Bristol.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	vii
Introduction	1	(6)
The Legibility of the Everyday City	7	(24)
Introduction	7	(1)
The New Urbanism in Context	8	(2)
The Flaneur and Transitivity	10	(6)
Rhythms and Rhythmanalysis	16	(6)
Urban Footprints and Namings	22	(4)
A Basic Ontology	26	(5)
Propinquity and Flow in the City	31	(20)
Introduction	31	(1)
The Nostalgic City	32	(5)
Near and Far	37	(4)
Distanciated Communities	41	(7)
The Restless Site	48	(2)
Conclusion	50	(1)
Cities in a Distanciated Economy	51	(27)
Introduction	51	(2)
The Urbanized Economy	53	(10)
Cities as Sites	63	(13)
Conclusion	76	(2)
The Machinic City	78	(27)
Introduction	78	(3)
Circulation	81	(2)
The City of Passions	83	(10)
The Engineering of Certainty	93	(12)
Powerful Cities	105	(26)
Introduction	105	(1)
Diagrams of Power	106	(13)
Escape Attempts	119	(4)
But . . .	123	(7)
Conclusion	130	(1)
The Democratic City	131	(26)
Introduction	131	(2)
`Creating a Democratic Public'	133	(2)
Political City	135	(6)
Rights to the City: a Politics of the Commons	141	(13)
A Mobile Politics	154	(3)
Afterword: Testing New Ground	157	(3)
References	160	(14)
Index	174